Hold the Wire (1936) More at IMDbPro »

All of a sudden Popeye isn't "romantic enough," according to Olive Oyl, who is immersed in a romance magazine called "Love and More Love."

So Popeye reads her a poem over the phone and says, "Roses is red, violets is blue, next to spinach, I love you!"

"Oh, what a man!" Olive is quickly won over.

Bluto, with his apparent super-hearing, can hear Popeye talking through a phone miles away as he's giving Olive all his rhymes and Olive is swooning away on the couch. The brute was outside at Miss Oyl's front door with a handful of flowers. (He and Popeye always seem to pick the same time to call on Olive.)

Bluto, who isn't dumb, climbs a nearby telephone poll, rips out some wires and interrupts Olive's call, pretending he's Popeye at the other end. He imitates the sailor man's voice and says: "You're homely, skinny and thin; You looks like something the cat drugged in!"

Olive, of course, freaks out and tells off Popeye off. Bluto keeps laying it on thick.

Popeye, who isn't stupid, either, comes over to Miss Oyl's house and quickly figures things out, especially when he sees Bluto still fooling around on top of the phone wires.

Popeye and Bluto then get into their customary boxing match but this time it's on top of the phone wires and the sight gags are very funny as the two go bouncing and flying around on top like trapeze artists.

The best part of this cartoon, however, was the dialog and the man lines of humorous poetry to the guys throw at Olive and at each other and they knocking the daylights out of the other. A fun cartoon.