Segar, Elzie

Segar, Elzie (Crisler)

(1894–1938) cartoonist; born in Chester, Ill. In 1919 he created the newspaper comic strip, Thimble Theatre, which initially featured Olive Oyl and her brother Castor, but later starred the hamburger-craving Wimpy, and on January 17, 1929, Popeye the Sailor. Popeye's spinach-eating heroics have been immortalized in a series of Max Fleischer animated cartoons and a 1980 full-length film starring Robin Williams.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.