Spenser Russell-Snyder
Looney Propaganda: Warner Bros. Animation and WWII

As the red curtain pulls up, we see a backdrop painting of three Revolutionary Era marching band members carrying the original American Flag. As a flute and drums play a marching song, the ever popular and lovable Buggs Bunny appears, marching and playing his trademark carrot like the flute. After taking a couple bites, he starts to sing a tune written by Irving Berlin: “The tall man with the high hat and the whiskers on his chin will soon be knocking on your door, and you ought be in (Dir. Clampett 0:16).” He then sidesteps off camera and comes back dancing in an Uncle Sam getup: a tall red white and blue hat and a white beard. “The tall man in the high hat will be comin’ down your way. Get your savin’s out when you hear him shout ‘any booooonds today?’(:26)” Then, in true cartoon fashion, he pulls a big stack of war bonds from behind him and tosses them towards the camera. “Step right up! Come on, step right up and get ‘em!” Buggs says in a carnival worker tone.

Buggs continues to sing, “Any bonds today? Bonds of freedom, that’s what I’m selling. Any boooonds today? Scrape up the most you can, here comes the freedom man askin’ ya to buy your share of freedom today (:40).” As major celebrities during the time of WWII, Buggs Bunny and the rest of the Warner Brothers Looney Toons did their part in promoting the war effort through their cartoons. Some of the films that the Warner Bros. Animation Department produced for the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II were meant as educational entertainment for the troops on their off-duty time and some were meant to inspire the home front to push on with the War effort. The films would deal with a wide array of issues from how to deal with spies, to giving terms to types of behavior, to pushing for the purchase of war bonds (such as the above mentioned “Any Bonds Today”). These films left no question of who the enemy was to the protagonists of the features. The shorts regularly played on stereotypes of the Germans and Japanese. However, looking back on the films in the present, there was much more of a push for negative stereotyping of the Japanese, which was concurrent with the majority of the nation’s views at the time. The shorts create a dilemma in most people that watch them: “How can something so offensive be so funny? (Campbell interview)”

Though they animated and produced the cartoons, The Warner Bros. Animation Department were not the ones that came up with this idea. It was the work of the Warner studio executives and the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit. This Unit was in charge of all of the propaganda films for the entire military. They over saw the making live-action feature length films, as well as the animated shorts the Looney Toons crew put together.

Even more interesting than the fact that the war effort had a motion picture branch, was who was in charge of it. Frank Capra, the famed director of It’s a Wonderful Life, was the head of the department. Capra himself made a series of 7 live action films called Why We Fight, that were also used as educational films to initiate soldiers into the wartime system. Capra employed Ted Geisel to head the animation branch of the department. Geisel is better known as Dr. Seuss and is responsible for most of the dialogue of the animated shorts (Blanc 194). Once that piece of information is given, one can easily see that there is a definite “Seusical” rhyme scheme to the cartoons. For example in the Warner Bros. cartoon Fighting Tools, directed by Warner regular Bob Clampett, every piece of dialogue is said in the typical Seuss styled limerick: “Oh I’ll be the war’s greatest hero/ With these guns I have nothing to fear-o/ My guns are the best/ They can meet any test/ Oh I’ll be the wars greatest hero (:40).” As one can see, Geisel’s dialogue was used for its lyrical rhythm as well as his ability to seamlessly rhyme almost any two ideas together.

Capra and Geisel’s unit was not only in charge of the production of propaganda films, they were also in charge of censoring every film that was made in the U.S. They created a document called The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture. In Mel Blanc’s autobiography That’s Not All Folks, he explains what the manual was used for:

“According to the manual, each filmmaker was to ask himself ‘Will this picture help win the war?’ Although these were purported to be ‘suggestions’ the film industry was ever-mindful that the government’s War Production Board could place unprocessed film on a critical-supply list at any time, thus putting them out of business.” (194)

So as it would seem, the cartoons may have been drawn and voiced by the Warner Bros. Animation staff, but they were not in charge of the subject matter that was covered.

As much as the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit had to do with the output of propaganda to the masses during the War, The Warner Brothers themselves had a large hand in the creation of the films. Harry and Jack Warner were two of the five children. Harry, the elder of the two, was born in his parents’ homeland of Poland as the pogroms of the 1880’s were breaking out. Because of their Jewish faith, the Warner Parents had to flea to America, where they eventually settled in Youngstown, Ohio after moving around for a year or two. After they moved to Youngstown, the Warner’s had another baby, Jack (Birdwell 5).

