I'd Love to Take Orders from You

During the 1930s, Looney Tunes generally made black & white cartoons like most of their competition. But some of these studios, including Looney Tunes, sometimes made color cartoons and I have no idea why they did this for some and not others. Regardless, "I'd Love to Take Orders from You" is a full color cartoon...and a lovely one when you see it today...full restored and on HBOMax.

While the Looney Tunes cartoons had lovely animation in the mid-1930s, the artwork in this one is definitely better than usual...and for once the quality of the artwork here rivaled the best of Disney....the studio with the best quality animation in the 1930s. The colors, backgrounds and characters just look great.

As for the story, it suffers a bit from a bit of cutesy singing...fortunately, it's brief! It stars a living scarecrow and his family...an odd story idea. The scarecrow wants Junior to grow up just like him...and Junior feels the same way. So is the boy able to do his old man proud?

As I already mentioned, the animation is great. But like most of the shorts from Looney Tunes from this period, the animation is better than the story. What's missing in most of these is the silly sense of humor and lovable characters of the 1940s Looney Tunes films...some sarcasm and edginess could have helped this one. Still, it's pretty decent for Looney Tunes for 1936 and my score of 8 is relative to its competition during this time period.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best cartoons ever made by anybody. 'I'd Love to Take Orders From You' has enough to demonstrate why Avery is regarded so highly. It is a long way from being one of his best, he has done funnier and more imaginative and he took more risks in his prime period in the 40s for MGM (this is pretty tame for him, which is forgivable as it is a reasonably early cartoon for him).

Not much wrong actually with 'I'd Love to Take Orders From You'. It is slight in terms of story and figuring out what happens throughout the cartoon is not that hard. Having said that, even with the tameness of Avery's style here it avoids being too bland.

It is no surprise that, as with a vast majority of Avery's cartoons regardless of the period, the animation is excellent. Beautifully drawn, very detailed and crisply shaded.

Music is lush and lively, with clever orchestration, and it fits very well with the action if not enhancing it as much as regular Avery composers Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley.

'I'd Love to Take Orders From You' is sweet without being cutesy, this is an example considering the story that Avery does do well with sweet. The father/son relationship has heart and the conflicts done with enough humour and tension to help make the cartoon entertaining and not dull and sugary.

The characters are engaging, the cartoon is nicely timed and the voice acting is good.

Overall, nice cartoon without being top-tier Avery. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This is an early cartoon done by Tex Avery when he was still being screen-credited as Fred. I haven't seen it in years but recall it vividly. Little son scarecrow wants to follow in dad's footsteps (or should that be strawsteps?) but dad suggests he wait a bit until he's older. Son decides to give it a go anyway, with predictable results. The expressiveness of the various characters is quite remarkable and I've seen film footage of Avery and another resident (or maybe inmate is more accurate) acting out one scene, which is probably why the movements seem so realistic. It's an entertaining and effective piece of animation. A good time was had by all. Most recommended

This is an early entry from director Avery and animator Clampett with surprisingly fewer of the outrageous sight gags and surrealism which would be notable in their later works. The proceedings of the story are presented in a pretty straightforward way considering its creators. This tale of an anything but dysfunctional scarecrow family does, however, offer its own realism and environmental world, right down to their home furniture (pumpkin lamps, cornstalks and such) and even their clothing with patches (although the one on the son's trousers switches from one leg to another!). Altogether this was an exceptionally well animated cartoon with great colors that surprised me (for example, the green of the crow's feet-an odd but effective choice!). I was only familiar with it on tv in black and white and just only recently saw it this way, and it appears to have been restored. The music was incorporated effectively and the voice work also was remarkable. Elmore Vincent (later on "Little House on the Prairie") was the father but I'm not sure who played mom...it may have been one of a couple of women active in cartoon voice work at the time-Sara Berner usually played younger characters like the mouse Sniffles created by Chuck Jones. More likely it was Martha Wentworth, who voiced mom in the Harman-Ising three bears cartoons at MGM, and years later in the 1960's was Madam Mim in Disney's "Sword in the Stone"...but again, as it is not on record I'm not sure it was her. The young son is really the focus in the story here as he tries to stand up to and intimidate the crows...this voice was supplied by Tommy Bond, already known in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) shorts as Tommy, then later as Butch, who certainly managed to intimidate Alfalfa! The characterizations are strong in this short and the story has great pacing and cohesiveness. An outstanding work in every respect.

Back when the Warner Bros. animation department had only just gotten on the map - Porky Pig was their main star, and Mel Blanc was not yet providing the voices - they made "I'd Love to Take Orders from You", about a father scarecrow teaching his son the ABCs of crow-scaring, giving the son a little bit of over-confidence. I presume that at this point in time, the animation department was still trying to figure out which kind of path it was going to take, so we needn't expect the outright wackiness that became their staple throughout the '40s and '50s. This one, directed by Tex Avery (billed as Fred), has a very simple story. But it remains an important part of cartoon history, as do all the shorts released by Warner Bros. back then. As this one is currently not available on video or DVD, you can find it on YouTube.

I wonder how "The Wizard of Oz" would have ended up had Dorothy come across these scarecrows instead of the one whom she found.