Winky the Watchman

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DATE: 1945

LENGTH: 10 min.

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Sound, Animation, Color

DIRECTOR: Uncredited

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Hugh Harman Productions with United States Public Health Service

Summary

This wartime dental film, produced by Hugh Harman with uncredited animators, uses industrial warfare as a metaphor for the battle between tooth decay and dentistry. In live action, a dentist seats four children in his waiting room and tells a story about a city defended by beautiful white walls that look like teeth. The film then shifts to animation. The walls/teeth are guarded by Winky, a careless watchman. While Winky dozes, demonic dark blobs (the “bad uns”) storm the walls, attack the teeth with picks, catapults, dynamite, and battering rams.

Supplementary Materials

Stills from Winky the Watchman

The title screen featuring the text "Winky the Watchman / In Technicolor / Copyright MCMXLV Hugh Harman Productions, Inc. All rights in this motion picture reserved under international convention

A still frame of a white male dentist talking and sitting down in a chair facing towards four children, two girls and two boys, who are all sitting down on a leather couch

A cartoon frame of a castle with pearly white walls resembling the shape of teeth

A cartoon depicting a sleepy man yawning and holding a stick in one hand

A cartoon depicting an alarmed man almost falling off the ledge of a wall while holding a stick with a lamp at the end of it.

Four black monsters stand around a seemingly exhausted man sleeping on his stomach on the ground.

An army of black monsters infiltrating a white wall shaped like teeth. Some black monsters are climbing on ladders between each wall gap, resembling the space between teeth, while other monsters mine and dig into and around the wall.

A black monster on a minecart lighting up a dynamite inside the white walls. The interior of the wall resembles the interior of a tooth.

The cartoon watchman wakes up from his slumber and finds himself falling into a hole inside a white wall. The hole resembles a cavity in a tooth.

The cartoon watchman marches out of the gates with an army of golden creatures riding on white horse-like animals behind him.

An army of golden creatures smiling and riding horseback. The golden creatures wave their swords in the air in unison.

An army of golden creatures riding horseback and fighting against the black monsters on the ground

A white wall, resembling the shape of teeth, has smoke, cracks, holes, and other devastation on it. Behind the white wall and off in the distance is a castle.

Three golden creatures work together and pass bricks to each other to mend the white wall behind them.

Two golden creatures work together to lay brick down and fill a hole in a white wall.

A group of golden creatures working together to lift and carefully place a filler in a chipped white wall.

A restored white wall with several columns of brick filling. The restored white wall resembles teeth filling.

A watchman with a whistle hanging around his neck standing and yelling, "all is well" atop a partially white and brick wall.

A still frame of four children, two boys and two girls, listening to a man in a chair wearing dentist attire. One boy and one girl sit on a leather couch while turning to the man and another boy and girl stand beside the man in the chair.

A man in dentist attire slightly bends down to say goodbye to a boy and girl leaving his office. His office door reads, "716 / Dr. R.C. Allen / Dentist"

Other Films Featured in the Essay

Explore thirteen films considered in the “Public Health Films Go to War” essay.

In the Collections of the National Library of Medicine

Prints & Photographs Collection

These posters, produced by or for the U.S. military in conjunction with campaigns that also employed films, come from the Prints and Photographs collection of the National Library. Explore these and more from the NLM’s Images in the History of Medicine.

image of cartoon mosquito with information about them — Poster shown in the film Medicine in Action: Pacific Enemy Number Two-Malaria (1944).
U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, 1945.
*National Library of Medicine #101438600*

Poster text reads: protect yourself, protect your buddies, keep covered after dark — This is a Malaria Zone, ca. 1940s
*National Library of Medicine #101451934*

cartoon man hanging surrounded by mosquitos with sword for noses — World War II-era health campaigns often used military metaphors to depict mosquitoes.
U.S. GPO, 1944.
*National Library of Medicine #101454784*

cartoon of a lady mosquito with makeup — The “Annie O. Pheles” anti-malaria campaign featured a seductive or criminal female malaria mosquito in several animated cartoons.
U. S. GPO, 1944.
*National Library of Medicine #101454783*

men shooting large cannon missiles at the words chancroid, gonorrhea, syphilis — Venereal disease campaign poster.
Wyeth & Bro., 1942.
*National Library of Medicine #101438710*