As they were growing up, the Warner’s worked as a family “selling kosher foods, making and repairing shoes, and even fixing battered bicycles (Birdwell 5).” It wasn’t until their brother Sam got a job as a projectionist that the Warner family got hooked on the revolutionary medium of film. Before they became one of the largest studios in the industry, the brothers went through about 15 years going from film studio to film studio trying to rent and distribute films that they themselves did not produce. Once Jack and Sam moved to the West Coast, Harry and their youngest brother, Abe, followed them to try to start their own production house. “Warner Bros. was officially founded in 1923 with Harry as President of the corporation; Sam and Jack became vice presidents in charge of production, and Abe assumed the role of the company’s treasurer (Birdwell 7).”

The Warner Bros. studio was relatively successful right off the bat, with their first picture being surprisingly similar to the types of movies they’d make during WWII. It was called My Four Years in Germany, based on the autobiography of James W. Gerard, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany. Malicious dictators, acceptance, and the necessity for democracy are just some of the themes explored in this movie, just like most of the films of the 30’s and 40’s (Isenberg 153).

After making the first talking film, The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros. was regarded as an established film production studio. In the years leading up to the U.S. entering WWII, Warner Bros. was one of the only studios actually acknowledging that there was a war going on. At the time, a many Americans sided with the Isolationist movement, and as a result, most studios refused to make pictures dealing with the issue. Going against the grain, The Warner Bros. produced around a dozen movies dealing with the imminent threat of America becoming involved in the war (Dir. Potter 7:00). These films depicted such scenarios as a fascist takeover of the U.S., attacks on British Forces, and the most personal subject to the Warner’s themselves, the rise of home front anti-Semitism in the form of the Black Legion.

Around this time, Warner Bros. decided to get their animation department in on the War effort. A man named Leon Schlesinger headed the animation department of Warner: “A producer who may not have known what made a good cartoon, but who did know what made good money (Dir. Nasr 6:23).” Before they got involved with making wartime propaganda cartoons, the Warner Animation Department created cartoons to go along with the Warner music catalogue. When Friz Freeling, an animator who had began work at the same studio as Walt Disney, became Senior Director of the Animation Department, the Looney Toons really began to shine. He and Schlesinger hired what would become the core Looney Toons staff, including directors Charles “Chuck” Jones and Bob Clampett; composer Carl Staling, radio talent Mel Blanc, as well as a slew of top-notch artists to create the typical Looney Toon feel (Dir Nasr 8:00). With Schlesinger staying out of the production side of the business, the writers and animators were free to create the zaniest cartoons their minds could imagine. However, once the WWII got under way, Warner Bros. and The AFMPU tightened the reigns on the mischievous bunch of Tooners.

The highlight of the Warner Bros. Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit was the creation of informational cartoon shorts featuring a misfortunate private named SNAFU, which stands for Situation Normal: All “Fouled” Up. The idea of the SNAFU cartoons was to show exactly what soldiers were not to do. However, instead of these messages being shouted at the soldiers through a drill sergeant, they were sprinkled throughout these comedic propaganda cartoons. “The format was rigid: SNAFU would be shown demonstrating everything from sexual hygiene to handling weaponry, but true to his name, he’d foul it up. Then, with the guidance of a narrator, he would repeat the action again the correct way (Blanc 193-94).” By the end of the war, the animation team had made over 30 cartoons dealing with basic training, goldbricking (faking being sick to get out of fighting), and coming home from the war.

One such cartoon, Spies, directed by Chuck Jones, deals with the paranoia that the U.S. was going through during the War. It has some of the most blatant imagery of enemies’ symbols and leaders in any of the Warner Cartoons. It follows the clumsy Private SNAFU as he walks through town with something on his mind, a military secret: “Now the military secret that I keep inside my brain, I keep in safe deposit, with a pad-a-lock and chain. You bet I got a secret (:22).” Just as most of the other Looney Toons, SNAFU was voiced by Mel Blanc, and this is apparent seeing as SNAFU sounds remarkably similar to Buggs Bunny. At this point in the cartoon, SNAFU passes a baby carriage and walks off screen and from within the carriage, a little caricature of a stereotypical Japanese man in a bonnet comes out and says “Oh and I bet we find it out! (:35)” The Japanese Spy looks like many of the other caricatures of the time: bucked front teeth, an exaggerated mouth, slanted eyes with round-rimmed glasses.

This paranoia of every Japanese person, be they Japanese-born or American-born, was extremely strong, especially on the west coast, where the Warner Bros. lot is located. Because these feelings were so strong, the government had a majority of the people of Japanese descent on the West Coast relocated to camps where they spent over of 3 years. Interestingly enough, the cartoons that Warner Bros. put out never mentioned anything of the relocation camps, but did play up the fear that many Americans unnecessarily had against the native-born people.

