16 Dr. Seuss used verse to narrate many of the movies he wrote for the army
Characters in the training films written by Dr. Seuss while serving in the army often spoke in verse, a trait which marked the characters of most of his children’s books after the war (before which several had been written in prose). In the film Gripes, both Private Snafu and the Technical Fairy speak in verse. Snafu is engaged in a dreaded army task, KP (kitchen patrol, peeling potatoes, washing pots and pans, and the general grunt duties of working in a kitchen) when he says to the audience, “I joined this here army to join the fun. A-jabbin’ the Jap and a-huntin’ the Hun. And look at the job they handed to me; KP, KP, KP, and KP. The rhythms of the Cat and the Hat and others of Seuss’s later works were clearly apparent, and part of the means he used to make the films entertaining.
Free from the restraints of the censors, Dr. Seuss was also able to write stories which the animators built upon which would never have been deemed acceptable for civilian consumption under the Hays Code. Snafu is allowed to fantasize about an army with himself in charge, one in which each GI would be issued two “dames” in the film’s parlance, as well as be free from the work and discipline of army life. The animators drew the “dames” in revealing poses and costumes, with one before her makeup table dressed in a garter belt and little else. The good girls, depicted as the all-American girl next door, nonetheless demonstrated a healthy eagerness to accommodate the brave boys in uniform. For Dr. Seuss, it was a creative freedom which he had never had before, and would never enjoy again, and he made the most of it.