{"id":67023,"date":"2021-09-02T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T07:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=67023"},"modified":"2021-09-01T20:38:53","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T03:38:53","slug":"thoughts-on-wwii-animated-films-what-we-have-and-havent-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/thoughts-on-wwii-animated-films-what-we-have-and-havent-found\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on WWII Animated Films – What We Have and Haven\u2019t Found"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

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The weeks leading up to the school year into the first week of school are some of the busiest here. As I sit and write, I honestly can\u2019t wait to get back to doing the things I want to rather than all the things I have to. I\u2019m helping a little with a non-Thunderbean project that will be done soon, then it\u2019s back to getting the long-in-progress Flip the Frog<\/em> set all finished. I\u2019m going to hid tomorrow morning and just try to bury myself in sending things back to people, burning special discs for some friends, and generally try to steal a little time catching up with dropped balls over these past weeks. <\/p>\n\"\"\n

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The biggest goal for the summer here was to organize and to set a path to finish as many of the started projects as possible. I\u2019m very happy with how this is going, since there\u2019s so many things we\u2019ve been able to scan that I didn\u2019t think we\u2019d *ever* have the ability to do. Other projects have been going quite well throughout the summer despite restrictions. While I\u2019m happy with this particular period, I can\u2019t wait until we\u2019re through most of the things on the plate so we can further pursue *other* things I\u2019ve been hoping to do for a while. Those I can\u2019t mention since I\u2019m not properly dressed for the occasion. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Looking for the oddball and forgotten films has been a pursuit here for some time. I was lent a few things recently that are really fun and along those particular lines, and seeing their strangeness was a reminder of how its worth trying to look in those off places for these sorts of things. We\u2019ve been able to scan and release some of the holy grails on my list of oddballs, and I\u2019ve continued searching for others, sometimes for many years- and have found many of them and have been quietly amassing a list of where certain things are and what we\u2019d like to do with them given the opportunity. <\/p>\n

Some of those things have been hiding in plain sight for many years, and the reason they are sometimes hard to find is that no one has actually pursued them enough to actually get around to scanning them. The films that have been made for and by the US Government are on that list.<\/p>\n

The US National Archives (NARA) have been especially fun to search since there are so many things that had rarely been seen since World War II – and a bunch of things made after the war that are fascinating. While there isn\u2019t a *complete* list of everything that the First Motion Picture Unit made, for example, there *is<\/em>* a fairly complete list of what was produced for the Army. In fact, the thing you recognize pretty quickly if you\u2019re looking for the films they made or had made for the government is that there\u2019s things you know exist that are suspiciously missing from the \u2018official\u2019 lists \u2014 and in further research, they\u2019re almost all produced for the Navy.<\/p>\n

\"\"One of my favorite things that ever happened at NARA was being able to go back into the actual stacks \/ film archive at NARA. One of the archivists there understood my plight of trying to find the best element during the SNAFU project. When you request materials, they “tell you” what element you\u2019ll be getting. What I quickly figured out was that there were multiple elements there of many of the titles, and if I requested something while the copy I was scanning wasn\u2019t there, I\u2019d get another element \u2014 and sometimes that one would actually be better. The archivist let me come back and go through up to the elements on some of the SNAFU negs and master positives, making it so much easier to figure out what reel to scan. This was unusual and I assume I\u2019ll never get a chance to again.<\/p>\n

That same archivist pointed out that the Navy material that was at NARA was, generally, in direct coordination with the Army, and that the Navy would decide what they would send in to NARA when not working with the Army, while the Army basically gave NARA everything, and continues to, even in modern times. The Navy\u2019s material, on the other hand, is in its internal library, but who knows what happened to all the nitrate that was produced only for the Navy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to get to the point where every animated film made for the government during World War II is accessible. We\u2019re way closer than we were a handful of years back, but there\u2019s still more to research and figure out. <\/p>\n

\"\"After producing the DVD More Cartoons for Victory<\/em> I haven\u2019t really gone back to further research animation produced for the Government too much. I\u2019m really interested in seeing what was produced into the 50s and 60s that we *haven\u2019t* seen or heard of at all. There\u2019s some things I especially want to track down (the Hook<\/em> and Sgt. Pettybone<\/em> Cartoons, for example) but I also want to see what just happens to exist there from some of the studios we all know well. There are a ton of films made for both internal and public use during the space race of the 60s, and I\u2019m always wondering what other really cool thing might be there that we just didn\u2019t ever know about.<\/p>\n

There are still several films that are on my WWII holy grail list. One is Mop Up<\/em>, a Snafu cartoon that never was finished. Records show it was in animation when cancelled. Another is the Disney short about VD produced for soldiers – this one has magically gone entirely missing. So…<\/p>\n

What\u2019s unusual on your \u2018Holy Grail\u201d list?<\/p>\n

Since there\u2019s all this talk about WWII this week, I thought I\u2019d reshare one of the SNAFUs we posted here a while back. Here\u2019s It\u2019s Murder She Says<\/em>. Lovely character animation in this one (and all of them honestly!). Make sure to watch in HD.<\/p>\n