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Historical Audiovisuals Collection

Commandments for Health: The Private McGillicuddy Cartoons
Hugh Harman Productions, United States Navy; b&w, 1945

In 1942, the animation department of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit began producing a series of humorous animated cartoons featuring the bumbling “Private Snafu.” Shown to millions of armed forces personnel, the Private Snafu series dealt with black marketeering, wartime censorship, the need for military discipline, and so on, but also malaria and venereal disease prevention and the physiological stress of combat.

In 1945 the U.S. Navy commissioned Hugh Harman Productions to create an entertaining cartoon series, patterned on Snafu, but dealing solely with health issues, for troops in the field. Harman was a veteran animator who had worked in 1920s with the (pre-Mickey Mouse) Walt Disney Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City and in the 1930s in Hollywood on the Warner Brothers’ Merrie Melodies series. The McGillicuddy cartoons had a smaller budget than Snafu—the producers saved time and money by using fewer drawings and less precise sound synchronization, which made for jagged animation and a greater reliance on voiceover narration—but the talent was top flight. Like Snafu, McGillicuddy featured the voice of Mel Blanc and music by Carl Stallings. While the director/animator is not identified, the artwork and direction has a definite Warner Brothers “feel.”

The series is formulaic: each episode takes place on a South Pacific island where the dim-witted Marine Private McGillicuddy ignores a different “Commandment for Health,” suffers the bodily consequences, and jeopardizes the war effort. The cartoons, aimed at a male audience of young soldiers and sailors, are mildly risqué. Unlike commercial films of the period, military cartoons were not subject to the dictates of the Hays Office, which censored what could be shown on civilian screens. The gags are corny; shopworn racial and social stereotypes abound. Flies that contaminate food are depicted as buck-toothed Japanese soldiers wearing thick glasses; South Sea islanders are given exaggerated African features and depicted as cannibals; doctors are sadists; and so forth.

Drinking Water

Personal Cleanliness

Cleaning Mess Gear

Use Your Head

Native Food

Disclaimer: These films depict ethnic, gender and racial stereotypes that were once commonplace in American society. We present them here as historical artifacts, valuable documents of the cultural practices of their time. Viewer discretion advised.

Read the Essay “The Five Commandments“