Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty is planting her spring garden and the crows are eating the seed as fast as she sows it. She builds a scarecrow and chases the flock off, and in the scramble one crow flies into a tree and is knocked out. Betty, soft-hearted, puts him in a basket and tells Pudgy to look after him. Pudgy dozes; the crow comes round, finds himself unguarded, and calls the whole flock in through the window for a party. Pudgy wakes to a house full of crows eating everything in it, and they make a fool of him, bundle him in a blanket and throw him out of the door. He warns Betty, and the crows pelt the two of them with eggs and berries as they come. Running, Betty trips over her scarecrow and has an idea: she dresses as the scarecrow herself, walks into the house, and the crows flee in panic.
Why It Matters
- The crows' house party, with the birds in Betty's kitchen eating her out of house and home, is a lively set piece, and the ending, with Betty as her own scarecrow, is a neat reversal; the crows are drawn as a gang of wise guys, in the manner of Disney's Dumbo crows two years later.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and is one of the last Pudgy cartoons, made in the final season of the Betty Boop series in Miami; Dave Tendlar and William Sturm, who animated it, both went on to long careers at Famous Studios.
Notes and Trivia
- The title's pun is the whole of the film's premise.
- Betty's garden is the last domestic setting of the series, which ended with two travel cartoons.
- See also: My Friend the Monkey (1939), Musical Mountaineers (1939), Rhythm on the Reservation (1939).
