How an industry-shaking flop ruined Robin Williams’ first starring role
For a task and role as challenging as playing the popular cartoon character Popeye, Robin Williams was certainly an astute casting decision to bring the beloved spinach-gorging sailor to life on screen. The year was 1980. Williams was looking for his break, and it materialised in the form of a lead role in a film based on EC Segar’s popular comic strip directed by Robert Altman. By then, Williams had won over audiences as Mork in the television series Mork & Mindy, exuding his humorous charm and penchant for comedic brilliance. However, Williams would carry the entire Popeye film from start to finish.
Williams’ improvisation skills, facial expressions, and everything else, from his strange voice to the way he carried the character, were his humble introduction to audiences across the globe—an audience he would consistently delight over the course of his longstanding career. Nevertheless, Popeye was drenched in turmoil from its very inception.
The movie received a mixed reception after its release but was, by and large, deemed a box office failure, an almost industry-shaking flop. This was despite the film grossing nearly $60million against a budget of $20m. However, the film was so badly received at the time that it effectively put a hold on director Robert Altman’s career in Hollywood for a while as he fled to Paris to work in the confinement of low-budget stage play adaptations after the film’s debacle.
The poor reception also threatened to derail Robin Williams’ career, but in hindsight, it showed everything Williams was about—his undiluted acting brilliance and unmatched comedic wit. Together with his co-star Shelley Duvall, who was cast as Olive Oyl, the pair worked with chemistry and complemented each other to bring the popular cartoon to life.
By the time Popeye reached the end of filming, the movie’s funding had been cut, and Williams cheerfully recounted deciding how the film would end with Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl stuck in the water being attacked by an octopus. Recounting the end of the movie, Williams stated, “Robert Evans, who was coked out of his tits at the time, said, ‘How are we gonna end the movie? I don’t know how we’re gonna end the movie…’ I joked, ‘Well, I could walk on the water like Jesus.’ And he went, ‘Yes! Let’s do it!’ And that ended up being the end of the movie… It was a perfect storm of addiction and alcoholism and craziness, but I wouldn’t trade the experience.”
Of course, Williams’ career would take off into hyperspace orbiting the surreal heights and worlds of characters he breathed into life since then, from Good Will Hunting and Jumanji to Bicentennial Man, Mrs Doubtfire and others but considering his career started with the upheaval and uncertainty of Popeye, it all almost didn’t happen.
There’s also the latest reboot of the film starring Will Smith, but the original movie would, however, delight younger audiences in the years since its release on digital formats, making it an essential classic children’s movie. Meanwhile, Williams’ rendition of the muscular spinach-loving sailor would go on to enchant generations of youngsters for years to come despite almost ending his career before it started.
