The War Against War Cartoons

Mrs. Besa Short has been credited with saving Tom and Jerry from being one-shot characters when she wondered when theatres in her Interstate chain would be able to show more shorts starring the cat and mouse.

The woman responsible for booking programmes for 175 movie houses in the U.S. Southwest also came to the defence of Bugs Bunny.

The Showmen’s Trade Review of July 4, 1942 published this curious squib:

“For making vicious attacks on Bugs Bunny and short subjects generally, particularly Defense Shorts,” Mrs. Walter Ferguson, syndicated columnist, was placed “in the dog house” in a recent issue of Besa Short Shorts, short subject house organ for Interstate managers down Texas way.

Mrs. Ferguson was a columnist for the Scripps-Howard service and at the time had been writing for newspapers for 12 years. There exists today in Oklahoma a journalism scholarship named for her. I have gone through months of her columns and cannot find any reference to Bugs Bunny, though she took a shot at patriotic films in 1941, including those of the Defence Department, questioning whether were effective, especially with young people.

However, I did find this column from February 26, 1942, where she sends mixed messages about another cartoon character.

Propagandist Duck
By MRS WALTER FERGUSON
USING Donald Duck for propaganda purposes was not a good idea. As a movie fan, I was disturbed to learn that Congress had objected to paying Walt Disney $80,000 for his latest short, "The New Spirit," featuring the nation's favorite feathered hero. But, as a taxpayer, I was delighted by the news.
To the ordinary man and woman $80,000 is still a sizeable sum, although the Treasury may not think so.
Mr. Disney, we are told, was commanded to make the picture so we might be inspired to fork over our income taxes more joyfully. He was promised pay for it — the pay, of course, coming from Mr. Taxpayer's pocket. The Government believes our morale can be improved by the right sort of entertainment, so the entertainment is ordered up and charged to us.
"The New Spirit," now being shown in major theaters, is neither good Donald Duck nor good propaganda, but a hodge-podge of both, which peters out into incongruity. The combination of a cartoon breathing fun and a commentator's voice breathing hate makes for an uncoordinated whole — a headache for adults and a heartache for children.
We must remember that Donald Duck is better known in younger circlet than Donald Nelson. He belongs to a fairy world where the guileless spirit always triumphs over evil, and where blundering by those who are good brings about happy endings. Alas and alack, such is not the case in the grown-up scene where so frequently Right battles futiley [sic] against Wrong.
I think our lovable Mr. Duck has been badly treated and deserves an apology. Surely ten times $80,000 could not compensate his creator for being asked to turn the gay and gallant bird into a propagandist.

She turned her focus onto cartoons, briefly, again in her column of February 15, 1944. Her claim is preposterous. She believed people would not be able to tell real from fiction if they watched a war movie then a cartoon. For years, theatres had been running cartoons and newsreels on the same programme. No one was confused. She must have thought the movie-going public was incredibly stupid. And she pulled out the tired “think of the children” boogie-man. As a kid, I watched Daffy Duck and Fred Flintstone. I also saw Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I could figure out the difference,

War Movies
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
A YOUNG air cadet from Newport, Ark. questions the wisdom of my criticism of grim war movies.
“If you refer to the blood-and-thunder Hollywood melodramas,” he says, “I agree.”
“However there have been excellent semi-official reels which depict battle scenes as they truly are.
“If the soldier can look upon and participate in such chaos why can’t the civilian stomach it? The people at home have failed their fighting men if they turn their faces from death and ignore their sacrifices I say more power to official movies which bring home with force the fact that men are giving their lives for freedom.”
His point is well taken, although he seems to have missed mine. What I object to about the official war picture is their presentation. They always come to us tied up with some Hollywood feature or short, which means that the audience gets a hodgepodge of the true and the false.
Duty doesn’t enter into the question. People don’t go to the movies from a sense of duty. They go to be entertained.
A poll taken recently among soldiers shows their preference for the lighter, gayer types.
The cinema is a form of escape. By this means men and women take flight from the drabness of their todays and the hopelessness of their tomorrows. Therefore I contend they are cheated when they go to a show expecting such release and are forced to sit through a program which tears them to bits inside and sends them home upset.
There should be special programs of war picture offered. Perhaps every adult should be required to see them, but the honest course is to separate the phoney from the real. As it is, audiences are asked to skip quickly from a battle to a jitterbug contest or a Looney cartoon. It results in mental confusion. In the end, the war briefs seem as unreal as the movie plot. And what about our children? They jam the movie house these days. What will be the effect of the horror pictures upon their minds and character!

Well, Mrs. Ferguson, kids who watched Bugs and Donald back then survived rather nicely. And Bugs adorned warplanes and other equipment designed to crush the Axis. Bob Clampett once remarked that Bugs was never more loved than during the war years. He was a boost to morale. He was a part of the war effort, where a columnist liked it or not.