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Technical fairy first class? Is this any way to Run an Army?: Private Snafu and World War Ii

2005; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680500137953

1465-3451

Michael E. Birdwell,

Cinema and Media Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Michael E. Birdwell is Associate Professor of History at Tennessee Technological University. He has published widely on animation history and is working on a series of essays on Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. He is the Business and Industry section editor for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Appalachia. His is the curator and archivist of Sergeant Alvin C. York's papers and is working on a biography of York's life. Notes Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American culture and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 60. Many stars gave up acting for combat, including James Stewart, David Niven, Van Johnson, Robert Cummings, Henry Fonda, and many more. The Selective Service announced that motion picture production was vital to the war effort, and that people working in the industry could seek exemptions from the draft. The Screen Actors Guild responded by saying that Hollywood did not want special treatment. Bill Mauldin, a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, identified with the average GI and his characters are enduring legacy from World War II. They have recently been republished by WW Norton in a new edition of his book Up Front. The OWI and BMP often competed with each other, unnecessarily duplicated materials, and conducted their own internecine battles throughout the war. For more about the OWI and BMP, see Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, Hollywood Goes to War: how politics, profits and propaganda shaped World War II movies (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 47–112. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: an autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 332. Capra clearly did not like his counterparts in the Signal Corps and hated army bureaucracy; in fact, he considered some of them outright stupid. He delighted in the fact that the Signal Corps had amassed a huge library of Nazi and Japanese propaganda films but had not exploited them to full advantage. The films were: Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, Battle of Britain, Battle of Russia, Battle of China, and War Comes to America. Among the training films seen by the general public were Safeguarding Military Secrets (1942) and Wings Up, which featured Clark Gable as he made his transition from screen hero to soldier. Doherty, Projections of War, pp. 63, 67. Richard Lingeman, Don’t You Know There's A War On?: the American homefront 1941–1945 (New York: Putnam, 1970), pp. 183–185. Judith and Neal Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 109. Stefan Kanfer, Serious Business: the art and commerce of animation in America from Betty Boop to Toy Story (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 137. Doherty, Projections of War, pp. 63–64. For a detailed discussion of the Truman Committee, see David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), pp. 256–291 and George F. Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the culture of Hollywood (New York: Basic Books, 1997), pp. 261–265. Truman's investigation struck many as disingenuous and spiteful. Senators Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri and Gerald P. Nye of Nebraska oversaw an investigation of Hollywood in August 1941, which had accused filmmakers of premature anti-fascist propaganda. The hearings were disrupted by Pearl Harbor and the self-same Washington that pointed a disparaging finger at Hollywood turned and asked for its help. Truman's call for new hearings seemed uncalled for and ill conceived. For more on the Clark-Nye hearings, see Michael Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros. campaign against Nazism (New York, 1998), p. 154–171. Senators accused Zanuck of favoring his own studio 20th Century-Fox over other studios which was tantamount to war profiteering and treason. Zanuck retired from active duty in 1943 due to perceptions of conflict of interest, for Zanuck remained head of 20th Century-Fox while overseeing the military's film unit. Doherty, Projections of War, p. 64. McCullough, Truman, pp. 289–291; Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox, pp. 263–265. That policy changed over the course of the war as the Signal Corps came to realize that drama and emotion helped get the point across. One film that proved especially memorable was John Ford's Sex Hygiene short which featured a love story between a GI and a girl of questionable virtue. Ford enhanced the film with images of men and women infested with chancre sores, hideously deformed genitalia, and other ravages of sexually transmitted diseases. Capra, Name Above the Title, pp. 339–340; Eric Smoodin, Animating Culture: Hollywood cartoons from the sound era (New Brunswick, 1993), p. 71. Paul Fussell, Wartime (New York: Oxford, 1989), p. 79–95; Frank Mathias, GI Jive (Lexington, 1982), pp. 2–31. Smoodin, Animating Culture, p. 79. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There's a War on, p. 197. Quoted in Kanfer, Serious Business, p. 137. Animators found themselves drafted into service, undergoing ‘perfunctory basic training and then sent to Hal Roach Studio in Hollywood,’ a place they referred to as ‘Fort Roach’. Animators who worked there referred to themselves as the ‘Foreskin Fusiliers’. See Kanfer, p. 137. Because of limitations of filmstock available, animators worked under even more strenuous conditions than usual. Traditionally, cartoons ran seven minutes. The Signal Corps wanted the cartoons for the Army–Navy Magazine to come in at 3 minutes in length. Army Chicken Shit affected the Termite Terrace as well. When Schlesinger got the contract to produce the Private Snafu films, his animators, writers, inkers, in-betweeners, and anyone who worked on them had to be fingerprinted, pass background checks, and wear identification badges when on the lot. See Karl F. Cohen, Forbidden Animation: censored cartoons and blacklisted animators in America (Jefferson, North Carolina, 1997), p. 40. Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: a complete illustrated guide to the Warner Bros. cartoons (New York, 1989), p. 379. Judith and Neil Morgan, Dr. Seuss, p. 109. Geisel and Chuck Jones became lifelong friends as a result of their association on the Snafu films and Jones later adapted the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas for television. Geisel was already known to the public as Dr. Seuss through his political cartoons in PM magazine, which have the same zaniness as his later children's books. See Richard H. Minear, Dr. Seuss Goes to War: the World War II editorial cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel (New York, 1999). The general public learned about Private Snafu in a book assembled by the Editors of Look magazine in 1945. See From Movie Lot to Beachhead: the motion picture goes to war and prepares for the future (Garden City, New York, 1945), pp. 41, 56–57. Chuck Jones, Chuck Reducks: drawings from the fun side of life (New York, 1996), p. 263; Mel Blanc and Philip Bashe, That's Not All Folks: my life in the golden age of cartoons and radio (New York, 1988), p. 192. Kanfer, Serious Business, p. 138; Beck and Friedwald, Serious Business, p. 379. Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American cinema in the 1940s, Vol. 6 in the History of the American Cinema series (Berkeley, 1997), p. 223. Blanc and Bashe, That's Not All Folk's, p. 194. The Complete Uncensored Private Snafu: cartoons from World War II (Chatsworth, California: Bosko Video, Image Entertainment, Inc., 1990), hereafter The Complete Uncensored Private Snafu. Snafu's body goes from rigid and erect to soft and pliable as he climaxes visualizing the stripper's bare body. The Complete Uncensored Snafu. Ibid. The crew at Fort Fox awarded Geisel and Jones with its own version of the Academy Award for best cartoon for Spies—a statue of Snafu. See Judith and Neil Morgan, p. 110. Ibid. Snafu has disastrous run-ins with women in Spies, Censored, Pay Day, and Operation Snafu. Gambling reduces Snafu to poverty in Pay Day and In the Aleutians. Over-consumption of alcohol abounds in the films. Ass jokes abound in the Snafu cartoons. His rump gets him in trouble in The Goldbrick, Censored, Malaria Mike, The Chow Hound, and several other cartoons. The Complete Uncensored Private Snafu; Smoodin, Animating Culture, p. 92; Blanc and Bashe, p. 194. Doherty, Projections of War, p. 67; Smoodin, Animating Culture, p. 85. Bugs Bunny makes a fascinating appearance in Gas, for example. The Complete Uncensored Private Snafu. Ibid.