Plenty of Money and You

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Airdate:
31 July 1937 Blue Ribbon reissue: 9 December 1944

Series:

Merrie Melodies

MPAA Number:	Vitaphone Number:
3501	8052

Copyright Renewed:

5 February 1965^[1]

Crew

Voice Characterizations:

Mel Blanc (uncredited)^[2]

Film Editor:

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Carl W. Stalling

Plenty of Money and You is a 1937 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.

Plot[]

All of a hen's eggs hatch, but one of them turns out to be an ostrich. She keeps it as one of her own. The ostrich has a knack for getting into trouble. He gets stuck after eating a goldfish, then falls into an basement where he swallows a car jack whole, then has a run-in involving a worm and a lawn sprinkler, and last but not least is captured by a weasel. The weasel is singing while he prepares to cook an Ostrich A La King as described in the weasel’s cooking book. The ostrich in the meantime swallows a hanging light bulb and a box of fireworks, and those are lit after he's put in the oven. The weasel, irritated at this point, decides to let the ostrich go. The ostrich unintentionally puts on a fireworks show.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

When the baby ostrich shoots fireworks out of its mouth after the mother hen hugs it, creating an "Eat at Sloppy Joe's" sign, the film abruptly cuts to the baby ostrich on the ground, suggesting that a scene got cut from the original release. The way the ostrich was animated implies that it was falling.^[3]

Notes[]

The ostrich appears again in a cameo in "The Lyin' Mouse".
This is the first short to end with the "Merrily We Roll Along" theme, which would continue until 1964. After that, the Merrie Melodies series used the Looney Tunes theme until 1969, when the Warner Bros. cartoon studio closed. This unique rendition would only be present in this short, and two more unique renditions would appear in "Speaking of the Weather" and "Dog Daze". Starting with "I Wanna Be a Sailor", another arrangement was made, with the new ending rendition lasting for approximately one year before being replaced.
While the American Turner "dubbed" version print retains the original ending music, the European Turner print changes it to that of the 1938–41 ending rendition of "Merrily We Roll Along". The 2020 restoration uses the American Turner print's soundtrack, and thus retains the original ending music.