NFR Project: 'Love Finds Andy Hardy' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Love Finds Andy Hardy’

Dir: George B. Seitz

Scr: Vivien R. Bretherton

Pho: Lester White

Ed: Ben Lewis

Premiere: July 22, 1938

91 min.

Nostalgia for a reality that never existed.

This film is a shining example of what used to be referred to as a “B movie,” one that was paired with a more prestigious “A” picture to fill out a theater’s schedule. (Double features, preceded by such things as a newsreel, a cartoon, and a “short subject” film, were once the norm.)

This is the fourth of 16 Andy Hardy movies, and the first one in which his name is used in the title, cementing Mickey Rooney’s status as a star performer. These small-town comedy/dramas dealt with the adventures of teenage Andy (Rooney), his older sister, and his parents.

In Andy’s world, there is no poverty, no strife, and no minorities. His father, kindly old Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), is wise and relatable, his mother sweet and domestic. Andy’s big issue is buying a used car to take his girlfriend Polly to the high school’s big Christmas Eve dance.

But then Polly has to go out of town and miss the festivities. Andy pledges to go stag (alone) to the dance – but then a friend of his is going out of town, and wants Andy to “date” his girl (a very young Lana Turner) in his absence, to keep other boys from hitting on her. Promised enough money to buy his car for this favor, he agrees.

Soon, it happens that Polly will actually be back in town in time for the dance. Andy must now juggle two girls at once. Fortunately, he is helped by a third girl, young Betsy (Judy Garland!), who acts as a kind of friend and fairy godsister to him. Plans go awry, misunderstandings crop up, and soon it’s anyone’s guess whether Andy will have any date at all. It takes some time for him to unravel his problems, in order to produce the requisite happy ending.

The film is directed competently by George Seitz; the script is inoffensive and the hijinks are, today, somewhat watchable. (The big highlight is seeing a 16-year-old Garland belt out a couple of musical numbers, one year before her star-making turn as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.)

The movie is comfort food. At a time when America was still climbing out of the Great Depression, the innocent contretemps of a scamp-ish adolescent was just the kind of reassuring, safe content that audiences wanted to see. The movie was a huge hit for MGM, the major studio that focused most intensely on producing family-friendly fare.

Andy’s simple and happy world is a construct of Americana, that yearning for an ideal environment in which no one goes hungry and no big issues are at stake. Other studios seeing MGM’s success, followed with similar content.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: March of Time: Inside Nazi Germany.