Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons (Leon Schlesinger Productions), for the First Motion Picture Unit, US Army Air Forces
Distributor: US Army (Army-Navy Screen Magazine)
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
Private Snafu is freezing on guard duty in the Arctic, so cold, the narrator says in the uncensored version, that it could freeze the nuts off a jeep, and he is feeling sorry for himself and bitter about the folks back home, who he imagines living it up while he suffers. The Technical Fairy, First Class, a stubbly fairy in army boots, appears and shows him the truth through a magic television: his grandfather working a factory lathe, his grandmother riveting, his father running a farm, his girl packing shells, all of them working for the war. Snafu's fantasies of his family at leisure dissolve one by one, and he ends the film ashamed and cheered up, until his own dream of a dancing girl turns out to be a factory worker too.
Why It Matters
- Tashlin's cutting between Snafu's fantasies and the truth is as sharp as his theatrical cartoons, and the Technical Fairy, a Seuss invention voiced by Mel Blanc in a Brooklyn growl, is the series' best recurring character; the frozen-jeep line, cut from some prints, shows how much freer the Army films were than anything the Production Code would allow.
- The Snafu cartoons were made to be shown to troops only, in the Army-Navy Screen Magazine, and this one is the series' morale film, a reminder to grumbling soldiers that the home front was working too. As works of the US government they are all in the public domain.
Notes and Trivia
- Some prints replace the "nuts off a jeep" line with a milder one; both versions survive.
- The Technical Fairy returned in several later Snafu films, including Booby Traps.
- See also: Spies (Private Snafu, 1943), Booby Traps (Private Snafu, 1944), Scrap Happy Daffy (1943).
