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[The Ghost Man]

Just uncovered this recently and wanted to post it to all. Did you know that Thimble Theatre and Popeye creator E.C. Segar based his lead character on a real man?

Before Thimble Theatre’s debut in the New York Journal back in December of 1919, fortune would have it that E.C. Segar had met up with a gent named Frank “Rocky” Fiegel. The character Popeye the Sailor Man would not appear in the comic strip series until 10 years later in January of 1929. Fiegel was a tough, retired sailor born on January 27, 1868 who had migrated from his native Poland. E.C. Segar had met Fiegel at Wiebusch’s Tavern in Chester, Illinois where he was employed as the janitor and bouncer. As is the nature of his employment, Fiegel got into many fights sorting out the sots and rowdies and incurring injuries. One incident had reported to have left him with an injury to his eye which led him to be given the nickname “Popeye”. He was a legendary scrapper locally who spoke out of the side of his mouth due to his near constant pipe smoking. It’s told that Fiegel smoked like a chimney and favoured wearing striped sailor’s t-shirts and his trademark cap daily. He also had a strong chin and thick, muscular arms. Lee Huffstutler, herself a Chester Illinois local, described Fiegel as “Tall, strong, always ready for a fight and always a winner”.

Fiegel was known to regale pub patrons and especially children with his fantastic tales of his adventurous younger life. He boasted of his great physical strength loudly proclaiming the benefits of spinach as the source of his vitality. E.C. heard these riveting accounts dramatised by the rambunctious ex-sailor again and again. He saw and heard the rough and tumble side of Fiegel’s life but also saw another as a compassionate and just man who loved playing with children and telling his thrilling stories of wonderment. Experiencing all of this in his hometown seeded the fertile imagination of E.C. Segar who developed his signature character Popeye off of this larger-than-life gentleman. Years later in 1979, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a picture of Frank “Rocky” Fiegel sitting in a rocking chair and smoking a pipe, stating that he was the inspiration for the character.

SOURCES:
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch clipping
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33064740/southern-illinoisan/

Gravesite
https://rare.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/31875462_137938898300.jpg

Popeye the Sailor Man was Based on a Real Person
https://www.historydefined.net/popeye-the-sailor-man-was-based-on-a-real-person/

[The Australian Panther]

Thanks for this info, Ghost Man. Sounds like good things are happening for you and for the site. 
Another example showing that creative people look around themselves and use what they see to create something new.
Clearly Frank was a larger than life character in the first place.

cheers! 

[SuperScrounge]

I've seen a number of 'fictional character based on real person' claims.

A few days ago The History Guy on YouTube had an episode on Tarzan that mentioned a claim of a real British lord that Tarzan's adventures were based on. Only there wasn't any such lord.

There was a weightlifter who claimed to be the model for the original Superman artist with questionable claims.

Is there any evidence that E. C. Segar even knew of this guy? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any confirmation in that article, just assumptions.

[The Ghost Man]

Thanks AP, as a creator myself I can testify that certain prominent characteristics of personalities encountered in your life are often used of to form characters. Frank "Rocky" Fiegel was a ready-made hero on a silver platter and was a prominent local legend in E.C. Segar's small hometown of Chester, Illinois.

[The Ghost Man]

Is there any evidence that E. C. Segar even knew of this guy? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any confirmation in that article, just assumptions.

Greetings SuperScrounge, I can't speak to any specious claims made by people regarding Tarzan or Superman, however I'm satisfied that this one is legitimate. If you noted in my post I included some basic sources that substantiate the claim. For example, Fiegel's gravestone has clearly engraved "Inspiration for Popeye the Sailor Man" on it, although on the image that I had attached, that statement was partially obfuscated by flowers. Here's an unobstructed view of it: https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/a/a4/Fiegel-29-1.jpg In another example, I found an additional entry in another article I had discovered in my research. Popeye artist Bud Sagendorf and local Chester Illinois businessmen posited that E.C. Segar had regularly sent checks of payment to Frank "Rocky" Fiegel in gratitude for use of his persona in the creation of Popeye. For more, I would recommend conducting some additional research on your own on this subject.

[SuperScrounge]

Gravestones are not legal documents. Pay the engraver and he'll chisel what you want in it. 

I'm more interested in if Segar actually stated that Fiegal was the inspiration.

[The Australian Panther]

For me, just that photograph of the man is more than enough!

[Robb_K]

Gravestones are not legal documents. Pay the engraver and he'll chisel what you want in it. 

I'm more interested in if Segar actually stated that Fiegal was the inspiration.

