Ub Iwerks, Shamus Culhane, and Al Eugster | Sinbad the Sailor / 1935

oh hi-de-ho!

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ub Iwerks, Stephen Bosustow, Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster, Ed Love, Grim Natwick, Irven Spence, Mary Tebb, and Bernard Wolf (animators), Ub Iwerks, Shamus Culhane, and Al Eugster (directors) Sinbad the Sailor / 1935

 

Sailing quietly on the serene seas, Sinbad the sailor suddenly spots a group of pirates singing and dancing a shanty. This short cartoon almost repeats parts of the 1932 Disney Silly Symphony work, King Neptune, with a quick switch of the frame to a lone queer with rouged cheeks, orange hair, and large hoop earrings, echoing their chorus of “Yo-ho-de-hi-de-ho!” Several knives are tossed at him, pinning him to the doorway, just as the Hays Code might have, but somehow didn’t. Although, just as in most of the “Panze” films of the first part of the 1930s, this crooner appears without any engagement with the rest of the characters and is bullied for singing his rendition of the pirate song.

    For the next 6 1/2 minutes Sinbad spots the pirate ship just as they spot Sinbad. The pirates shoot cannon balls at the approaching ship, which the world sailor easily bats back at them. But recognizing that he is outnumbered, he attempts to sail in the opposite direction, the pirates catching up with him, dropping anchor and engaging in hand-to-hand battle.

    When the pirate captain finds himself alone, he picks up a cannon ball, and mows Sinbad’s crew down like bowling pins, forcing the famous sailor to walk the plank.     

     Sinbad almost drowns, but he is saved by his famous parrot, and he is able to swim ashore a deserted island which he imagines inhabited by dancing hula girls, introduced, one suspects, to make it clear that Sinbad is a decent heterosexual.

     On this same island he discovers the pirates busy digging hole for the stolen treasure, and climbing a tree to observe them, Sinbad throws a cocoanut first at one and then at another, tricking them to believe they are slugging their own compatriots, which leads briefly to a brawl.

     Eventually, however, an angry ape who eats from the same tree, tosses him to the ground revealing his existence, once again, to the pirates, who tie him up to a tree. The tree is actually the leg of a giant, fire-breathing roc, who, unable to shake off Sinbad from his leg, takes his vengeance on the pirates before he flies away with Sinbad still attached.

    Once again, the parrot saves him by untying his friend, the gigantic bird dropping both our favorite sailor and the treasure with which he has also absconded.

     Sinbad activates a parachute hidden away in his turban and lands safely on the open treasure chest, enjoying his victory with the parrot until they discover the cigars they have begun to smoke are the inferior kind, as in a joke, exploding in their faces.

    I basically agree with a commentator on Letterboxd who goes under the name of Cinemasurf: “Maybe it was the pipe, or the very large pirate trying to relieve ‘Sinbad’ of his ship of treasure, but I just kept thinking this was a ‘Popeye’ cartoon only without any spinach!      

    UCLA has nicely restored this 1935 film with funds from ASIFA-Hollywood.

 

Los Angeles, August 6, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).