horizontal colors of red white and blue with the letters VE, VJ, and VD in them — U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, 1945.
Artist. Bob Bode.
*National Library of Medicine #101438715*

illustration of a blue silhouette man with white drawings of the inside of a human on the skin — Venereal disease campaign poster.
U.S. Public Health Service, ca. 1945.
Artist: Leonard Karsakov.
*National Library of Medicine #101439384*

drawing of man in army helmet underneath explains how to fight syphilis and gonorrhea — Venereal disease campaign poster.
U.S. Army, ca. 1942.
Artist. Robert Riggs.
*National Library of Medicine #101444144*

cartoon man scrubbing himself with soap — Personal hygiene campaign poster.
U.S. Public Health Service, 1942.
Artist: H. Price.
*National Library of Medicine #101438120*

man in army helmet looking into water reflection of his skeleton with large beware word on top — Water purity campaign poster.
U.S. War Dept., 1944.
*National Library of Medicine #101454782*

Historical Audiovisuals Collection

Commandments for Health: The Private McGillicuddy Cartoons
Hugh Harman Productions, United States Navy; b&w, 1945

In 1942, the animation department of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit began producing a series of humorous animated cartoons featuring the bumbling “Private Snafu.” Shown to millions of armed forces personnel, the Private Snafu series dealt with black marketeering, wartime censorship, the need for military discipline, and so on, but also malaria and venereal disease prevention and the physiological stress of combat.

In 1945 the U.S. Navy commissioned Hugh Harman Productions to create an entertaining cartoon series, patterned on Snafu, but dealing solely with health issues, for troops in the field. Harman was a veteran animator who had worked in 1920s with the (pre-Mickey Mouse) Walt Disney Laugh-O-Gram studio in Kansas City and in the 1930s in Hollywood on the Warner Brothers’ Merrie Melodies series. The McGillicuddy cartoons had a smaller budget than Snafu—the producers saved time and money by using fewer drawings and less precise sound synchronization, which made for jagged animation and a greater reliance on voiceover narration—but the talent was top flight. Like Snafu, McGillicuddy featured the voice of Mel Blanc and music by Carl Stallings. While the director/animator is not identified, the artwork and direction has a definite Warner Brothers “feel.”

The series is formulaic: each episode takes place on a South Pacific island where the dim-witted Marine Private McGillicuddy ignores a different “Commandment for Health,” suffers the bodily consequences, and jeopardizes the war effort. The cartoons, aimed at a male audience of young soldiers and sailors, are mildly risqué. Unlike commercial films of the period, military cartoons were not subject to the dictates of the Hays Office, which censored what could be shown on civilian screens. The gags are corny; shopworn racial and social stereotypes abound. Flies that contaminate food are depicted as buck-toothed Japanese soldiers wearing thick glasses; South Sea islanders are given exaggerated African features and depicted as cannibals; doctors are sadists; and so forth.

Disclaimer: These films depict ethnic, gender and racial stereotypes that were once commonplace in American society. We present them here as historical artifacts, valuable documents of the cultural practices of their time. Viewer discretion advised.

Read the Essay “The Five Commandments“

Guide to Tropical Disease Motion Pictures and Audiovisuals

The Tropical Disease Motion Picture and Audiovisual Collection is comprised of films, videorecordings, and digital videocasts produced from the 1920s through 2009, with the majority shot prior to the 1960s. All are devoted to health concerns and include material on medicine and public health. Materials range from ideological, documentary, educational, and training films to American war propaganda. The intended audience is diverse and includes military personnel, health professionals, and the general public. The collection will be of particular interest to scholars concerned with the social, economic, and political implications of health disparities in a world where epidemics travel with great rapidity across national and regional borders. Explore the Guide.

Digital Collections

Explore first aid manuals, pamphlets, and other documents in this digitized set of World War II materials held at NLM.

View digitized films on tropical disease.

Related Resources from the National Library of Medicine

Circulating Now

Read blog posts on topics related to World War II based on research in the NLM collections.

MedlinePlus

See current information from MedlinePlus on tropical disease and military health topics.

External Resources

Articles and Websites

See World War II: A Resource Guide from the US Library of Congress.

Watch these World War I and World War II films from the US National Archives and Records Administration.