A brilliant cartoon, Spies is part of the Private Snafu series of animated shorts produced by Warner Bros. during World War II. Released in 1943, the cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones and features the vocal talents of Mel Blanc. Plot: Private Snafu has learned a secret, but the enemy is listening and he’d better zipper his lip. However, Snafu – little by little – lets his secret slip (by telling the audience, calling his mom, and drunkenly relaying it to a bar girl who works as a Nazi spy): His ship is about to set sail for Africa at 4:30. The information is picked up by spies and quickly relayed to Adolf Hitler, who orders the Nazis to attack the American fleet – which they do, shooting Snafu with torpedoes when he falls in the water. He then ends up in Hell boiling in a cauldron, demanding to know who leaked the secret. Adolf Hitler as well as Hitler’s staff then appear as demons and reveal that he gave away the secret he was entrusted to keep, and then showed him a mirror that revealed a horse’s ass.
A scene in which Private Snafu becomes drunk is musically accompanied by an excerpt from Raymond Scott’s composition, Powerhouse.
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional cartoon shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale.
The series was directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, and the voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc. 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.
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, mild 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. The shorts were classified government documents. Martha Sigall, employed at the ink and paint department, recalled the government security measures imposed on the staff working on them. They had to be fingerprinted and given FBI security clearances. They also had to wear identification badges at work. Workers at the ink and paint department were given only ten cels at a time in an effort to prevent them from figuring out the story content.
The name “Private Snafu” comes from the unofficial military acronym SNAFU (“Situation Normal: All F*cked Up”), with the opening narrator merely hinting at its usual meaning as “Situation Normal, All … All Fouled Up!”
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