Snuffy Smith
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- For the World War II Medal of Honor Recipient please go to Maynard "Snuffy" Smith
Snuffy Smith has been for many years the predominant character in the syndicated newspaper comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, created by Billy DeBeck and later drawn by Fred Lasswell from 1942 until 2001 (when Laswell died). The strip is currently drawn by John Rose.
Snuffy is a very stereotypical hillbilly. He lives in a shack, makes moonshine, is in constant trouble with the sheriff, and is very shiftless, occasionally doing a small amount of farm work but primarily working his still and loafing. He also has some proclivity toward stealing chickens, which led to a brief but effective use of his character in a marketing campaign by the Tyson Foods corporation in the early 1980s. He is very short, wears a broad-brimmed felt hat almost as tall as he is, has a huge mustache, and almost invariably wears a pair of tattered, poorly patched overalls. He constantly cheats at poker and checkers. His speech is ungrammatical in the extreme. In fact, almost all of the characters in the strip (except of course for the occasional visiting "flatlander") were/are stereotypical hillbillies – sharp-tongued gossipy women such as his wife Loweezy (Louisa), his baby, Tater, his nephew Jughaid (Jughead), his neighbors Elviney and Lukey, the sanctimonious (but nonetheless ungrammatical) Parson, Sheriff Tait with his huge, star-shaped badge, Silas, the owner of the General Store, and many others. All vehicles were rundown jalopies of a seeming 1920s vintage, even in the 1970s and beyond.
Two live-action feature films with actor Bud Duncan portraying Snuffy Smith were made in 1942: Private Snuffy Smith and Hillbilly Blitzkrieg.
In the 1960s, King Features Syndicate produced a number of shorts with prolific voice actor Paul Frees providing the voice of Snuffy Smith.
