Private Snafu

Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character's name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up". (The cleaned-up version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was "Situation Normal: All Fouled Up".)

The series was directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, and the voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc.

Background

File:Coming!! Snafu.webm

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 the first crack at creating the cartoons, Leon Schlesinger of the Warner Bros. animation studio underbid Disney by two-thirds and won the contract. Disney had also demanded exclusive ownership of the character and merchandising rights.

The goal was to help enlisted men with weak literacy skills 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

File:Private Snafu - Spies.ogv

Technical Fairy, First Class, transforms Private Snafu into Snafuperman.

File:The Home Front.webm

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.

Later in the war, however, Snafu's antics became more like those of fellow Warner character Bugs Bunny, a savvy hero facing the enemy head-on. 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. File:Fighting Tools.ogv

The Snafu shorts are notable because they were produced during the Golden Age of Warner Bros. animation. Directors such as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett, and Frank Tashlin worked on them, and 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 the celebrated Mel Blanc (Private Snafu's voice was similar to Blanc's Bugs Bunny characterization, and Bugs himself actually made cameos in the Snafu episodes Gas and Three Brothers). Toward the end of the war, other studios began producing Snafu shorts as well (the Army accused Schlesinger of padding his bills), though these were never filmed before the war ended. The Snafu films are also partly responsible for keeping the animation studios open during the war—by producing such training films, the studios were declared an essential industry.

The character has since made a couple of brief cameos: the Animaniacs episode "Boot Camping" has a character looking very much like Private Snafu, and the Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot" shows Private Snafu on the building-mounted video screen for a few seconds in the opening credits. File:Gas.ogv File:Operation Snafu.ogv

While Private Snafu was never officially a theatrical cartoon character when the series was launched in 1943 (with the debut short Coming! Snafu, directed by Chuck Jones), a proto-Snafu does appear, unnamed and in color, in Jones' cartoon The Draft Horse, released theatrically one year earlier, on May 9, 1942. This appearance would serve as the basis for Snafu's character in the series.

The 24th film of the series, Going Home, produced in 1945, was never released. The premise is what damage could be done if a soldier on leave talks too much about his unit's military operations. In the film, Snafu discusses a "secret weapon" with his girlfriend which was unnervingly (and unintentionally) similar to the atomic bombs under development.

In 1945, a series of cartoons for the Navy featuring Private Snafu's brother "Seaman Tarfu" (for "Things Are Really Fucked Up") was planned, but only one was produced before the war came to a close: Private Snafu Presents Seaman Tarfu in the Navy.

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.

