Pri­vate Sna­fu was the U.S. Army’s worst sol­dier. He was slop­py, lazy and prone to shoot­ing off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was huge­ly pop­u­lar with his fel­low GIs. Pri­vate Sna­fu was, of course, an ani­mat­ed car­toon char­ac­ter designed for the mil­i­tary recruits. He was an adorable dolt who sound­ed like Bugs Bun­ny and looked a bit like Elmer Fudd. And in every episode, he taught sol­diers what not to do, from blab­bing about troop move­ments to not tak­ing malar­ia med­ica­tion. The idea for the series report­ed­ly came from Frank Capra — the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor of It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and, dur­ing WWII, the chair­man of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Pic­ture Unit. He want­ed to cre­ate a car­toon series for new recruits, many of whom were young, unworld­ly and in some cas­es illit­er­ate. Capra gave Dis­ney first shot at devel­op­ing the idea but Warn­er Bros’ Leon Schlesinger, a man who was as famous for his hard-dri­ving busi­ness acu­men as he was for wear­ing exces­sive …