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.

Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941) and Spring Reunion (1956)

Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary (1941) celebrates the high school graduation of Mikey Rooney as Andy Hardy, a member of the class of 1941.  Spring Reunion (1956), starring Betty Hutton and Dana Andrews, is a look at another class of ’41 at their 15^th reunion.  The first movie idealistically launches teenagers into their newly proclaimed adulthood at the first major accomplishment of their lives—commencement, and the latter film looks back with a wistful sadness and even frustration, questioning just what have they accomplished since.  

We’ve mentioned before the deeper meaning of being a member of a high school graduating class in the spring of 1941 in this previous post on Peyton Place (1957).  Though World War II had already begun and most young people were likely expectant that the U.S. would join the Allies sooner rather than later, it must have been a strangely unsettling feeling graduating from high school that spring of 1941.  Plans for further education, or job options, would have been made probably only tentatively, with an uneasy suspicion of the lack of permanence in a world catching fire.

Andy Hardy plans to go to college, but with his typically jubilant frenzy, he never gives the impression he suspects his plans might be knocked out by the war.  (We discussed his next venture in this post on Life Begins for Andy Hardy - 1941) Mikey Rooney, a workhorse actor whose well over 300 films began when he was barely old enough to tie his shoes, had traded a long run as “Mickey Maguire” for a long run as Andy Hardy by 1937 and Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary was tenth in the series.  He could play the part with his eyes closed, and the mugging all-American fella in the sweater vest was Louis B. Mayer’s schmaltzy paean to American boyhood, a mantle not always worn comfortably by Rooney.

Lewis Stone is his long-suffering pop, Judge Hardy; Fay Holden is his adoring and somewhat ditzy mom; Sara Haden is back as doting maiden Aunt Milly who lives with them, and who teaches English at the local high school.  Older sister Marian is absent from this entry in the series and it is explained that she’s away in New York City.

Ann Rutherford’s back as Mikey’s best girl Polly, and spends most of the movie in a jealous snit.  The main diversion for the Hardy clan, besides Andy’s struggle to graduate, is the Land family.  Widower Ian Hunter lives in a small cottage on the other side of the tracks with his son Harry, played by Todd Karns; and his daughter Kathryn, played by Kathryn Grayson in her first movie.  She is the reason Ann Rutherford’s in a jealous snit. The secondary characters are always more interesting in the Hardy series because we already know Andy’s going to be okay no matter what. His family will always bail him out, and he’s Uncle Louis B. Mayer’s pride and joy.

Young Miss Grayson is fresh-faced and natural, and I think her appearance here is actually less affected than some of her later performances when her career had hit its peak in the following decade.  Her voice, of course, is lovely and she gets to display her talent more than once in this film, most notably in selections from Lucia di Lammermoor.  Louis B. Mayer convinced her to turn down her dream of an operatic career in favor of the movies.  A purely unselfish act on his part, you understand.

Todd Karns, son of our favorite smarmy bus passenger, Roscoe Karns (“Shapely’s the name, and that’s the way I like ‘em”), also made his film debut in this movie.  It is never said that the Land siblings are twins, but they are both graduating, and because they are poor, Karns does not have the requisite white flannel pants, and Grayson does not have the requisite silk stockings (still available even with the war on?) to take part in the ceremony.  Mickey Rooney, their fairy godfather, will take care of that.

They had lived with their dad in Europe for several years, but the war has put a damper on his travel business (nobody wants to vacation in war zones, go figure), and working in a garage is the only job he’s been able to find.  His ability to speak nine languages will be just the angle for Judge Hardy to give him a hand up at the end of the movie.  Anybody who enters the Hardys’ magical sphere is always the better for it.  

There is something amusingly snobbish about Louis B. Mayer’s version of a perfect America where Andy Hardy, the son of a judge, and Polly Benedict, the daughter of the local banker, are regarded as typically middle class—both will be presented with brand-new cars by their dads—while Mr. Land, who must work in a garage as a mere “working man,” the expression used to be, is regarded as somehow pitiable.  Judge Hardy must remind his son to be nice to the Land kids and include them in their own graduation ceremony.

Kathryn Grayson is the private secretary in the title, assigned to help Mickey in his duties as class president in the final hectic weeks of senior year.  He has the ceremony to arrange, the yearbook, is writing the class play, and as a result of his over-extending himself, he flunks his English final.  Even Auntie Milly could do nothing to save him.

Todd Karns, who is understandably fed up with Mickey’s antics with the resentment a poor kid has for an upper-middle class kid who’s getting a brand-new car for graduation, nevertheless finds the loophole to get him a makeup test and together with Kathryn and Ann Rutherford, stays up all night and force-feeds English grammar rules into Mickey’s thick head.

Kids today might regard the importance of English grammar on the same level of unbelievability as the apparent social shame of not owning white flannel pants.

