Spies

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Spies

Directed By: Chuck Jones (uncredited) Produced By: Leon Schlesinger (uncredited) Released: August 1943 (Army-Navy Screen Magazine issue 7) Series: Private Snafu Story: Animation: Robert Cannon Phil DeLara Ken Harris Phil Monroe Lloyd Vaughan Ben Washam (all uncredited) Layouts: Backgrounds: Film Editor: Treg Brown Voiced By: Mel Blanc Music: Carl Stalling Starring: Private Snafu Spies Adolf Hitler Preceded By: Gripes Succeeded By: The Goldbrick Private Snafu - E3 "Spies"-1 LOONEY TOONS Spies (Private Snafu) (1943) (Remastered) (HD 1080p)

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 his secret out, 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 behind.

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.
• Besides Adolf Hitler himself, several other real life Axis Powers figures were caricatured in the cartoon:
  • Benito Mussolini, Hermann Wilhelm Göring, and Hideki Tojo 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.

Censorship

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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, for reasons unknown, the snippet of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" redubbed with a generic jazzy tune.

Availability

Like all Private Snafu cartoons, this short is in the public domain, so it can be found on numerous home video releases in varying condition.

• DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc 3 (part of Toonheads: The Lost Cartoons, edited)
• DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc 4
• Blu-ray, DVD - Private Snafu: Golden Classics (Thunderbean Animation)
• Blu-ray - Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2, Disc 3

References

• Friedwald, Will and Jerry Beck. "The Warner Brothers Cartoons." Scarecrow Press Inc., Metuchen, N.J., 1981. ISBN 0-8108-1396-3.

External Links

• Spies at the Internet Movie Database