Screwy War Gags

The bulk of people reading this, I suspect, are not Americans who were alive during World War Two (I am not). So, like me, you had to have certain wartime references in cartoons explained to you.

Tex Avery’s Big Heel-Watha has a few of them, throwaway and otherwise.



4F is a designation that one is unfit for military service.



Lockheed was a huge military manufacturer in California during the war.



Someone correct me on this. From what I was told, the sheet with the stars was put up outside a home where a soldier (with the draft number on the sheet) was in the service.



All kinds of food was rationed and assigned points. Some foods were exempt. So were skunks, it appears.



Ran out of points? Well, there was always the Black Market, where crooks would charge a fortune for meat and other things in short supply.



Gas was rationed, too. The C card was for doctors, ministers and others who were deemed essential workers and therefore needed gas.



“Pearl Harbor? We’re next!!” cried many along the West Coast (of Canada and the U.S.), to whom the possibility of an invasion wasn’t screwy (to try to get back to our cartoon). So blackouts were invented so the Japanese bombardiers couldn’t see war plants, homes and malt shops. Air Raid Wardens patrolled to ensure no light could be seen during the blackouts.

The Showman’s Trade Review gave top marks to this cartoon in its September 2, 1944 edition.

Big Heel-Watha (Excellent)
MGM — Cartoon - 8 mins.
The rationing problem hits an Indian community without reservations, and Big Chief Rain-in-the-Face offers his daughter in marriage to the first brave who brings in some meat. Big Heel-Watha after much tribulation makes a deal with a red squirrel and wins the hand of the veiled Minnie Hot-Cha. Lifting the veil, he is confounded by a horrifying face whereupon he, the chief and the braves, dive into the cauldron joining the cooking squirrel. Minnie attempts to join them, and all but the squirrel and the heel scram. The squirrel pulls a false face from Minnie, revealing a beautiful face, all of which makes the brave Heel-Watha happy. This cartoon in Technicolor is almost up to Red Hot Riding Hood, so all that needs be said is: get it dated.