A Lecture on Camouflage

Private Snafu, the least disciplined soldier in the armed services, was the disaster-prone star of 26 animated shorts produced for the fighting men of the American armed services during World War II. These black and white cartoons ran between three and four minutes apiece and played for an exclusively military audience, delivering lessons in everything from discipline and protocol to the importance of maintaining your service weapon. Frank Capra, the chairman of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, figured the best way to reach servicemen was through humor and created the character of Snafu (from the unofficial military acronym for "situation normal: all fouled up," at least in the G-rated version). The productions themselves, however, were supervised (and often written) by Captain Theodor Geisel, better known today by his pen name Dr. Seuss, and produced by Leon Schlesinger's animation unit at Warner Bros., utilizing the talents of voice artist Mel Blanc, composer Carl Stalling, and directors Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin. Because they were made for an exclusively adult audience, they featured often bawdy humor that would never have passed censors in public theaters, and in the years since they've become cult items for their saucy humor and adult content. Gripes (1943) Fed up with KP duty, Private Snafu shows how he would run things, thanks to a wish granted by Technical Fairy First Class. His vision of a military base with no discipline ends just as you'd imagine. The second Private Snafu animated short is directed by Friz Freleng from a script written in an instantly recognizable rhyming scheme by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. Spies (1943) "I just learned a secret," chants Private Snafu as he goes on leave, bragging about how he'll never tell while leaking every detail piece by piece in sing-song rhyme written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. Chuck Jones directs the third Private Snafu with racial caricatures common to the era and ends the lesson with a bang of gallows humor. A Lecture on Camouflage (1944) Technical Fairy First Class takes over to deliver this comic lecture on the importance of camouflage in the field while Snafu bumbles through the lessons. Chuck Jones directs from a script by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, who added a few touches to the visual design as well. The fluffy roller that Snafu uses to cover his tracks is right out of a Dr. Seuss storybook. Private Snafu Presents Seaman Tarfu in the Navy (1946) The final Private Snafu cartoon hands the spotlight over to his brother and naval counterpart, Seaman Tarfu (as in "things are really fouled up"), for his first and only appearance. This parody of life in the Navy, framed as a good-natured ribbing from the Army, is the only Snafu production from Harmon-Ising studios and was released after the end of the war. Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (1944) Chuck Jones directs this lesson in the importance of proper protection against mosquitos in a slapstick man-against-insect battle. Snafu waves the red flag (in this case his bare bottom) in front of the tenacious "Amos Quito" while the unmistakable sounds of Carl Stalling's lively scoring provides comic commentary. Snafuperman (1944) Private Snafu, tired of studying maps and manuals and enemy identification charts, is transformed into a pudgy, woefully unprepared man of steel by Technical Fairy First Class. As usual, his disastrous failures prove that wars are, in fact, won with field manuals. Carl Stalling's music quotes the fanfare from animated Superman cartoons. By Sean Axmaker