GEISEL: Remember when you told me that the best way to teach is to make students laugh?
OLLIE: Yeah.
GEISEL: Well, that’s what we’re trying to do with these, each one about this idiot screwing up in every way possible…
In Episode #2: “New Job,” Ted Geisel shows Ollie the trailer for the Private Snafu, the series of black-and-white animated short films produced by the U.S. Army during World War II to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects. Frank Capra came up with the idea for the series and put Ted Geisel in charge of developing it. The Walt Disney company was given first crack at producing the animated shorts, only it demanded ownership of the Snafu character and merchandising rights – and was underbid by the Leon Schlesinger company.
The Wikipedia article is a terrific source of information on Private Snafu (if not entirely correct, see *** below), especially because it contains videos of virtually every episode! Go to it to watch the full trailer! Or watch it on YouTube, where most of the Snafu cartoons can also be found.
The goal of the series was to help enlisted men with weak literacy skills learn through animated cartoons. They featured simple language, racy illustrations, mild profanity, and subtle moralizing. Private Snafu did (almost) everything wrong, so that his negative example taught basic lessons.
An article about the series from the National World War II Museum explains the need for such a simple educational tool:
Of those accepted for military service, 70 percent had dropped out of school, 500,000 had less than a fourth grade education, and 4.4 million had less than an eighth grade education. One army psychiatrist estimated the mental age of the average soldier to be between 13 and 14 years of age. On the other end of the spectrum were the college graduates, who made up only three percent of the army’s ranks.
In his biography of Ted Geisel, “Becoming Dr. Seuss,” Brian Jay Jones devotes a full chapter to “Snafu” and provides insight into the creative process behind it:
“Together, Geisel and (Chuck) Jones designed the look of Private Snafu, developing the character model sheets with Art Heinemann and another young artist in Capra’s unit named Ray Harryhausen, later the groundbreaking stop-motion animator. ‘It was a delight to work with him,’ Harryhausen said of Geisel, adding that even with all the hands on Snafu’s design, ‘Dr. Seuss… was in charge of the Snafu character.’ While the final version of Snafu soaked up the varying artistic styles of his creative crew, Geisel’s influence can still be seen in his basic design: wide eyes with light lashes, car-door ears sticking straight out from his head, and a slightly lopsided grin… Geisel would personally write the scripts for the first few installments of Private Snafu, setting the tone and establishing the pacing for the thirty or so films that would follow over the next three years….”
“From the beginning, Geisel also applied Munro Leaf’s recommendation that if they really expected young servicemen to pay attention — even to a cartoon — they had to ‘make it racy.’ And so the Snafu cartoons feature plenty of shapely women – nurses, WACs, girls back home – in various states of undress….”
*** Note on Wikipedia mistakes:
In crediting director Frank Capra with having the idea for the Private Snafu character, Wikipedia states that Capra was the “chairman of the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit.” It also lists the First Motion Picture Unit as cartoon’s military production company. BOTH OF THESE ARE INCORRECT! Capra was the commanding officer of regular army’s 834th Signal Corps unit, NOT of the First Motion Picture Unit, which was the Hollywood film production unit of the U.S. Army Air Forces (the semi-autonomous air arm) to which Ollie was assigned in Season 1 and where Ronald Reagan was the personnel officer. While it made some animated training films, the First Motion Picture Unit had nothing to do with Private Snafu.
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