Title	Director	Release date	Video	Notes
Coming!! Snafu	Chuck Jones	June 28, 1943	File:Private Snafu - Coming.ogv	Pilot for Private Snafu. Narrated by Frank Graham.
Gripes	Friz Freleng	July 5, 1943	File:Gripes - Snafu LTGC.webm	All voices are provided by Mel Blanc.
Spies	Chuck Jones	August 9, 1943	File:Private Snafu - Spies.ogv
The Goldbrick	Frank Tashlin	September 13, 1943	File:The Goldbrick.ogv
The Infantry Blues	Chuck Jones	September 20, 1943	File:The Infantry Blues.ogv
Fighting Tools	Bob Clampett	October 18, 1943	File:Fighting Tools.ogv	Cameo of Daffy Duck as Father Duck. A briefly seen newspaper sub-headline reads "Adolph Hitler Commits Suicide", an event that would not become a reality until 18 months after this short premiered.
The Home Front	Frank Tashlin	November 15, 1943	File:Home Front.ogv	Some versions of this short exist where the line at the beginning, "It's so cold, it could freeze the nuts off a jeep" was cut.
Rumors	Friz Freleng	December 13, 1943	File:Rumors.ogv
Booby Traps	Bob Clampett	January 10, 1944	File:Private Snafu - Booby Traps.ogv	First appearance of the "Endearing Young Charms" musical bomb gag, which would be reused in two Bugs Bunny shorts ("Ballot Box Bunny" and "Show Biz Bugs"), one Wile E.Coyote/Road Runner short ("Rushing Roulette"), and in Animaniacs ("Slappy Goes Walnuts").
Snafuperman	Friz Freleng	March 6, 1944	File:Snafuperman.ogv
Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike	Chuck Jones	March 27, 1944	File:Malaria Mike.ogv
A Lecture on Camouflage	Chuck Jones	April 24, 1944	File:A Lecture on Camouflage.ogv
Gas	Chuck Jones	May 29, 1944	File:Gas.ogv	Bugs Bunny makes a cameo appearance, having been pulled from Snafu's gas mask bag.
The Chow Hound	Frank Tashlin	June 19, 1944	File:The Chow Hound.ogv
Censored	Frank Tashlin	July 17, 1944	File:Censored.ogv
Outpost	Chuck Jones	August 1, 1944	File:The Outpost.ogv
Pay Day	Friz Freleng	September 25, 1944	File:Payday.ogv
Target: Snafu	Frank Tashlin	October 23, 1944	File:Target Snafu.ogv
Three Brothers	Friz Freleng	December 4, 1944	File:Three Brothers.ogv	Bugs Bunny makes a cameo appearance in the scene where Fubar tries to escape from the dogs.
In the Aleutians – Isles of Enchantment	Chuck Jones	February 12, 1945	File:In the Aleutians.ogv
It's Murder She Says	Chuck Jones	February 26, 1945	File:It's Murder She Says.ogv
Hot Spot	Friz Freleng	July 2, 1945	File:Hot Spot.ogv
No Buddy Atoll	Chuck Jones	October 8, 1945	File:No Buddy Atoll.ogv
Operation Snafu	Friz Freleng	December 22, 1945	File:Operation Snafu.ogv	In a cartoon with no dialog, Snafu does something right for once as he personally steals Japanese war plans and captures Tojo himself.
Private Snafu Presents Seaman Tarfu in the Navy	George Gordon	1946	File:Seaman Tarfu in the Navy.ogv	Produced by Harman and Ising.
Unreleased shorts
Going Home	Chuck Jones	Unreleased (planned for 1944)	File:Going Home.ogv	There are various theories as to why the short was never released, among them that the depicted "secret weapon" was too reminiscent of the American nuclear weapons program.
Secrets of the Caribbean	Chuck Jones	Unreleased (planned for 1945)	N/A	Master given to the Army. Lost cartoon
Mop Up	William Hanna Joseph Barbera	Unreleased (planned for 1945)	N/A	Project was aborted before filming; also known as How to Get a Fat Jap Out of a Cave.

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.

Title	Date	Director	Studio	Notes
AIR&NAVY/China/Safety	1944	unknown	MGM	Snafu appears in the third segment.
US Soldier/Bullet/Diarrhea and Dysentery	1944	unknown	MGM and UPA	Snafu appears in the third segment.
USS Iowa/Brain/Shoes	1944	unknown	MGM	Snafu appears in the third segment.
Chaplain Corps/Accidents/Gas	1944	unknown	MGM	Snafu appears in the second act.
Voting for Servicemen Overseas	1944	unknown	Disney
Venereal Disease	1944	unknown	Disney	Lost cartoon
Inflation	1945	Osmond Evans	UPA
About Fear	1945	Zack Schwartz	UPA
Japan	1945	Osmond Evans	UPA
Lend/Lease	1945	unknown	UPA
GI Bill of Rights	1946	unknown	Disney

In addition, Weapons of War (1945) 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

While Private Snafu is well known for educating military soldiers, a few other similar series were produced for slightly different purposes. Produced by Walter Lantz Productions and later Warner Bros. Cartoons, Mr. Hook was created to encourage American Navy personnel to buy war bonds and hold them until the end of the war.

Also around the same time, Hugh Harman Productions 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. Because of the small budget, the shorts use 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 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.

Sources

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Further reading

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See also

• Dilbert Groundloop

External links

• Private Snafu on IMDb
• Private SNAFU cartoons at the Internet Archive
• Bright Lights Film Journal
• Storyboard for Weapon of War presented in iMovie
• Private Snafu on YouTube
• The US National Archives YouTube Channel has some digitalized copies in HD