“La guerre, c’est jolie!"
-Anonymous French soldier, WWI

Bob Clampett's Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs could be the greatest wartime short of all time. This sketch is drawn by the great animator Rod Scribner. Courtesy of Bob Clampett Collection.

The dashing poilu who made the above statement may not have lived to prove it; he most likely discovered that war was not a party somewhere on the bloody banks of the Marne. Even for the victors, war is rarely a joyous romp, nor does victory come without a dear cost. The exceptions, of course, were America’s animated combatants, who had a rip-roaring time thwarting the foe at no risk of death or disfigurement. Not only was war a right jolly time for them, victory was guaranteed. Yet, after the end of the Second World War, the toons laid down their arms. The surrender of Japan in 1945 marked the final time that cartoon characters sallied out to support the troops, despite the fact that the United States participated in several wars thereafter. This month's column examines why Hollywood’s animated guns fell silent.

As I was working on the initial drafts for this column, the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis was being observed. Wednesday, October 24, 1962, was an unseasonably cold and cloudy day that smelled of wet leaves and fear. I remember sitting in my first-grade class in the William Bradford School, Dorchester, Massachusetts. As twenty other young children and I watched, faces filled with dismay and shock, our teacher (I no longer recall her name) abruptly began to cry and could not stop. Adults rarely did this; teachers, never. We looked helplessly across our desks at each other, none of us knowing quite what to do. A couple of the girls began to cry as well. Another teacher named Mrs. Hill was passing by our classroom and noticed what was happening. Mrs. Hill walked up to our teacher’s desk, gently put her arm around the stricken woman, and whispered to her. Our teacher mumbled something, sobbed sharply, and shook her head. Mrs. Hill helped her to her feet and walked her from the room, talking to her in a low, soothing voice. Although no teacher was now in the room, no child uttered a sound; so it remained until Mrs. Hill came back a few minutes later. Your teacher isn’t feeling well, we were told. You may take your pencils and crayons and draw quietly. Shortly after that, the assistant principal came in to cover the class. Our teacher, you see, had been listening to the radio before coming to school that day. If a certain ship crossed a certain line at a certain time, the world might end. Our teacher’s nerves gave out first.

That wasn’t the way school — or life — was supposed to go. I went home badly shaken and did what I thought would help: turned on the TV and waited for the afternoon cartoons. I wanted my ink-and-paint heroes to face down the evil Reds; I had seen them in action against Hitler and Tojo and wished that my celluloid heroes could thrash the Bolsheviks as well. I wanted revenge for my teacher and for my fearful classmates, but most of all I wanted my beloved cartoons to give me some reassurance and make everything better. (If Bugs Bunny is with us, who can stand against us?) However, there was little comfort to be found. Popeye’s can of spinach, which had sunk more Japanese ships than the Seventh Fleet, was empty when it came to the Russians. Superman had defeated both Germans and Japoteurs alike but where was he now? Bugs and Daffy, twin nemeses of the Nazis, left Mr. Krushchev unmolested. The toons were shortly replaced that day by Conelrad alerts — this is a test, this is only a test — and the shadows of the missiles grew deeper. Bugs, Daffy, Superman, Popeye, my teachers and classmates, the whole world and I were going to go down together in a blistering nuclear fireball.

To my great relief, it never happened. Today, little remains of the geopolitical scene that existed in October of 1962, but one thing did remain constant: American animation never went to war again. This is somewhat of a puzzle, since animated characters had been fighting like furies since WWI. Animation was just a few years old when Mutt and Jeff starred in such films as Hunting the U-boats, At the Front and The Kaiser’s New Dentist. Colonel Heeza Liar was no less active against the Hun, and Winsor McCay made one of the most stunning propaganda films of all time, The Sinking of the Lusitania. This indictment of perfidy under German arms demonstrated the power of animation to inflame a nation’s fighting spirit.