I was really enjoying watching some of the Private Snafu cartoons a little earlier today, so I thought it would be fun to put one up from our master file.
Booby Traps (1944) is the 9th of the series, released on January 10, 1944 as part of the Army/Navy Screen Magazine, issue 19. It’s one of two in the series directed by Bob Clampett, and one of my favorites.
The sort of soft messaging the series was designed to highlight isn’t so soft here: this wild cartoon crams ideas into short form as well as any cartoon from the golden age. Rod Scribner and Robert McKimson animated quite a few scenes in the film, as is usually the case in Clampett films from this period.
Snafu’s childlike skipping through a war zone at the beginning of the cartoon sets the tone for the rest of the film. I really love what a dolt he is in this particular cartoon; I’m sure it went over great with the largely military audience that wished they could approach life with such reckless abandon. Over the course of the next handful of minutes, Snafu tries to milk a camel with a bomb attached, and enters a brothel, ignoring the many (fake) women there in favor of a piano at the back of the building. The ‘Exploding Piano Gag’ was familiar to me when first seeing this film, and out course the gag is used many years later in Ballot Box Bunny (1950). Funny enough, a version of that gag actually goes back a lot of years earlier, to Van Beuren’s The Fatal Note (1933) the first Little King cartoon.
The golden age of animation is of course a master class in gag timing and short comedy writing in addition to character animation. The exuberance of these films is on full display in this entry, and they must have cheered up many a tired soldier and supporting staff. One can only hope for another period in animation history that has an approach that shows a love for the medium.
So, here’s Booby Traps from the master positive held at The United States National Archives, with clean up from Thunderbean about 11 years back.
Have a good week and look forward to more good news this next week!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
It indeed was a red letter day when I discovered the “private snafu“ cartoons. I liked it, the whole series, because I always wondered what it would be if the Looney Tunes directors were allowed to be totally unhinged and prove that the Warner Brothers cartoons were really meant for adults both in the military, and on the homefront. Now I know, and I’m so glad that you, Steve, helped restore these films to the best quality possible. I love the “golden collection“ disc you released of these cartoons. I hope a lot of other people bought it as well.
A few comments: (1) when Snafu attempts to milk the camel, that’s a sea contact mine standing in for an udder [something the Hays Office would not have allowed], as noted by the “Hertz horns;” (2) booby traps really were a very serious concern for the high command, as the Germans really were skilled in setting these kinds of traps; (3) at least one “Willie and Joe”/”Up Front” cartoon by Bill Mauldin addresses the topic; (4) the cartoon, what with the desert setting and harem, appears to be set in North Africa, a theater of war that had closed some months before with the surrender of German forces in Tunisia; (5) back to milking the camel — doing that sort of thing was grist for at least one other Up Front cartoon (called “Breakfast in Bed”); (6) Snafu’s exaggerated gum-chewing touches on a point that, apparently, drove captured German soldiers to distraction — the constant gum-chewing of American soldiers; (7) Snafu as Jerry Colonna does the Old Gold cigarette ad slogan of 1941-1942, which also turns up in Clampett’s “The Hep Cat”
Interesting that the German aversion to chewing gum was so widespread. My mother told me that, of the many things my German grandmother hated about America, chewing gum was very high on the list. Worst of all: chewing tobacco… and spittoons!
This is my favorite of the two Private Snafu cartoons that Bob Clampett directed. It’s probably the funniest and most outrageous of all the Snafu cartoons. By the way, that “exploding piano gag” was also used in the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Show Biz Bugs,” but they used a xylophone instead of a piano.
Regarding the “exploding piano” gag, I once read a World War II U.S. Army engineers’ manual about setting booby-traps that did in fact include how to set a bomb in a piano to go off if a certain key was pressed. I don’t know if it predated this cartoon, but apparently it was considered seriously as a real thing to do.
That “Exploding Piano Gag” was used in a 1965 Road Runner cartoon (directed by Robert McKimson), the first to be directed by someone other than Chuck Jones.
I always love the Private Snafu shorts done by the WB team. While the subject matter is not meant for the regular moviegoing audiences back then, it didn’t stop the WB team from cutting loose with its style of humor and tone that everybody recognizes them for. What if the Looney Tunes could go even further with its jokes without the interference from the Hays Office?
In Friz Freleng’s takes on the exploding piano gag, the keys we see the character play on the piano (or xylophone) correspond precisely to the melody we hear. In this one, however, Snafu’s piano playing is all over the place, and all the more noticeable for being shown in closeup. Not that it’s a problem, it’s just a little distracting for those of us who took piano lessons in our youth.
I doubt that Bob Clampett thought through the theological implications of the final scene, when Snafu’s heavenly harp turns out to be a booby trap. Does that mean God is the enemy?
More details about the booby-trapped piano gag:
It was used in four Warner Bros. cartoons. The gag is that the piano is set to go off when a certain note in the song “Those Endearing Young Charms” is played. (Or a certain young note on “Those Endearing Charms”…?):
1. The Private Snafu cartoon “Booby Traps” (Jan. 1944) by Clampett, as noted above.
2. “Ballot Box Bunny” (Isadore Freleng, 1951), in which Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny are running against each other for mayor (of _where_, I don’t remember!). Sam booby traps the piano that Bugs is about to play. Bugs plays the wrong note, several times, of course, so Sam goes in and plays the right note, and…
(By the way, they both lose the election. To a “dark horse” – literally!)
3. “Show Biz Bugs” (Freleng,1957). In that one, Daffy booby traps the xylophone Bugs is about to play.
4. “Rushing Roulette” (1965), the first of two Wile E. Coyote-vs.-Road Runner cartoons that Robert McKimson directed. (The other one is “Sugar and Spies,” 1966.) “Free Piano Lessons” – right in the middle of the desert! The Road Runner keeps playing the wrong note, of course, and…
Incidentally, that one was shown on “Toon in With Me” on MeTV just last week. It is one of only four Road Runner – Coyote cartoons from the “classic” era that has never been released on DVD/Blu-Ray.
Well, Warren Foster was Bob Clampett’s writer during “Booby Traps” was made, he probably came up with gag and then he moved to Friz’s unit when the second and third one was made, so probably he imported the same gag there, too. The fourth one, though, was actually written by Dave Detiege