Private SNAFU and other lost souls
Marks Survey/pop quiz the other day and the follow up post that called us all Savages got me thinking about old cartoons. When I started thinking about them I started looking for them on the interwebs.
I found the entire private SNAFU Army training series from WW2. If you have never see it its worth the time to watch. I had seen them before and knew some of the history behind them. Theodore Geisel later to be know as Dr. Seuss was in charge of story and animation on most of them. His influence in the early episodes can be seen in the rhymes and art work. Mel Blanc did most of the voices.
There were at least two episodes that never got shown, the last was a case of art hitting a little to close to reality. The story was about going home and not talking about what you had done or seen, they used the existence of a fictional super bomb or secret weapon as an example. This episode was created before all but a very few knew of the the Atomic bomb.
My favorite episode Booby Trap, keeping in mind that these cartoons were made for adult men that episode would be considered almost pornographic by 1940 standards. I get great joy out of knowing that Dr. Seuss was the master and creator of the nipple slip and the Technical Fairy 1st Class.
I cant write about WW2 cartoons with out mentioning Warner Brothers, MGM, Disney and Fleischer Studios. Buggs Bunny, Donald Duck and Popeye were all after the Axis.
Most of the cartoons from that time have been archived. They are no longer politically correct and will more than likely never be shown on a big screen again.
The Video Below is about 2 hours long, its all of the SNAFU cartoons. The others can be found by looking for Banned WW2 Caatoons on You Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cChh8HuZrog
Category: Historical, Who knows
VERY entertaining, the “Payday” episode rings true today!
Show your age, who remembers reporting for pay? Step forward, report, cite name and pay grade. get paid, sign and move out smartly. I think there was some saluting involved.
We got a Check then went and stood in line on the Ship and Cashed it. It was then that they would nail you for the Random drug test
I remember having to escort and guard the pay lady when I was a young MP. That seems like a lifetime ago now.
Enigma4you…Thank you. Very informative AND entertaining. If we could only get Private SNAFU back on the screen to show America what ISIS and like minded Muslim terrorists are REALLY all about, abroad and AT HOME, I would know there had been a BIG change in America and the entire government.
Speaking of WWII films, here’s one (Non-Cartoon) featuring 1LT Ronald Reagan!
Isnt “The Rear Gunner” Bernaths pet name for Dallas?
Interesting. About a week ago a movie on TV featuring the Bowery Boys got me to wondering if I could find my all time favorite Army training film on the internet. It was a shop safety film shown to us during AIT featuring Milburn Stone (Doc, from Gunsmoke) as the sergeant and Huntz Hall as the moron mechanic. My favorite scene was Hall using a mechanic’s creeper like a sled and sliding across the shop floor before slamming his head into a work bench. Alas, no joy, all I could find was a Navy film.
can you give me a year you saw it?
June, 1963, at Aberdeen PG. Not sure when the TF was made but it looked to be circa 1950. It was still available 11 years later when I was there as an instructor, along with other crowd pleasers such as Principles Of Planetary Gearing and TX100 Transmission Power Flows.
I wish I could figure out how to post images here. I have a book full of Bill Mauldin’s “Willy and Joe” cartoons with some particularly good non-PC ones.
The first one shows a jeep in an Italian town. A sign on a nearby building proclaims how much the locals love their American liberators. The jeep is on blocks and has been stripped and chop-shopped by the same people who posted the sign.
The next one shows Willy and another GI looking at a jeep parked in France. The jeep has been chained and padlocked to a tree, the wheels chocked, an M1 carbine is lashed to the tree pointed at the driver’s seat, and a wire runs from the steering wheel to the carbine’s trigger. Willy explains that, “It’s a habit Joe picked up in Italy.”
It’s a long URL, but it looks like it includes all of them.
I own one of Bill Mauldin’s post-war collections of Willy and Joe (given to me by my Social Studies teacher in 8th Grade, who was a Hillsdale alum. The book was his father’s, and he also gave me a USMC cap that was his uncle’s, and a Japanese cap his uncle took from Iwo). They’re all hilarious.
I have to agree with you, “Booby Trap” is the best.