Censored (1944)
Desperate to tell his girl he's shipping out, Private Snafu tries every trick to slip a letter past the censor — until his leaked secret reaches the enemy and dooms his unit in a nightmare that ends with him censoring himself.
Directed by Frank Tashlin for the Private Snafu series, this short dramatizes wartime mail censorship as a matter of life and death — and, fittingly, its own risqué sight gag of Snafu’s girlfriend was itself cut by military censors before release.
Background
Censored is a Private Snafu short from 1944, directed by Frank Tashlin and produced for the U.S. Army by Warner Bros. Animation. The series was made for the Army Signal Corps from 1943 to 1946 and used its title character to teach soldiers about security and procedure. Mel Blanc voiced Snafu, and the series drew on the animation talent of Warner Bros. directors such as Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. Like the other shorts, Censored was made as a training film and is a U.S. government work.
What to watch for
The comic engine is Snafu’s attempt to slip a letter announcing his departure past the military censor, which he tries with one scheme after another. The joke turns when his leaked secret reaches the enemy with fatal consequences for his unit, and the nightmare that follows delivers the warning at the film’s core. The short ends with Snafu censoring himself, which is the lesson the series returned to again and again. Watch how the cartoon makes the stakes of wartime mail security concrete, and how the tone shifts from comic schemes to a far grimmer climax within a few minutes.
