Private SNAFU "The Home Front" 1943 US Army Cartoon Mel Blanc, Frank Tashlin, World War II
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"
Private Snafu imagines the good times his family is having back
home while he's stationed in the Arctic. Technical
Fairy First Class shows that even his family is helping with the war effort - his dad building tanks, his mom planting a
Victory Garden,
Grandpa riveting battleships, and his girl joining the
WAC's and even the family's horse is pitching in.
This is one of 26
Private SNAFU ('
Situation Normal, All Fouled Up) cartoons made by the
US Army Signal Corps to educate and boost the morale the troops.
Originally created by
Theodore Geisel (
Dr. Seuss) and
Phil Eastman, most of the cartoons were produced by
Warner Brothers Animation Studios - employing their animators, voice actors (primarily
Mel Blanc) and
Carl Stalling's music."
Public domain film slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Snafu
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white
American instructional cartoon shorts produced between
1943 and
1945 during
World War II. The character was created by director
Frank Capra, chairman of the
U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, and most 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. Nel (
2007) shows 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, no profanity, and subtle moralizing. Private Snafu did 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, compared to the six months usually taken for short cartoons of the same kind
...
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...
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 some of these never made it to celluloid 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.
After the war, the Snafu cartoons went largely forgotten.
Prints eventually wound up in the hands of collectors, and these form the basis for The
Complete,
Uncensored Private Snafu, a
VHS and
DVD collection from
Bosko Video...