Todd is given the chance to pay off his graduation fee and contribute to the festivities by being allowed to decorate the high school auditorium for graduation.  Not only does he win the prestigious $25 prize for academics and citizenship, but his artistry is rewarded by being offered a job creating window displays for a local department store.  This is more than just a convenient happy ending or a deus ex machina, at least for our purposes in examining the cultural background of movies.  It tells us a little more.  These are kids who want to work, have seen their father struggle, and they want to help him and pay their own way.  The Great Depression is receding, but it’s all these teens remember and it will mark them for life, and a job, any job, made one a winner, at least in one’s own mind. We might wonder how Kathryn can have such a polished coloratura soprano voice with no mention of voice teachers, but we can accept that Todd might not have plans for college and be thrilled at starting a career in a department store.  

If you can find a department store in your town that is not a chain, they still likely may have an outside advertising agency handling that for them.  Once upon a time, retail was local, every facet of running the store, nothing outsourced, and the boss was the owner.

At one point, Mickey announces, “I don’t live in the present.  I belong to the future.”

The future, at least fifteen years down road, is where Spring Reunion takes us. The town of Carson might not be so very different from the Hardys’ town of Carvel, but the seaside burg has undergone a lot of real estate development in the backwash of the war. Jean Hagen, who plays Betty Hutton’s girlhood chum, returns to her old hometown for the reunion with the bemused, incredulous, “What happened to this town anyway?  Supermarkets, ranch houses….”  

The movie sinks us into sleepy springtime nostalgia with the opening credits taking the form of yearbook pages.  Betty Hutton had been “most popular girl.”  Dana Andrews had been “most likely to succeed.”  Jack Frazer plays the football hero.  Jean Hagen had a less stellar high school identity; she is comically noted as a chess club captain and assistant proofreader of the yearbook.  When she arrives to attend the reunion, she is on a much-needed vacation from her husband and four kids. She is perhaps back not so much to relive the glory of her high school days—they were not so glorious—as she is on much-delayed, last-chance at being the person she wanted to be then.

Betty Hutton is one of the organizers of the reunion, and it’s easy to see why she was voted most popular.  No “clique” is inferred here, her popularity comes from her genuine likeability and her friendliness with everyone.  Betty Hutton is really quite appealing in this quiet role.  Some of her other movie performances tend to jump into your face and choke off your air.  This role, her last film, perhaps because of the nuance of wistfulness, of sadness below the surface, is more intimate and draws our interest and our sympathy.

Betty’s problem, opposite from Jean Hagen’s, is that she is not married and has no children.  She helps her father run a successful real estate business, but the refreshing sight of seeing a woman in this period capably handle a business with authority is tempered by the sight of the woman questioning her self-worth because of not being in a romantic relationship.  Her bigger problem is one she does not see:  Her father, who calls her “Kitten,” is entirely too clingy.  Played by Robert F. Simon, Papa seems to enjoy his daughter’s company more than his wife’s.  She is played by Laura La Plante, and her eyes are wide open to the situation, and she tries to tactfully pull him away.  A subtle point made with the set decoration is seen late in the movie when we see two photos on either side of her father’s desk at the office.  One is a portrait of his wife.  The other, perched across the desk on the other corner as if in a world of its own, is a photo of he and his daughter together.

We see some old friends at the reunion, character players who would find more prominent places in pop culture in television: Irene Ryan as the innocent class advisor growing tipsy on spiked punch would later play Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies.  Herbert Anderson was the dad of Dennis the Menace, Ken Curtis was Festus on Gunsmoke, Richard Deacon came back as Lumpy Rutherford’s dad in Leave it to Beaver.  Betty Hutton would also make a break for the world of TV in her The Betty Hutton Show as her next gig.  It was a time of new beginnings.

Though she is mocked as a no-talent leftover from an old school show, voice actress Sara Berner is splendid as Paula Kratz, who does impersonations of movie stars being interviewed by Louella Parsons.

There are the usual jokes at the reunion about weight gain, hair loss, and the anxiety of not measuring up to who they thought they’d be fifteen years down the road, still dwelling in the identities they had in high school. The football hero is the only one who seems to be a case of arrested development, enjoying game reels of himself and reliving past glory on the gridiron.  The others are more uncomfortable with themselves.

Dana Andrews has no interest in the reunion.  He’s only in town to sell his family’s beach house, which Betty, as a real estate agent, is happy to handle.  It is only a desire to see her again that evening that he shows up reluctantly at the reunion.  The event fills him more with disgust than nostalgia.  He had been class president, but squandered opportunities through the years with an inability to be happy at anything.  Perhaps he could have used a secretary like Kathryn Grayson.

They leave for a long walk and what ends up being a long night of talking about themselves, escape on a sailboat, and renewing something of what could have been a romance in high school if either had been ready for it.  They may not be ready for it now, but their mutual attitude is they have nothing left to lose, and maybe nothing left to expect from life.

They end up on the rocks—literally, as the sailboat takes refuge below the lighthouse where the local lighthouse keeper, played by our old friend James Gleason, longs for company and card players. He and Dana are old friends.

Meanwhile the football hero, his wife out of town, cozies up to Jean Hagen, who is half excited and half scared to be finally paid the attention she never was in high school.  She comes daringly close to an affair, but will think the better of it by morning when she decides she wants to return to her family.

