Pass the Salts

The darndest things wash up from the deep blue sometimes. This weekend, treasure hunters can find two refugees from the high seas right in their own backyard: Popeye, the world’s oldest salt and star of a musical opening Friday in Dana Point, and pirate Hippolyte Bouchard’s, whose 1818 raid on Mission San Juan Capistrano is reeancted Saturday.

For Bouchard’s sake, let’s just hope to two don’t cross paths. Even though Popeye’s getting close to 70, we hear he still throws a mean punch.

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Square of jaw and true of heart, friend to orphaned babes and scrawny gals with cloying voices, Popeye is docking at the Orange County Marine Institute this weekend in a musical presented by the Orange County Light Opera Company.

“Popeye the Sailor,” the 1984 show with book and lyrics by R. Eugene Jackson and music by Carl Alette, is directed by Caprice Spencer Rothe and is recommended for all ages. The two-hour show opens Halloween night in OCMI’s Historic Maritime Center and continues weekends through Nov. 23.

Most of us recall Popeye as the mumbling, muscled star of dozens of animated film shorts and TV cartoons. His screen career dates to 1933, when animators Max and Dave Fleischer released the Betty Boop film short “Popeye the Sailor” and brought to life the seaman (and his famous theme song), gal pal Olive Oyl and brawny but dim nemesis Bluto (or, in later cartoons, Brutus).

The hearty lad thrived for more than five decades in movie houses and on television, carried by a string of studios from the innovative Fleischers’ to King Features to Hanna-Barbera.

Even Robert Altman had his way with Popeye in 1980 in a live-action film that, despite the skills of Robin Williams in his first starring role, was a flop commercially and critically.

The one-eyed one also squeezed in a stint on the radio in the mid-1930s, when he temporarily swapped spinach for Wheatena as his strength-giver, thanks to the cereal makers’ sponsorship of the radio program.

But the Popeye swaggering across the stage in Dana Point goes even further back. According to producer Marti Klein, the characters and look of the show are based mostly closely on E.C. Segar’s “Thimble Theatre” comic strip, where Popeye originated in 1929.

In the play, patriotic Popeye has taken a job as a ticket seller and tour guide at the Statue of Liberty. Brutus’ nasty mom, the Sea Hag, overhears our hero telling tourists about the historical treasure contained in the statue and interprets that to mean cold, hard cash.

She and Brutus decide to squeeze the whereabouts of the treasure out of Popeye by kidnapping his beloved Olive and their foundling boy, Swee’pea.

Naturally, Popeye rises to the challenge and restores justice. Or, as he puts it so eloquently: “Them whut’s evil gits whut’s comin’ to ‘em sooner er later.” (Klein notes that in this staging, our hero resorts to violence only when all other options have been exhausted.)

How, you might wonder, has a hotheaded, pipe-chomping squirt like Popeye held the affection of so many generations?

Maureen Furniss, an assistant professor of film studies at Chapman University who is writing a book on animation, has an explanation.

“The Fleischer cartoons had this strange, dreamlike quality . . . that was fascinating,” Furniss said. “But the character had this charming quality too. . . . Like Mr. Magoo, he was always kind of a bumbler that somehow always comes through.

“A scrawny guy, not too attractive, but . . . he always seems to get the girl. Not,” she added with a laugh, “that Olive Oyl was such a catch.”

BE THERE

“Popeye the Sailor,” presented by the Orange County Light Opera Company, opens Friday in the Historic Maritime Center at the Orange County Marine Institute, 24200 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point. Performances 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday. $10-$12. Through Nov. 23. (714) 496-2274.

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According to local lore, Southern California’s first designated drivers may have appeared as long ago as 1818, in San Juan Capistrano. That’s when, during a four-day drunken pillaging of Mission San Juan Capistrano, some of the pirates in Hippolyte Bouchard’s scurvy crew had imbibed so heartily in purloined sacramental wine that their shipmates had to lash them to cannons to get them back to their waiting craft.

Nearly 180 years later, those seagoing party boys are at it again, but this time they’re laying off the sauce. The occasion: the third annual Pirates Festival in Mission San Juan Capistrano. The event, Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., marks what some believe was the only pirate attack ever launched on the Southern California coast.

Festivities include a performance of “The Pirate’s Prance,” a story ballet about Bouchard’s raid created by the Anaheim Dance Company (formerly Coast Ballet Theatre).

In addition, there will be presentations by the Santa Ana College Folklorico Dance Ensemble and other troupes and pirate-themed face-painting and temporary tattoos for the kids.

At 4 p.m., richly costumed members of the Port Royal Privateers and mission volunteers reenact the struggle between Spanish soldiers defending the church and village from pirate Bouchard and his scurvy dogs.

Colorful as it is expected to be, Saturday’s reenactment won’t be 100% historically accurate, admits Amy Weyand, Port Royal Privateer’s event coordinator and one of 60 volunteer swashbucklers.

“Pirates . . . were really a scuzzy, disgusting people,” noted Weyand with undisguised satisfaction. “They didn’t bathe. . . . They were basically guys who couldn’t get a job.”

Privateers, she explained, were essentially pirates with a contract, enlisted by governments to wreak havoc on their enemies by destroying their ships and settlements.

According to mission spokesman Jim Graves, Bouchard was a Frenchman working for the Argentine government who was passing the Spanish-controlled Southern California coast en route to his employer’s home port when he decided to stop in at San Juan Capistrano to “pick up some supplies [and] basically have a soiree.” The brigand chose to bypass San Diego because it was too heavily guarded by a Spanish presidio.

The Mission San Juan Capistrano re-creation features a skirmish between the raiders and the defending Spaniards, but take it with a grain of salt, cautions Weyand.

“We’re acting like Bouchard has to fight the Spaniards, but in reality, [when the Spanish soldiers saw the interlopers approaching] they went, ‘Oh, my God!’ and took off for the hills.”

Pre-pillage, the privateers will mix and mingle with the crowds, handing out small treats for the children, Weyand said. Goodies will be given to children attending the festival dressed as their favorite pirate, Indian or Spaniard. Food will be sold (sorry, no hardtack), with proceeds benefiting the mission’s restoration fund.

BE THERE

Pirates Festival, Mission San Juan Capistrano, 31522 Camino Capistrano. 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. $4-$5. (714) 248-2048.