Do you think everything in that newspaper article was made up, out of thin air, by Fiegal, himself, and told to the reporter?   Do you believe that the reporter didn't check out Fiegal's reputation with people in that small, Illinois town, to see if that claim was based on actual events?  It seems to me that making a claim like that, if it were false, with Segar's surviving family members still around would be impossible.  Furthermore, even if the newspaper article had been printed well after Segar's death, there would still be people in the town that could remember how long the story about Fiegal having been the inspiration for Popeye had been circulating.  Certainly, Segars children should have been told by him that there was a real man who inspired him to invent Popeye.  Segar's assistant on Thimble Theatre and later, Popeye, would certainly have been told by Segar that Fiegal had been his inspiration.  Someone pretending to have been the inspiration for such an iconic character couldn't get away with that if it weren't true, especially with Sagendorf still alive at the time the claim was being made.

I believe that it is a true story.  I've written a few hundred stories.  Virtually every character I've invented has qualities that I've experienced in people I've met in real life.  Some are amalgomated  from a few different people, and the characters of several were taken wholly from the characteristics of just one "real character" I've known. A character so unique and colourful as Popeye could easily have been formed from meeting such an unforgettable person.  So, I have no reason to doubt that what is printed in the article has been fabricated, and was just made up by a man in a small town, who happens to look very much like the cartoon character, and whose young life mirrored the cartoon character's comic strip activities.

It seems to me I've seen other examples of this same type of situation in which authors based characters in their stories on people they had come across in their lives.  Damon Runyan was probably the best example of that method of interesting character building.  And many of his "fictional" characters in his stories were real people, who were well known to many New Yorkers as being exactly that way.  Just about all my author friends do the same.  A wise editor once said, "Write about what you know.  Realism always shines through, and can be identified by the reader's emotions."

[SuperScrounge]

I'm just a suspicious cuss. 

I've had lies told about me, I've read & heard other stories that turned out to be lies, so I tend to nitpick stories. The article had a lot of "we think", but no actual Segar quote, which is funny since Segar did give interviews. Some reporter must have asked him "Where did you get the idea for Popeye?" I'd like to see his answer.

[Robb_K]

I'm just a suspicious cuss. 

I've had lies told about me, I've read & heard other stories that turned out to be lies, so I tend to nitpick stories. The article had a lot of "we think", but no actual Segar quote, which is
since Segar did give interviews. Some reporter must have asked him "Where did you get the idea for Popeye?" I'd like to see his answer.

I've also had lies told about me, which I was never able to refute, because people wouldn't believe me, even though I was telling the truth.  But, that doesn't make me disbelieve almost everything I encounter in life.  I know for a fact that I can't really know "facts" about "information" I take in.  Almost everything I take in is a judgement based upon my senses (which are often subject to deceiving me), and upon my past experience.  I can't be sure of almost ANYTHING in life, but that doesn't stop me from making what I believe to be a "best guess" about it (and hope I'm right).

We should ALL be from Missouri, and have to be SHOWN convincing evidence, which even then, wouldn't be fully convincing.  Only knowing the person in question, and actually seeing him tell someone that Fiegal WAS, indeed, what inspired him to invent Popeye, and knowing, for sure, based on his looks and his unique voice, that he was really Segar, could actually convince me that I really KNOW that what he stated was true.  And even then, Segar could have been approached later in his life and bribed with a large payment, or coerced by a blackmailer, to make that statement.  Or, it is possible that Segar's handwriting could have been meticulously copied by the same person for many years, so it could be forged and expert handwriting experts wouldn't be able to tell a forged document stating that Fiegal WAS his inspiration for Popeye. 

Most of the "information" we accept in life, we take on faith.  We don't know much, at all, "for sure".  If a gun were put to my head in a Russian Roulette situation, I would guess that Siegal WAS his inspiration (because if it were a lie, it would have been too difficult to not be debunked by Bud Sagendorf, Segar's assistant, who started assisting Segar on "Thimble Theatre" less than 2 years after Popeye's debut).  Surely Segar told Sagendorf how he came up with Popeye!  And Sagendorf was quoted by several different people to have stated that Segar sent checks on non-inconsequential amounts of money, regularly to Fiegel, for having based his popular character on the well-known Chester, Illinois personage.

Lambiek Comiclopedia, an excellently-researched encyclopedia of comics creators (Worldwide), published by Dutch Stripwinkel Lambiek (the premier comic book collector store in The Netherlands (currently edited by a friend of mine, and one of my editors at Dutch Disney Comics)), states that Fiegal, who was a well-known character in Segar's home town of Chesteer, Illinois while the former was growing up, WAS Segar's inspiration for Popeye.  Lambiek has always been fastidious in their research.  Everything I've read, printed in different eras, states that this was true.  Popeye was too popular and well-known for people who knew Segar well to not come forward and debunk a fictitious story made up by Fiegal or anyone else.