Coming!! Snafu
About Coming!! Snafu
The first Private Snafu cartoon introduces him as the goofiest soldier in the U.S. Army and spells the name out as Situation Normal: All Fouled Up. He salutes and hits his own nose, whistles at a poster and falls in a ditch, then turns up in the infantry, artillery, tanks, paratroops, and the air corps. A ripped parachute is one of the gags. He ends in the guardhouse demanding a lawyer. The finish trails four later shorts: Gripes, Spies, The Goldbrick, and Booby Traps.
Cast & crew
More about Coming!! Snafu
Chuck Jones directed this opening short of the Private Snafu series. Frank Capra, head of the Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, created the character. Warner Bros. Cartoons did most of the animation. Released 28 June 1943. The English Wikipedia times a copy at 2 minutes 57 seconds. Mel Blanc and Frank Graham are the voices named in the catalog. The films were made for soldiers, not for ordinary theater bills.
Themes
Background
An Army training cartoon of June 1943, the first Private Snafu short, played to service audiences during the war.
Preservation
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- A Library of Congress-style timing on the series page is 2 minutes 57 seconds.
- The cards use the cleaned-up wording All Fouled Up. The Army slang behind SNAFU is coarser.
- The end card tells the audience to watch for Gripes, Spies, The Goldbrick, and Booby Traps.
- A proto-Snafu, unnamed and in color, is in Jones's theatrical cartoon The Draft Horse (9 May 1942).
Scenes
- He salutes and smacks his own nose.
- The finish advertises the next Snafu cartoons.
Influenced
- Gripes (1943)
- Spies (1943)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Coming!! Snafu.webm)
