Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)

Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) represents Christmas only as a deadline and an event on the social calendar.  As with many classic films, the holiday is a backdrop, not the focus of the plot.  As with all the movies in the Andy Hardy series, sixteen of them, Andy’s focus is on Andy.  We may not learn any lessons at the end of the tale, but Andy always claims he does.

Then we have another movie where he has forgotten them.

This post is part of the countdown to Christmas coinciding with the launch of my newest book, Christmas in Classic Films.

The story begins in early December, and the Hardy family are occupied with their usual challenges:  father Judge Hardy played by Lewis Stone censures a young juvenile delinquent in his courtroom for driving under the legal age and getting in a crash.  Sis Marian, played by Cecilia Parker has broken up with her boyfriend and melodramatically swears off men.

Andy, played by the energetic powerhouse Mickey Rooney, wants to buy his first car, a fixer-upper which will cost him the astronomical price of $20.  He pays down $12, and owes $8 and must find some way to pay it so he can have the car by Christmas Eve.  (His pop does not want him to have a car, so he has to do this on the sly.) There is to be a big formal dance at the country club on Christmas Eve and he wants to take his girlfriend, Polly played by Ann Rutherford. 

Normally, Ann Rutherford is a pretty high-maintenance girlfriend with expensive tastes and a somewhat controlling attitude, but young Mr. Rooney’s dead gone on her so he does his best to keep up to keep getting those kisses.  However, in what will be a rash of people going away for the Christmas holiday, Miss Rutherford is leaving with her family to go to her grandma’s and will miss the big dance.  Andy swears to her he will take nobody else and will just go stag.

However, his pal Beezy, played by George P. Breakston, is also going away for the Christmas holiday with his family, and he asks Rooney to date his girlfriend to keep the other wolves in the class away from her.  She is a hottie and he’s afraid of losing her.  He promises to pay Rooney the $8 he needs to buy the car.  The girlfriend is played by Lana Turner in her fourth film, in what was actually her first featured role.

Another new girl is entering Andy Hardy’s life: Betsy Booth, played by Judy Garland in her first of three Andy Hardy outings, and her second of some ten films she played opposite Rooney.  Young Miss Garland plays a 13-year-old visiting her grandma for a few weeks running up to Christmas.  Her grandma lives next door to the Hardys, and she becomes instantly smitten with Andy.

Not to be outdone, the Hardy family has its own grandmother issues when Mrs. Hardy’s mother, who lives on a farm in Canada, has suffered a stroke.  They receive the telegram with the bad news and the house is all a-flutter with what to do.  Mrs. Hardy, played by Fay Holden, and her sister who lives with them, Aunt Milly, played by Betsy Ross Clarke, will take the next train and leave the family rudderless.  The Judge hires a cook, played by goofy Marie Blake, and sister Marian takes charge of the house like General Patton, driving Andy nuts.

The movie could have been called “Christmas with Grandma” or “Grandma Messes Up Everybody’s Christmas Plans.”

In the days leading up the Christmas, Judge and sister Marian decorate an enormous tree in the living room.  There is the familiar scene of Pop feeling victorious that the lights actually work, and the stepladder is out to reach the high branches.  It’s a homey scene, but the son of the house is too busy moping on the running board of the family car in the driveway, worrying about his troubles.  He does not appear to have any joy or anxiety about Christmas wishes or shopping for others.  It’s all about the upcoming dance.

Amid Rooney’s hijinks and stress juggling dates (Beezy found a new girlfriend and no longer wants Lana Turner, so the deal’s off), problems at home, and yearning for his car, with the deadline of Christmas Eve looming before him—he marks off the days on the calendar—is a charming relationship with Judy Garland.  She has a crush on him and tries to interest him, but he thinks of her as a child.  Judy sings the plaintive-comic “In-Between” regretting she has no glamor—and briefly glances down at her chest.  “No glamor at all.”

Judy is the one who helps Mickey the most, serving as a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board for his schemes, and with much less heavy-handedness than either Ann Rutherford or Lana Turner, manipulates our young hero into taking her to the dance, eventually ditching Turner, and she herself patches up his romance with Miss Rutherford.  Judy and Mickey are pals through this film, and he couldn’t find a better one.

We have some interesting pop culture references in this movie, including the sending and receiving messages from Mother in Canada via ham radio, Andy’s ruminating on how there were no cars or planes when his father was a boy, and the Judge’s eerily prescient remark, made when admiring the 12-year-old boy ham radio operator and former delinquent in his court, played by future television producer Gene Reynolds, “Heaven only knows what this generation has coming.”

It would have a world war the following year.

Perhaps for these and much more, including the delightful performance of Judy Garland—who commands every scene she’s in—the movie was named for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2000 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

To be sure, the Andy Hardy series is a window on an era. 

Christmas Eve arrives, and Mickey takes Judy to the country club dance.  He is in a tux with a top hat.  He is astounded by how grown-up she looks with her new long gown.  He takes possession of his car (she has bought a flashy hood ornament for him for Christmas) and incongruously, as in many classic films, they drive in an open jalopy through the cold.  It might have looked good on a Hollywood soundstage, but nobody seems to have considered the very real consequence of frostbite or hypothermia.  Just looking at people driving in an open car in the winter makes me cold.

Ann Rutherford is back from grandma’s early, so she attends the dance in a huff with another escort, once she finds out that Mickey has been dating Lana Turner.  Her date is a young orchestra leader from New York, played by Don Castle.  He is familiar with Judy Garland, having met her and heard her sing at a house party back home.  He asks her to sing, and though Mickey is nervous his 13-year-old date will make a fool of herself in front of his friends, he needn’t be.  She’s Judy Garland, for heaven’s sake.  Judy sings a couple songs, leads the grand march with Mickey, and the evening is a great success.

He brings her back to his house afterwards to give her his Christmas present to her, which we never see, and the Judge and Marian sneak out to join them in the living room.  It is just past midnight, so it is Christmas Day.  They wish each other a forlorn “Merry Christmas,” but then the doorbell rings and it’s Mother, who bravely flew in an airplane to return home to them.  (Maybe Aunt Milly decided to play it safe and take the train.  She ought to be along in a day or two.) Grandma’s out of the woods and it’s a happy ending.

The next morning, with a wreath on the grille of new car, which the Judge has given in and gave him the balance of what he owed, Mickey’s troubles vanish.  Polly arrives with the bandleader, who was her cousin after all, and makes up with Rooney because Garland had visited her earlier and explained things.  We can’t help but wonder if Andy Hardy wouldn’t be better off with a selfless girl like Betsy Booth, but he’s still attracted to the flashier types.

Garland’s humble response to his gratitude: “On account of you I was grown-up for one night, just like Cinderella.  Now I know how wonderful life’s going to be when I’m eighteen.”

It’s a sweet and innocent remark, and if Christmas is a time for wishes, for family, for nostalgia, for angst, and for sadness, there’s also plenty of room for old-fashioned innocence.  That might be what we mean when we say “Christmas is for children.”  But when we carry appreciation and respect for innocence into adulthood, even if we do not quite rate the label ourselves, it’s a form of benevolence that makes for a kinder world.

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Come back next week in the home stretch to Christmas for a department store hijinks with Ginger Rogers, David Niven, and a baby in Bachelor Mother (1939)

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.