The Real Man Behind the Sailor

Long before Popeye the Sailor Man squeezed open a can of spinach, flexed those enormous forearms and knocked another enemy across the room, there was a real man walking the streets of a small Mississippi River town in Illinois.

His name was Frank “Rocky” Fiegel.

And if the stories from Chester, Illinois, are true, Rocky didn’t need spinach to handle himself.

Frank Fiegel was born in 1868 and became a familiar character around Chester—the same town where Popeye’s creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, grew up. Fiegel was thin and wiry, had a distinctive angular jaw, regularly smoked a pipe and developed a reputation as an extraordinarily tough fighter. Chester’s public library, which preserves the town’s Popeye history, says Fiegel worked part-time cleaning a local saloon and was known around town for his fighting ability.

One local story sounds almost like something taken directly from a Popeye cartoon.

According to the Chester account, three men once supposedly lured Rocky into the woods intending to rob him. Rocky eventually walked back into town and calmly returned to his usual spot outside the saloon.

The three men reportedly went looking for medical attention.

Rocky was rough around the edges. He fought. He smoked his pipe. His face was weathered and distinctive.

But there was another side to him.

Accounts remembered him as being particularly good to children, sometimes giving them candy and treats. That strange combination—a hardened street fighter with a softer heart underneath—sounds remarkably familiar to anyone who grew up watching Popeye.

And one of the children growing up around Chester was E.C. Segar.

Segar was born there in 1894. As a boy he worked at the Chester Opera House, eventually becoming a projectionist. He drew cartoons while movies he had already watched repeatedly played on the screen. His employer recognized his talent and helped pay for a correspondence course in cartooning.

That young man eventually left Chester and became a professional cartoonist.

Then came January 17, 1929.

Segar introduced a strange sailor into his existing comic strip, Thimble Theatre.

The sailor wasn’t originally supposed to become the star.

His name was Popeye.

He was tough. His speech was rough. His jaw stuck out. He smoked a pipe. He solved plenty of problems with his fists—and underneath that hard exterior was a stubborn sense of right and wrong.

Readers loved him.

Popeye became so popular that he eventually overshadowed the characters who had been there before him and became the center of the strip.

And back in Chester, people recognized something.

They had seen this man before.

The resemblance between Popeye and Rocky Fiegel became part of Chester history. Even historical accounts describe Fiegel as the probable inspiration rather than treating every detail of the legend as proven fact. Segar apparently never left behind a definitive statement saying, “I based Popeye entirely on Frank Fiegel.” But the connection has endured for generations and is recognized by Chester itself.

And Rocky apparently wasn’t the only hometown personality who found his way into Segar’s imagination.

Chester tradition identifies the unusually tall, thin Dora Paskel as an inspiration for Olive Oyl, while Segar’s former employer J. William “Windy Bill” Schuchert, a hamburger-loving theater owner, is associated with the inspiration for J. Wellington Wimpy.

The fictional world millions of people came to love may therefore have contained pieces of the ordinary people Segar remembered from childhood.

Frank “Rocky” Fiegel died in Chester on March 24, 1947, at age 79. A contemporary Chester newspaper obituary remembered his feats of strength, angular jaw and familiar pipe—and noted his connection to Popeye. Decades later, his previously unmarked grave received a headstone bearing an engraving of Segar’s original Popeye.

Think about that.

Rocky never became a movie star.

He wasn’t a wealthy celebrity.

He was simply an unforgettable character from a small Illinois town.

Yet something about the way he walked, fought, smoked that pipe and carried himself stayed inside the memory of a young boy who loved to draw.

And years later, pieces of Rocky may have traveled around the entire world.

Sometimes you never know whose life you’re leaving a mark on.

Someone may remember your strength.

Someone may remember your kindness.

Someone may remember the way you stood your ground when everybody else backed down.

Frank Fiegel probably never imagined that generations of children would grow up loving a sailor who looked and acted an awful lot like him.

But more than a century after Rocky walked the streets of Chester, people are still telling his story.

The man disappeared.

The character became immortal.

And somewhere between the two lived the legend we came to know as…

POPEYE THE SAILOR MAN.

— Restored Life After