Speaking of the Weather

Speaking of the Weather
Directed by	Frank Tashlin
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Animation by	Credited: Joe D'Igalo Volney White Uncredited: Nelson Demorest Art Loomer
Color process	Technicolor
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Running time	7 minutes 24 seconds

Speaking of the Weather is an animated cartoon short in the Merrie Melodies series produced by Leon Schlesinger for Warner Bros.. Released to theaters on September 4, 1937, it was directed by Frank Tashlin and animated by Joe D'Igalo and Volney White. It was reissued into the "Blue Ribbon Classics" series in January 1945.

The film centers around literary figures coming to life — a basic theme that Tashlin would later use in the subsequent shorts Have You Got Any Castles? and You're an Education, both released in 1938. Collectively, the films are commonly referred to by WB cartoon fans as the "Tashlin Three."

Plot

In a closed drugstore at midnight, the characters from all of the books and magazines are coming to life.

At the beginning of the film, "Bob Boins" (Bob Burns) introduces Ted Lewis (who according to Boins was once called "Uncle Fudd" back at Van Beuren) who is seen playing Plenty of Money and You, which segues into a caricature of orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski leading the Storm movement from the William Tell Overture. After this, the title song is sung by a girl trio caricaturing the Boswell Sisters on the cover of Radioland magazine; all the while, Hugh Herbert is seen repeatedly smiling and adjusting his necktie. A bullish criminal on the cover of The Gang Magazine, distracted at the sound of the sisters' performance, sneaks about and decides to use a blowtorch from the cover of Popular Mechanics to break into a safe on the cover of The Magazine of Wall Street. He is discovered by detective "Cholly Jam" (Charlie Chan), and after explaining himself to the police on the cover of True Confessions, he is tried, and sentenced to Life. However, he decides to escape through the cover of Liberty; but his escape does not go unnoticed when he is reported by the famous columnist and radio reporter Walter Winchell (here caricatured as "Walter Snitchall"), which then leads to a wide variety of characters, including police officers, Boy Scouts, Tarzan, wild animals, and native Zulu tribesmen, joining the chase. The Thin Man (a caricature of William Powell, who got an Academy Award nomination for playing the role) uses Asta from the cover of Dog World to detect the criminal on the cover of Better Babies, and the criminal gives chase on the carriage, only to be assailed by everyone from Navy battleships to Greta Garbo and even Saint Nicholas. He ultimately ends up imprisoned in the bars on the cover of Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, and when Herbert laughs, the criminal uses a globe from the cover of a World Almanac to hit him in the head. At iris-out, it turns out he has stolen Herbert's laugh himself.

Availability

• DVD - Gold Diggers of 1937 (USA 1995 Turner print added as a bonus)
• LaserDisc - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Volume 1, Side 1
• DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc 2

Notes

• This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on July 21, 1945.
• Airings of this cartoon on the American Turner networks delete the short scene with Zulu natives.
• The original opening, credits, and ending titles were found and restored on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 DVD.

External links

• Speaking of the Weather at IMDb
• Speaking of the Weather (Blue Ribbon) on the Internet Archive
• Watch Speaking of the Weather here