Car-azy Drivers

Directed by  |  Seymour Kneitel
Produced by  |  Seymour Kneitel
Isadore Sparber
Written by  |  Larz Bourne
Starring  |  Jack Mercer
Mae Questel
Jackson Beck
Music by  |  Winston Sharples
Animation by  |  Anton Loeb
John Gentilella
Tom Johnson
Studio  |  Famous Studios
Distributed by  |  Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)  |  July 22, 1955
Running time  |  6:00
Country  |  USA
Language  |  English
Preceded by  |  Gift of Gag
Followed by  |  Mister and Mistletoe
IMDb profile
Car-azy Drivers is a Popeye the Sailor theatrical animated short produced by Famous Studios (the original animation unit of Paramount Pictures) and released on July 22, 1955.

## Plot[edit]

Popeye drives to Olive Oyl's house to teach his girlfriend how to drive. He shows up at Olive's doorstep wearing a suit of armor as a precaution because he suspects that she may turn out to be a bad driver. When Olive sees Popeye wearing the suit of armor, she tells him that she refuses to go for her driving lesson unless he removes the suit.

Popeye's concerns about Olive's driving skills turn out well-founded as Olive is literal-minded when following his instructions; for starters, when Popeye's car won't start and he tells her to choke the engine to get it going, she gets out of the car and literally "chokes" the engine before Popeye puts her back in the driver's seat and presses the choke button twice to get the right result. Olive hits the gas pedal next and starts driving too fast, and when Popeye orders her to step on the brake, she slams on it and brings the car to a sudden stop, causing Popeye to go right through the engine block.

While driving through town next, Olive gets distracted by hats on sale at a hat shop and fails to keep her eyes on the road, causing the car to crash into a fruit wagon and then into the back of an armored car. Popeye then instructs Olive about turn signals, but Olive again takes Popeye's instructions literally and stands up on the driver's seat and starts signalling to the cars behind her using semaphore flags while again taking her eyes off the road; when Popeye shows her the proper way to signal, he accidentally slaps a traffic cop in the face.

The distracted Olive ends up driving toward a road construction zone, and when Popeye tells her to let him take the wheel, Olive (again being literal-minded) rips the steering wheel and column out and hands it to him, causing the car to lose control and cause several accidents along the way (as well as losing Popeye, who gets caught by a tree branch and pulled out of the car) before the car ends up on railroad tracks and on a potential collision course with a train. Olive's cries for help spur Popeye to action as he eats his spinach, races to the scene and uses his feet as brakes to bring the train screeching to a halt while his car, with a surprised Olive still inside, ends up at the top of the resulting woodpile of railroad ties.

Soon after, Popeye takes Olive, who is now wearing a pair of horse blinders to keep her from getting distracted, for a driving lesson on a kids' scooter to keep her from getting into any more accidents.

## Production notes[edit]

* This is a color remake of the 1940 Fleischer Studios black-and-white Popeye the Sailor short Wimmin Hadn't Oughta Drive.
* This is the last Popeye theatrical cartoon to be made before Paramount Pictures sold the cartoons for television syndication to Associated Artists Productions (which would alter the front and end credits of the cartoons they acquired to remove references to Paramount's mountain logo and the Paramount name at the studio's request in favor of using a customized Popeye the Sailor title card at the beginning of the Popeye cartoons, along with AAP's own logo at both the beginning and end of the cartoons); all subsequent shorts to the end of the series exist only with their original front-and-end titles (which continued to feature the Paramount logo).

## External links[edit]