As the cartoon continues, SNAFU is calling his mother from a public telephone booth. The shot starts out as a full shot of SNAFU inside the phone booth, but as he begins to speak in the typical Dr. Suess rhyme scheme, the camera tightens up on his face and the telephone itself. Through the magic of animation, the audience is able to see through the telephone and see that there is a small stereotypical Japanese man inside the telephone listening to SNAFU’s every word: “Hello ma, I’ve got a secret, but I can only drop a tip. Don’t breath a word to no one, but I’m goin’ on a trip (:43).” The shot then cuts away to the outside of the phone booth, where 3 other phone booths are leaning over to hear what SNAFU is saying inside. The booths come upright and the audience sees a German man in one phone booth, a Japanese man in the next, and a French man in the last phone booth. Each one of these depictions is very blatant, as to not confuse the audience of U.S. soldiers. The Japanese man looks like every other Japanese stereotype of the time, the German Man is tall and bulky with a thick mustache, and the French man is skinny with a thin black handlebar mustache and blonde hair. The group of “enemy phone booths” looks directly at the audience and repeats in thick accents, “Don’t breath a word to no one but he’s going on a trip. (:53)”

SNAFU continues his trip around town, shooting his mouth off this time to a magazine stand owner. As he walks up to the stand, the audience sees that the owner is reading a magazine called SEX. This was most likely thrown because of the audience the cartoon was trying to appeal to: 18-25 year old servicemen who are away from their significant others, thus making them hunger for any glimmer of sex appeal (this is less subtle in other cartoons). SNAFU shouts at the stand owner: “Hey! Give me some magazines to read for when I’m on the ship. (:56)” The camera pans to the left and shows three characters holding magazines in front of their faces. Each magazine has a different picture of a different dictator, dressed in officer’s attire, on the cover. On the left most magazine is a caricature of Mussolini, in the center is Hermann Goering, one of Hitler’s right hand men, and on the right is the Japanese Emperor, Hideki Tojo. As they lower the magazines to reveal their faces, the faces on the magazines disappear and the audience finds out the people behind the pictures are the actual dictators themselves. They say to the audience, “Don’t breath a word to no one but he’s going to go by ship. (1:05)”

We next find SNAFU in a bar, about to get a drink from the stereotypical barkeep. He turns to the camera and talks in a regular tone for everyone to hear: “It’s a synch to keep a secret, if a fella just takes care…(1:10)” The shot then tilts upward and above the bar you see two mounted moose heads with their eyes closed. Through the magic of cartoons, these moose come to life, look each other dead in the eye, and cross antlers with each other. As they speak to each other, the antlers create a swastika, so there is no doubt in the audience’s mind that these moose are enemy moose. To further this notion of enemy moose, they say, with a thick German accent, “He’s sailing on a troop ship. Now we’ve got to find out where. (1:14)”

As SNAFU pours himself a shot of alcohol, he reassures the audience: “I’m a sound and silent soldier, just as steady as a rock.” He then toasts to the audience and says, “Here’s to my little secret, with it’s chain and pad-a-lock. (1:18)” However, in true SNAFU form, he throws the shot glass over his shoulder and begins to nurse the bottle, making him drunk as a fish. As he pores the alcohol down his throat, we see an x-ray view of what’s going on in SNAFU’s body. Fumes from his alcohol-filled stomach float up to his brain, which is wrapped up with a physical chain and padlock, and begins to break them down. The chain and padlock fall from his brain and splash into his stomach. The camera then leaves x-ray mode as we see an obviously intoxicated SNAFU, whose literally zippered mouth becomes unzipped as he scampers off to go try to pick up on a tall, good looking, blonde woman in a feathered hat.

“Hello, Baby. Hiya [slurred speech]. Say, you’re a nifty trick. I hope I meet some babes in Africa as cute as you are…*hiccup*. (1:45)” As SNAFU drools over the curvy blonde, the camera cuts to a shot of the woman’s leg under the table. Amidst her guarder belts and leggings (a very risqué shot for the times), she is typing, on a very small typewriter, every word that SNAFU is saying. She takes the note she has written and holds it up to her feathered hat. The hat then magically turns into a bird, which takes the note in its claws and flies away. The camera follows the bird as it flies and zooms in on the note. We see that the note is addressed to Adolf as the bird says in the all too familiar German accent, “This message is important. I must fly it double quick (2:00).”

As we come back to SNAFU and the blonde double agent, he is in her arms, smooch marks all over him and he looks as though he is about to pass out. Still drunk, SNAFU slurs, “It’s been a wonderful evening and I’d like to stay some more. But I gotta get a move on now, I sail at half past four. (2:09)” As further signs of her loyalty to the Nazis, the camera zooms in on her large bosom, which turn into two old style microphones with swastikas in the middle of them.

