HOLLYWOOD WAS one of the first institutions to jump on the pa- triotic bandwagon when the U.S. en- tered World War II in December 1941. Over the next four years, Tinseltown produced hundreds of feature films, shorts, and newsreels that entertained and educated the American public
about who the country was fighting, why we were fighting, and what men and women on the home front could do to support the war effort.
More than six decades later, many of the movies released during that period still are remembered with tremendous affection. However, the scores of war-themed animated cartoons that made American mov- iegoers laugh and think — and even helped train fighting forces heading overseas — often are overlooked.
Early effort “As soon as the attack on Pearl Harbor happened, everyone mobilized,” says movie historian and critic Leonard Maltin, author of Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Plume, 1987). “But it takes a long time to make an animated short, so it was some months into 1942 be-
56 MILIT A R Y O FF I C E R MAY 2011
fore the studios could even begin inte- grating [the war] into their cartoons.” There were, according to car-
toon historian and consultant Jerry Beck, a handful of early efforts. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Warner Brothers released a cartoon parody of the 1939 Univer- sal film Confessions of a Nazi Spy, titled Confusions of a Nutzy Spy. Almost immediately after the attack, the studio rushed into production a theatrical short
A still (right) from director Tex Avery’s cartoon Blitz Wolf shows an American bomber attacking German Blitz Wolf. The cartoon is featured in a 1942 poster (above).
featuring Bugs Bunny that encour- aged audiences to buy war bonds.
Consuming the industry It wasn’t until the middle of 1942 that movie audiences began seeing war-themed cartoons in abundance from almost every one of the major cartoon studios.
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