Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons, for the First Motion Picture Unit, US Army Air Forces
Distributor: US Army (Army-Navy Screen Magazine)
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
The narrator is a bull from the Panhandle, on his honeymoon when America enters the war. Moved by an Uncle Sam poster, he volunteers, and his contribution is himself: he is processed into canned beef, each tin stamped with his smiling face, and the cans travel by truck, ship and camel across the world to the hungry troops. They reach Private Snafu in the Pacific. The bull's ghost follows his cans and watches what becomes of them. Snafu is first in the chow line, demands his tray piled high, bolts what he can and throws the rest in the garbage while shells burst around the camp. The ghost of the bull, who gave everything so that this soldier could eat, loses his temper and goes for the clueless Snafu, lamenting that he volunteered to be food only to be wasted.
Why It Matters
- Telling the story from the point of view of the cow who became the ration is the kind of idea only the Snafu unit, working for soldiers rather than the public, would have used, and Freleng plays the bull's sacrifice straight enough that the joke lands; the film is a food-waste lecture that works as a cartoon.
- As a US government work it is in the public domain. The 1944 date distinguishes it from the unrelated 1951 Warner cartoon Chow Hound, a Chuck Jones film about a bulldog, with which it is often confused in listings.
Notes and Trivia
- The manifest's filename carries a placeholder date of 1 June 1944; the Army-Navy Screen Magazine issue was 19 June.
- Freleng directed several Snafu films between his theatrical cartoons.
- See also: Spies (Private Snafu, 1943), The Home Front (Private Snafu, 1943), Payday (Private Snafu, 1944).