In the Aleutians
About In the Aleutians
Chuck Jones’s Private Snafu short tells men posted in the Aleutians that the islands used to be called a back door to the United States and are now a front door to Tokyo. The commentary lists rain, snow, thunder, and gales as Mother Nature “blowing her top.” An elephant seal answers in a Jimmy Durante voice. Soldiers ride one another out of the mud. A williwaw strips buildings and hills. The strip is so wet that airmen, Snafu in a diving suit among them, go into a pond after a B-17. The bomber takes off and drops a fish into the seal’s mouth.
Cast & crew
More about In the Aleutians
Jones directed it in the Private Snafu series. Warner Bros. made it for the U.S. armed forces and sent it to the services in February 1945, for men stationed in what was then Alaska Territory. Mel Blanc voices. Carl W. Stalling is the music credit. Another title is Private Snafu in The Aleutians—Isles of Enchantment (Oh Brother!).
Themes
Background
By early 1945 the Japanese had been pushed off Attu and Kiska. The cartoon is for the men still living with the Aleutian weather, and it calls the chain a front door toward Tokyo.
Making
Jones uses the training-film voice to sell the weather as “almost unbelievable,” then draws the mud, the gale, and the bomber in the pond as if the claim were a tourist brochure.
Music
Carl W. Stalling scored it. Mel Blanc supplies the voices, including the Durante-styled seal.
Preservation
A service print survives.
Notes
- The Aleutian Islands campaign had already put thousands of U.S. servicemen on the chain. This reel is a briefing cartoon, not a combat record.
- The seal’s answer is played as Jimmy Durante.
- Snafu’s diving suit is for a pond on the airstrip, not a naval landing.
- The williwaw gag strips the post down to bare hills.
Scenes
- The seal talks back in a Durante voice.
- Men wade out of mud riding each other.
- A williwaw peels the buildings off the post.
- Snafu, in a diving suit, helps fish a B-17 out of a pond, and the plane pays the seal with a fish.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (In the Aleutians.ogv)
