Animation studios were busy during World War Two, and we don’t just mean theatricals where Nazis and “Japs” got their just desserts, or gags about rationing or working at Lockheed.
The U.S. military commissioned all kinds of animated films, some made at special government film units on either coast, others contracted out. Thanks to restoration and exposure, the Snafu shorts put together by the talents at the Schlesinger studio are best-known.
Walter Lantz, MGM, even Hugh Harman were signed by the Army or Navy or government departments to make shorts to instruct personnel or get civilians to preserve fats, stay away from the Black Market, and so on.
UPA was another studio that provided the government with cartoons. Though there is no credit on Marginal Weather Accidents, the designs scream UPA (or whatever it was called then) and the main character sounds like Jerry Hausner, who was Waldo in the Mr. Magoo cartoons in the ‘50s, and spent the war with AFRS.
(A check of Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern states this was one of 16 cartoons produced between 1945 and 1947 to promote flight safety, mainly directed and designed by John Hubley, with additional design and direction by Zach Schwartz and Bill Hurtz, and backgrounds by Paul Julian).
If I had to guess, I’d say the score was composed by Clarence Wheeler.
It’s a shame the artwork is masked by the corporate bugs and the resolution is low, but it’s worth a look to see the early UPA in action.
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