Private Snafu is a series of black-and-white American animated instructional short films produced by the First Motion Picture Unit between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The main character's name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up" (often minced as "All Fouled Up"). He is depicted as an incompetent soldier whose misadventures are intended to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects. The series' animation was primarily outsourced to Warner Bros. Cartoons, producers of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series.
Contents
Background
The character was created by director Frank Capra, chairman of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, and most shorts were written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, Philip D. Eastman, and Munro Leaf. Although the United States Army gave Walt Disney Productions the first crack at creating the cartoons, Leon Schlesinger Productions underbid Disney by two-thirds and won the contract. Disney had also demanded exclusive ownership of the character and merchandising rights, but in the end was forced to use Donald Duck or produce individual propaganda films. Snafu was designed by Art Heinemann, the same man who would soon redesign Woody Woodpecker for Walter Lantz Productions. The animators who worked on Snafu were reunited with department head Rudolf Ising, who worked with Leon Schlesinger in the studio's early years, as well as Geisel, which had collaborated with the studio on Horton Hatches the Egg.
The goal was to help enlisted men with weak literacy skills to learn through animated cartoons (and also supplementary comic books). They featured simple language, racy illustrations, mild profanity, and subtle moralizing. Private Snafu did (almost) everything wrong, so that his negative example taught basic lessons about secrecy, disease prevention, and proper military protocols.
Private Snafu cartoons were a military secret—for the armed forces only. Surveys to ascertain the soldiers' film favorites showed that the Snafu cartoons usually rated highest or second highest. Each cartoon was produced in six weeks. The shorts were classified government documents. Martha Sigall, employed at the ink and paint department, recalled the government security measures imposed on the staff working on them. They had to be fingerprinted and given FBI security clearances; they also had to wear identification badges at work. Workers at the ink and paint department were given only ten cels at a time in an effort to prevent them from figuring out the story content.
The name "Private Snafu" comes from the unofficial military acronym SNAFU ("Situation Normal: All Fucked Up"), with the opening narrator in the first cartoon merely hinting at its usual meaning as "Situation Normal, ... All Fouled Up!"
Content
The shorts did not have to be submitted for approval at the Production Code Administration and so were not subject to the Motion Picture Production Code. Most of the Private Snafu shorts are educational, and although the War Department had to approve the storyboards, the Warner directors were allowed great latitude in order to keep the cartoons entertaining. Through his irresponsible behavior, Snafu demonstrates to soldiers what not to do while at war. In Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike, for example, Snafu neglects to take his malaria medications or to use his repellent, allowing a suave mosquito to get him in the end—literally. In Gas Snafu throws away his gas mask and is almost killed by poison gas. In Spies, Snafu leaks classified information a little at a time until the Axis enemies piece it together, ambush his transport ship, and literally blow him to hell. Six of Snafu's shorts actually end with him being killed due to his stupidity: Spies (blown up by enemy submarine torpedoes), Booby Traps (blown up by a bomb hidden inside a piano), The Goldbrick (run over by an enemy tank), A Lecture on Camouflage (large enemy bomb lands on him), Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (malaria), and Going Home (run over by a street car).
Nine of the Snafu shorts feature a character named Technical Fairy, First Class. The Technical Fairy is a crass, unshaven, cigar-smoking miniature G.I. whose fairy wings bear the insignia of a technical sergeant, and who wears only socks, shorts, and a uniform hat. When he appears, he grants Snafu's wishes, most of which involve skipping protocol or trying to do things the quick and sloppy way. The results typically end in disaster, with the Technical Fairy teaching Snafu a valuable lesson about proper military procedure. For example, in the 1944 cartoon Snafuperman, the Technical Fairy transforms Private Snafu into the superhero Snafuperman, who takes bungling to a super-powered level through his carelessness.
The cartoons were intended for an audience of soldiers (as part of the bi-weekly Army-Navy Screen Magazine newsreel), and so are quite risqué by 1940s standards, with minor cursing, bare-bottomed GIs, and plenty of scantily clad (and even semi-nude) women. The depictions of Japanese and Germans are hostile-comic, par for the course in wartime U.S.
The Snafu shorts were directed by noteworthy individuals such as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, and Frank Tashlin, with their characteristic styles are in top form. P. D. Eastman was a writer and storyboard artist for the Snafu shorts. Voice characterizations were provided by Mel Blanc, who was under exclusive contract with Schlesinger at the time. Snafu's voice resembles Bugs Bunny, who made cameo appearances in the Snafu films Gas and Three Brothers.
Availability
As now-declassified work of the United States government, all Private Snafu shorts are in the public domain and are thus freely available in numerous places, including on YouTube and Internet Archive.
Warner Home Video has begun including Private Snafu shorts as bonus material on their Looney Tunes Golden Collection. Other commercial DVDs are available from Thunderbean Animation, who released a DVD containing all the Snafu cartoons entitled Private Snafu Golden Classics, and Bosko Video. The Private Snafu shorts were released on Blu-ray on November 19, 2015 by Thunderbean.
At least one of the Private Snafu shorts was used as an exhibit piece: the short Spies was used for the World War II exhibit at the International Spy Museum.
Impact on children's literature
According to a postwar study of the Snafu cartoons, the wartime experiences of authors Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Philip D. Eastman, and Munro Leaf shaped their successful postwar children's books, especially the use of simple language, and some of the themes. Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat (1957) because Geisel believed the widely used Dick and Jane primers were too boring to encourage children to read. Geisel, Eastman, and Leaf authored books designed to promote personal responsibility, conservation, and respect for multiculturalism. Some racial characterisations are considered questionable today. Geisel's characters were often portrayed as rebels who displayed independence of mind. Eastman's characters, on the other hand, typically embraced the wisdom of authority figures. Leaf's heroes were in between, and seemed more ambiguous toward independence and authority.
Filmography
Private Snafu
Note: All shorts were created by Warner Bros. Cartoons for the U.S. War Department unless otherwise noted. The films, being produced for the U.S. government, are in the public domain.
A Few Quick Facts
In addition to his own shorts, Snafu made some cameo appearances in the Few Quick Facts series of Army-commissioned training films produced by other studios.
In addition, Weapons of War (1944) produced by MGM was originally planned to be part of the Few Quick Facts series but was left out, while Another Change (1945) produced by Disney was probably also left out of the Few Quick Facts series.
Similar cartoons
Private Snafu was not the only character created to educate soldiers for the Army, as a few others with different purposes are known to exist.
Created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, Mr. Hook was created to encourage American Navy personnel to buy war bonds and hold them until the end of the war. The first short of the series was produced by Walter Lantz Productions in color while the remaining shorts were made by Warner Bros. Cartoons in black-and-white.
Hugh Harman also created a short series called Commandments for Health, along with a character named Private McGillicuddy. McGillicuddy was a US Marine who shared similarities to Snafu (both even voiced by Mel Blanc), but this series has a much greater emphasis on health care. Harman's shorts also used limited animation, which had yet to be popularized by mainstream studios at the time.
Warner Bros. also produced a short entitled Dive Bombing Crashes, a cartoon made for a joint-series called Pilot Safety, featuring the character Grampaw Pettibone. Two shorts were known to be made, the second of which was produced by UPA.
Chuck Jones would later direct a 1955 cartoon entitled A Hitch In Time, a short made for the United States Air Force to encourage airmen to re-enlist. The lead character, John McRoger, bears strong resemblance to Snafu, albeit updated to Jones's mid-1950s style, while he encounters Grogan, Technical Gremlin First Class, an updated version of the Technical Fairy from the WWII Snafu shorts.