The Rumors About Dr Seuss

The best part about the Snafu cartoon ‘Rumors’ (1943) is the flying baloneys, jabbering away over an army base. But something that’s about as fun is checking out the incidental characters that had to be influenced by the art of Dr. Seuss. That shouldn’t be surprising as he was with the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Force during the last couple of years of the war. The Snafus were commissioned by the military to play for soldiers and most were animated and recorded at the Warner Bros. studio.

I’d love to point out similarly-drawn characters in Dr. Seuss’ books but my knowledge isn’t that in depth. So I’ll just put up the animation drawings instead.



Here’s the first appearance of a horn-mouthed creature as Snafu slowly starts being driven insane by rumours.



The eyelashes on the horse are like the ones you’d find on Horton the Elephant, though at least some of the Seuss characters had only three lashes.



And here’s another Horned Beaketybeast with his friends.

The Seussical animation is by Friz Freleng’s unit. I’m not sure how the Snafu cartoons were put through the system; if Ted Geisel was involved then I gather the story came from FMPU and the rest of the work was handled at Warners.