The Gold Brick (1943)

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Private Snafu is a series of black-and-white American animated instructional short films produced by the First Motion Picture Unit between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The main character's name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up". He is depicted as an incompetent soldier whose misadventures are intended to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects. The series' animation was primarily outsourced to Warner Bros. Cartoons, producers of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series.

Background

The character was created by director Frank Capra, chairman of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, and most shorts were written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, Philip D. Eastman, and Munro Leaf. Although the United States Army gave Walt Disney Productions the first crack at creating the cartoons, Leon Schlesinger Productions underbid Disney by two-thirds and won the contract.

The goal was to help enlisted men with weak literacy skills to learn through animated cartoons (and also supplementary comic books). They featured simple language, racy illustrations, mild profanity, and subtle moralizing. Private Snafu served as a negative example, teaching basic lessons about secrecy, disease prevention, and proper military protocols through his mishaps.

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.

The name "Private Snafu" comes from the unofficial military acronym SNAFU ("Situation Normal: All Fucked Up"), with the opening narrator in the first cartoon merely hinting at its usual meaning as "Situation Normal, ... All Fouled Up!"

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