The Goldbrick (1943)
A born goldbrick, Private Snafu dodges every duty he can get away with — until his shirking leaves a gap in the defense that the enemy exploits, and he ends up flattened by an enemy tank for his trouble.
Directed by Frank Tashlin, The Goldbrick takes aim at soldiers who shirk assigned work — military slang for a lazy malingerer — to warn that cutting corners on duty can open the door for the enemy.
Background
The Goldbrick is one of the Private Snafu training shorts made for the US Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit during World War II. The series used the cartoon soldier Snafu, whose name stood for ‘situation normal, all fouled up,’ to teach troops everyday lessons about military life. Frank Tashlin directed this entry, and the series drew on animators from the Warner Bros. studio. Because it was produced by a federal agency, the short is a work of the US government and has been in the public domain since its release. Its title refers to military slang for a soldier who shirks assigned work, a figure the series treated as both comic and dangerous.
What to watch for
Watch how Snafu’s dodging of duty is shown as a run of small evasions that add up to a serious problem. At about four minutes the short moves quickly, and it builds toward a deliberately harsh punchline in which the enemy exploits the gap his shirking leaves in the defense, and an enemy tank flattens him. That ending makes the point that the consequences of slacking fall on everyone, not just the slacker. The cartoon’s style is typical of the series, with hard-edged caricature and direct moral framing that turned a training lesson into something soldiers were meant to remember.
