Spies is a 1943 Private Snafu short directed by Chuck Jones.
Plot[]
Private Snafu has learned a secret, but the enemy is listening, and he'd better zipper his lip. However, he lets his secret slip bit by bit, from telling the audience to calling his mom about it, until finally, he gets drunk and spends the evening with a prostitute, who turns out to be an Axis spy, and tells her that he has to sail off to Africa at half-past four. The information is picked up by spies and quickly relayed to Adolf Hitler, who orders the Nazis to attack the American fleet, which they do. Snafu just notices the U-boats in time and yells for the ship to go full speed ahead, although it comes at the cost of him falling overboard and being literally blown to hell by U-Boat torpedoes. After arriving in Hell, Snafu angrily demands who let out his secret, only for Hitler and his staff as Satan and various demons to reveal that he is the leak. Hitler then shows Snafu a mirror that changes his reflection into a horse's ass.
Caricatures[]
Notes[]
- A scene in which Private Snafu becomes drunk is musically accompanied by an excerpt from Raymond Scott's composition, "Powerhouse".
- This film was used in the "World War II" exhibit of the International Spy Museum.
- Benito Mussolini, Hermann Wilhelm Göring, and Hirohito made a cameo in the scene where they were disguised as civilians reading Lyfe, Gollier's, and Fiberty with their faces on the cover in an obvious attempt to eavesdrop on Private Snafu (and thus learning he's going by ship), the magazines being parodies of Life, Collier's, and Liberty, real magazines that were in circulation around the time of World War II.
- The Nazi who listened to the recording and jotted down the information before reporting to Hitler about the departure time was a member of the Abwehr.
- The characters in the short all spoke in rhyme. The writer of the episode, Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, was known for writing children's stories composed with rhyme.
Censorship[]
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Snafu gets a call from a mysterious figure.
When this short aired during ToonHeads' special about lost, obscure, and rare Warner Brothers cartoons (on both Cartoon Network and first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection), the following edits were done:
- The shot of a buck-toothed, bespectacled Japanese spy posing as a baby and saying, "Oh, I bet we find it out," during Private Snafu's opening rhyme was cut.
- When Snafu is in the phone booth talking to his mom about his upcoming mission, the original version shows another Japanese spy inside the phone listening in. On the ToonHeads edited version, the spy's appearance is digitally covered up with a black square (this edit is a bit hard to pinpoint, unless you have seen the original version or notice the digital editing job, as the black square does stand out a bit).
- While those two shots of Japanese spies were edited, one scene showing a Japanese spy in a fake phone booth next to the real one (alongside a German and an Italian spy) and a caricature of Hideki Tojo reading a magazine next to a caricature of Herman Goerring and Benito Mussolini were not edited in any way.
- The part where the alcohol Snafu consumes roils in his stomach and the fumes go to his head and melt the padlock and chain in his brain had the stomach roiling shortened, the fumes melting the padlock and chain sped up, and the snippet of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" redubbed with a generic jazzy tune.
- When "Spies" aired as part of a regular ToonHeads episode about Private Snafu's cartoons, the scenes that were edited on ToonHeads: The Lost Cartoons were left uncut.
Availability[]
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 4, Side 8: Ben Hardaway & Cal Dalton (and Private Snafu).
Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc Three (part of Toonheads: The Lost Cartoons, edited)
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc Four
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2, Disc Three (also as part of ToonHeads: The Lost Cartoons, edited)
Notes[]
- Is in the public domain, since the cartoon, as well as many other Private Snafu cartoons, are made by the U.S. government, then declassified some years later.
Gallery[]
References[]
- Friedwald, Will and Jerry Beck. "The Warner Brothers Cartoons." Scarecrow Press Inc., Metuchen, N.J., 1981. ISBN 0-8108-1396-3.