This shot dissolves into the office of a Nazi officer who is writing down everything that SNAFU has been saying. He goes into Hitler’s office, who is depicted as cartoony as everyone else in the short. The officer surprises Hitler with a “Hail!” and tells him, “The troopship bound for Africa pulls out at half past four (2:29).” Hitler immediately gets on his microphone and shouts in a high registered yelp, “Calling all Wolf Packs! Calling all Wolf Packs! The transport ship for Africa pulls out at half past four! (2:35)”

The next shot transfers the audience from Hitler’s office to the front lines of the sea. We see a fleet of German subs, arranged to make a swastika, and on their affirming “Hail!” they move into a line and begin to sail. We then see SNAFU’s boat sailing off into the sunset, but the fleet of subs closely follows it. SNAFU himself is on the back of the boat, looking over the railing when he sees the subs and goes bug-eyed. He shouts to the captain of the ship, “Full speed ahead! (2:58)” and just as in many Looney Toons, the ship pulls away so fast that SNAFU is pulled off of the back of the ship, causing him to plummet into the sea. As he looks around and tries to stay afloat, the subs that have surrounded him all unload their torpedoes on to SNAFU and a huge explosion ensues (3:13).

The audience then witnesses SNAFU falling into the depths of Hell, where he lands in an oversized caldron. Angrily, SNAFU looks at the camera and says, “Now who in hell do you suppose it was who let my secret out? (3:29)” As a puff of smoke clears, we see the devil, who looks amazingly like Hitler, with a giant swastika on his chest. The Devil/Hitler asks SNAFU, “What was that I heard you say, my little sauerkraut?” Behind another cloud of smoke appears a group of four demons that repeat, “He wonders who in Hell it was that let his secret out! (3:37)” As they all laugh at SNAFU, the Devil/Hitler holds up a mirror to SNAFU’s face, and the picture dissolves into a horses ass as SNAFU looks at the camera and it fades to black.

The picture of the horse’s ass is a reoccurring image in the SNAFU cartoons. For the most part, it is shown at the end of each short to advise the audience, “don’t be a horse’s ass like SNAFU”. The lesson conveyed in this particular short was an important lesson for soldiers that was brought up in multiple SNAFU cartoons. Be it abroad or at home, the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit and the government as a whole stressed the soldiers’ code of secrecy. They even went so far as to say you would go to Hell if you were to let a secret out. As comedic as these cartoons were, the messages conveyed in each of them were never taken lightly among the officers involved.

Up until recently, these cartoons had not been seen since the time of their initial release, but as the films sat and degraded in the Warner Archives, consumer interest in the historic films created enough of a pull for the company that they released all the SNAFU films on video cassette in 1990. Though most of these cartoons had racial stereotypes in them, many of the youth of today do not know that these ever were made. There are a couple cartoons that Warner has not let out of their vaults for fear that a backlash may ensue, based on the degree of stereotypes that were depicted in these few cartoons. One such cartoon, Buggs Bunny Nips The Nips, is not available to anyone besides the Warner staff. Because of incredibly blatant racism by the cute and lovable Buggs, this short has been pulled from the list of every reissue of Looney Toons to date.

As offensive as these cartoons may seem today, they are a part of our history, nonetheless. If these cartoons are forgotten, America will forget how far we as a nation have come in only 65 years. Warner Brothers cartoons are still a integral part of our society to this day, and just as history is not all crazy, zany and Looney, sometimes it takes examples, such as the ones mentioned above, to open minds about what is appropriate in film or not.

Bibliography
America Goes To War: Right In Der Fuhrer’s Face. Dir. Anthony Ross Potter, Frank J. De Meo, Prod. Patrick Trese, VHS. PBS Video, 1990.
Any Bonds Today?. Dir. Bob Clampett, Prod. Leon Schlesinger, DVD. Bosko Video, 1990.
Campbell, Brian. Personal Interview. 20 February 2004.
Birdwell, Michael E.. Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Bros. Campaign Against Nazism. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Blanc, Mel, and Philip Bashe. That’s Not All Folks. New York: Warner Books Inc., 1988.
Fighting Tools. Dir. Bob Clampett, Prod. Leon Schlesinger, DVD. Bosko Video, 1990.
Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of Looney Toons. Dir., Prod., and Written Constantine Nasr for Looney Toons: The Golden Collection DVD. Warner Bros. Entertainment. 2003.
Isenberg, Michael T.. War on Film: The American Cinema and World War I, 1914-1941. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981.
Spies. Dir. Chuck Jones, Prod. Leon Schlesinger, Writ. Ted Geisel, DVD. Bosko Video, 1990.