Betty and Dana have not come to their senses in the light of day.  They decide to run off to be married, but her dad makes one last ditch effort to keep her by dangling a job, a partnership for Dana. Dana walks out, because he always walks out on opportunities and doesn’t want to feel trapped, and it is supposed to be a moment of triumph for our Betty when she runs out into traffic with her suitcase to go with him.  Perhaps her first impulsive move will be his first effort at commitment and both will be happy at last.

Where were Kathryn and Harry Land fifteen years after graduation?  Did he make it through the war?  Did she ever sing in public again?  Did they go to their 15^th reunion at Carvel High?

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

Life Begins for Andy Hardy - 1941

“Life Begins for Andy Hardy” (1941) brings Andy into The Real World and closes the door, or attempts to close the door, on his childhood. “Today I am a man!” he yells from his massive convertible roadster as he pulls away from home and loved ones to seek his fortune in New York, but he’s still that bouncy teenager with no more notion of what it is to be an adult than he did when the series started.

Mickey Rooney, prodigiously talented but typecast by this time, had played the character of Andy Hardy in something like 17 or 18 movies and short subjects, so he had Andy down cold. Andy could demonstrate winning charm, hearty all-American boy determination, or comically sad remorse, but he never really developed as a character. He was no Harry Potter.


Judy Garland plays his pal “Betsy Booth” in this one, and demonstrates her spectacular comedic timing and way with a line, particularly as the overly dramatic teenaged girl, “I’m simply curdled with remorse,” or boasting “My mother just bought me an evening gown with no visible means of support!” or “I drove around that revolting block 51 times and my feet are killing me!”


Andy’s ma and pa, played by the ever reliable Fay Holden and Lewis Stone nervously allow their boy to take off for the summer after high school graduation to try his luck getting a job in New York. Lewis Stone, whose wry humor and subtle facial expressions alone make him one of the most endearing screen fathers, wants Andy to settle down and go to college in the fall. Ann Rutherford has only a brief appearance in her regular role as Polly Benedict in the series. It’s mostly Andy in the big city, with occasional popping in and out by Judy Garland, whom Andy never seems to fall for, but treats as a bothersome child.

I suppose we could wince at Andy’s being a member of the graduating class of 1941, knowing that in six months the nation would be at war and Andy’s future, like the future of most of his generation, was going to be in serious jeopardy. But this is the back lot, a spanking clean small town, a tidy and village-like New York City, and a convertible so clean and shiny you could apply your makeup in its reflection. There’s no foreboding because never going to be anything really wrong.


If this were a Harold Lloyd outing, we would suffer over the risks Harold was taking by traveling to the big city, taking a room in a small residential hotel, messing up at his office boy’s job. Harold would be beaten up by a romantic rival, stuffed down a dumbwaiter and probably run over by a streetcar six or seven times. That’s why we loved him. There’s just something about a guy who gets run over six or seven times but keeps bouncing back. But Andy is so self assured, and his tie is so perfect, we never really have to worry about him. He doesn’t need us. He’s got mom and pop, Auntie, and Judy looking after him. When Andy does mess up at work, his boss forgives him and gives him free tickets to a dinner dance. What a swell guy.

However, this film is a bit of a departure from others in the series in that Andy deals with the sudden death of a new friend, and very nearly being seduced by a big city vamp. But he is neither led astray nor discouraged for very long. Even though he learns what it means to go hungry, we know, and he knows, that he can always go home to that middle class home where his mother makes his favorite breakfast and helps him put his pants on, where his spinster aunt will slip him money, and where his dad will send him to college.

Mickey Rooney, as always, makes it work by appearing so genuinely likeable, even when Andy is at his most self-involved.

Fun signs-of-the-times to watch for is that his rent is $5 a week, and when he finally gets his office boy job (which is very cushy and gives him very little to do), he is paid $10 a week. Not bad. When he and Jimmy, his new pal whom Andy gives a helping hand, are low on funds, they can at least be glad that the 25 cents they have between them will feed them for three days. They are being only a little sarcastic.

Patricia Dane is the streetwise and sassy as the big city vamp, who at first dismisses Andy, then helpfully gets him a job, then tries to seduce him. After leaving her with propriety at her apartment door all movie long, he finally gets into her apartment at the end of the film. Luckily for Andy’s poor mother, the vamp’s ex-husband barges in and destroys the mood.

When the expensive fur she wears turns out not to be the gift from one of her conquests, but instead is a gift to herself she charged to her ex-husband, it feels a little like a copout, as if they are trying to make her character shifty but not necessarily promiscuous. As it is, the Catholic Legion of Decency came down on this film (On an Andy Hardy film? No!) because of the very idea of Andy being almost seduced and his father having a man-to-man talk with him in the most vague and couched language about staying away from big city vamps.

Some of the film does sound like one of those educational “Don’t Let This Happen to You” one-reelers of days gone by, but Mickey Rooney and staff, likeable as they are all are, make Andy’s summertime New York adventure one swell experience. He needs to kick back and relax; high school was tough, and Pearl Harbor is only six months away.