Who's Who in Animal Land is a 1944 short film (10 minutes) directed by Lou Lilly.
It is part of the "Speaking of Animals" series, a series of shorts which ran in theaters before features in the early 1940s. The conceit has a jokey, pun-loving narrator interacting with various animals, all of whom talk back to him via animated mouths. While other shorts in the series were quasi-documentaries, this one is framed as a children's book. The children's book has pictures of animals, all of which spring to life in live-action and talk to the viewer. Elephants, foxes, giraffes, chinchillas, and other animals all give humorous commentary on animal life.
Tropes:
- Born in the Theater: After the narrator observes that goats will eat tin cans, the goat says "Has anyone in the audience got my bicarbonate of soda?"
- Extreme Omni-Goat: A goat bites on a tin can as the narrator says that goats will eat whatever slime is left in the bottom of a tin can, and then eat the can.
- Medium Blending: Mostly live-action but with the mouths of the animals animated, as with all shorts in the "Speaking of Animals" series.
- Narrator: Ken Carpenter provides jokey, whimsical narration.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The cow that is "singing" a cowboy song wanders away from the camera as the movie ends.
- Pun: Many. The storybook that opens the film is subtitled "a storybook of reel animals." Yes, reel animals.
- Shout-Out: When the narrator suggests that the giraffe must be lonesome, the giraffe replies, in a sultry feminine voice, "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?" This is a shout out to Mae West and her famous line from She Done Him Wrong (although it's a misquote and West actually said "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?").
- Silly Simian: Inverted. As monkeys idle away their time on a tree branch, the narrator observes that in all biological respects monkeys most closely resemble humans. The monkey says, in an upper-class British accent, "We monkeys resent that last statement."
- Storybook Opening: The film begins with the narrator opening a child's book about animals and reading the words therein. Unlike some uses of this trope the conceit is maintained to the end, with the narrator flipping through the book and looking at pictures.
