The Home Front

The Gang's All Here

Thurs., July 14

1943's The Home Front, one of 26 wartime animated shorts directed by Frank Tashlin-creator of such gemlike ephemera as Puss 'n' Booty, Booby Hatched and The Stupid Cupid-is a tour de force of subversive, or subverted, propaganda. Commissioned by a nascent Army Intel, used to (re)educate American servicemen about the enormous popular support they'd left behind on the other side of the ocean, The Home Front stars a more hapless less hep Fritz the Cat named Private Snafu, voiced by the deliriously mad Mel Blanc, of Merrie Melodies fame, an old friend of Tashlin's from the days they spent sneaking drug and sex references past the censor that was Leon Schlesinger. Because The Home Front was made especially for the service, to be shown to a packed field room of sweaty, horny men, Tashlin could get away with pretty much anything: Snafu's girl, Sally Lou, is a Jessica Rabbit who thumps so hard she'll rip your Roger right off.

Snafu's sidekick is the brilliantly named Technical Fairy First Class, created by one of the series' greatest writers, a young budding cartoonist named Theodore Geisel, later Doctor Seuss. In The Home Front, Snafu-who in the previous installment, 1943's Fighting Tools, was left beaten and naked, prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp-now finds himself stationed in the Arctic, regaled by Technical Fairy First Class with tales of his dad building tanks, his mom planting a victory garden, and his best gal rebuffing the buffs and going off to join the WACS.

Following Snafu are the great Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda, strutting their stuff to the sound of the Benny Goodman Orchestra in Busby Berkeley's 1943 noir-wacky The Gang's All Here. When Phil Baker as debauched, heroic playboy Andy Mason gets his Army leave, he meets up with Alice Faye's shimmering, smoky showgirl, Edie Allen. A one-night stand that-doubtless-leaves her begging for more, she's bereft when he ships out the next day for active duty in the Pacific. Of course, he lied to her and told her his name was Casey. Why? Just believe it.

When Phil-Andy-Casey returns a hero, medals and all, his rich father throws him a party for which he engages Edie's dance troupe. During the performance, will she discover that Casey, or Andy, is really engaged to rich, intelligent, Vivian, his family-arranged fiancee? Who really cares, as in true Berkeley style The Gang's all music. Post-Puccini opera on celluloid, whenever the plot founders Goodman strikes up the band, then Carmen Miranda shows up to shake some fruit.

Donnell Library Center, 20 W. 53rd St. (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.), 212-621-0619; 2:30, free.