As his moniker suggests, Private Snafu is a comic character with a habit of fouling things up, usually because of carelessness, laziness, or ineptitude. His adventures were designed to instruct and entertain American soldiers during World War II, conveying information, imparting safety tips, and reminding GIs that deviating from regulations and protocols can have bad consequences even when they seem arbitrary or even silly at first.
The series was supervised by Hollywood producer-director Frank Capra and created by an amazingly talented team including producer Leon Schlesinger, animators Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, composer Carl W. Stalling, and the inimitable Mel Blanc, who supplied Snafu's voice with the same comic vigor he brought to Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Barney Rubble, and others in more than a thousand cartoons. It's no wonder that Private Snafu became a star during his career, which began with Coming!! Snafu in 1943 and faded after Operation Snafu in 1945, when the war had drawn to a close.
When your name is Snafu a booby trap is the last thing you want to encounter, but they pop up everywhere in the aptly named Booby Traps, released in January 1944. This was the private's ninth picture, and by this point in the series he had smartened up a bit, perhaps because Capra and company didn't want to seem entirely disrespectful toward the everyday soldiers - often without much education or sophistication - in the audience. Accordingly, our hero manages to dodge most of the dangers in disguise that lurk all around him. For a while, at least.
"As our forces move up," narrator Robert C. Bruce says at the beginning, "they must exercise great care." This message hasn't yet reached Snafu, who skips into a recently seized desert area with a goofy grin on his face. "Some booby traps are more alluring and ingenious than others," the voiceover continues, and sure enough, the first ones Private Snafu stumbles on look mighty good at a glance. There's a shower attached to a palm tree, a tad out of place but very tempting for our hero until he spots a gun amid the coconuts above, its trigger tied to the faucet. "If you are a boob, you will be trapped," the narrator warns, and Snafu proudly retorts that he isn't a boob and the trap won't get him, adding, "Nyah!"
The next thing he sees is a sign promising Cool Fresh Camel's Milk free of charge, and there's a cool, fresh camel standing ready to dispense it. Snafu sits on a handy stool and starts to milk the generous beast, realizing in the nick of time that the udders aren't udders, they're detonators on a strategically placed explosive. The challenge after that is a whopper for Snafu, and probably a treat for his predominantly male audience. Strolling further into the desert, the private sees a harem of sexy women striking voluptuous poses in the windows of a building. He makes a beeline...not for the ladies, but for their piano, where he plunks out a familiar song without noticing a batch of TNT set to go off when he hits the final note, or rather if he hits the final note, since he's a terrible musician. Taking a break from the keyboard, he starts groping a scantily clad woman, only to learn that she isn't a woman, she's manikin or fembot with a bomb molded on her backside and two more on her breasts. Fleeing is difficult - a giant mousetrap, multiple trapdoors, and other perils loom - but soon he's safe again.
Or so it seems. He never did hit the last note of that song, and now a tiny door opens in the wall behind him, from which an Adolf Hitler figurine emerges, playing the elusive tune on a tiny triangle. "That's it!" says the private, racing back to the piano, where he hits the correct key and - alas, poor Snafu - gets blown to smithereens. The last scene finds him in heaven, where he wears a halo, strums a harp, and comforts himself with the knowledge that no booby traps await him in the sweet hereafter. He happily plucks the notorious melody on his harp - and gets blown to smithereens all over again. Sometimes a GI just can't win.
Booby Traps was directed by Robert Clampett, a veteran of the field who joined the Warner animation department in 1931 - working on the first Merrie Melody cartoon, Rudolf Ising's Lady, Play Your Mandolin! - and made his directorial debut with Porky's Badtime Story in 1937. After the war he worked at other studios and created the hugely successful TV puppet show Time for Beany, which ran from 1949 to 1955. The story of Booby Traps came from Phil Eastman, who later wrote and illustrated many children's books (as P.D. Eastman) and worked on Mister Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons. Perhaps most important, the screenplay was penned by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, the renowned children's-book author and artist who was recruited for the team because Capra admired his politically minded newspaper cartoons.
Although the Snafu series earns few points for intellectual subtlety, sensitivity to women and minorities, or plain old good manners, the short, low-budget animations are still fascinating to watch. The explosive climax of Booby Traps seems to say that sometimes a GI can't win, but the implied message is that soldiers can win if they follow the rules, stay alert, and keep their wits about them. Private Snafu failed to heed this advice, so he shouldn't have been surprised when a booby trap finally went off in his face. Blunders and mistakes don't always take a fatal toll on him, but he does get blown up, run over, or otherwise dispatched in about a quarter of his films. Although their primary tool is antic humor, the real business of his movies is to convey important facts, encourage proper habits, and drive home essential warnings. This is deadly serious entertainment, crazy gags and all.
Director: Robert Clampett
Producers: Leon Schlesinger, U.S. Army Signal Corps
Screenplay: Dr. Seuss; story by Phil Eastman
Film Editing: Treg Brown
Music: Carl W. Stalling
With: Mel Blanc, Robert C. Bruce
BW-4m.
by David Sterritt
