January 17, 2012
Guest Blogger: Paul
Cogley
Love Finds Andy Hardy
(1938)
This is a photo of Mickey Rooney hamming it up with Jonathan
Winters at a gala event in July. With his good-natured toothy expression, I saw
it and thought that the spirit of the 16-year-old Andy Hardy must still live
inside him.
The occasion was the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences 50th anniversary
showing of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad
World. For us Rooney watchers, it was great to see Rooney in such high
spirits. Lately, when he’s in the news, it’s often about allegations of elder
abuse. Also, that evening, Rooney gave an impromptu tribute to Ernest Borgnine,
who had died the day before. It was reported to be quite touching.
The popular Andy Hardy movies made Mickey Rooney a household
name. The series would later be a touchstone in entertainment history because
they foreshadowed the family sit-com genre that would dominate TV some two
decades later.
But maybe even more socially significant, Andy Hardy
introduced a new kind of adolescent to the public’s consciousness, the
teenager. In an often cited article,
sociologist Thomas Hine traced the rise of the teenager to the dramatic
disappearance of jobs in 1933, when virtually all young people were thrown out
of work as part of public policy in order to reserve jobs for men trying to
support their families. That action led to an influx of young people with time
on their hands, to the huge expansion of high schools, and, finally, to the
creation of a self-identity of the new subgroup. Then, as described by Hine:
“Late in the 1930s a new kind of youth emerged in the
movies, personified above all by the bizarre boy-man Mickey Rooney and the Andy
Hardy movies he began to make in 1937.”
(American Heritage, Sept. 1999)
The Andy Hardy series of movies are seldom seen today. But
at least one in the bunch has earned a respectable critical reputation: Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), the fourth
in the series. Since I had never seen an Andy Hardy movie, I decided to check
this one out.
Five minutes into the movie, I decidedly parted company with
Hine and his description of the 16-year old Rooney as a “bizarre boy-man.” I
was thoroughly charmed by the 16-year-old Rooney. I watched it along with two
other adults, and judging by our bursts of laughter, this young teenager was a
very funny guy. When the movie got serious—as when Andy turns to his father,
Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), because he’s in over his head in girl trouble— the
dialogue got insightful and warm. Judge Hardy dispenses sound, fatherly advice
with a twinkle in his eye. An interesting diversion takes place when a friend
makes a Ham radio connection to Canada; detailed and technical, the scene
foreshadows the fascination teenagers will have with communication devices.
Of course, this is a movie about youth attracting and coping
with the opposite sex. The plot itself has to do with a high school Christmas
dance, Andy’s need for $8, how he finds himself with more than one date to the
dance and how he stresses over it. Amazingly, two of the young actresses in Love Finds Andy Hardy went on to have
important Hollywood careers. Future-superstar
Lana Turner is the beautiful head-turner who smooches with Andy on a park
bench, and future-legend Judy Garland plays the neighbor’s grandkid with the
spectacular singing voice and a crush on Andy. This is Judy at age 14, when she
is more child-like and inches shorter than Oz’s
Dorothy, a more-perfect fit for the role she would play some 18 months later.
I have no doubt Love
Finds Andy Hardy would entertain any audience today, young or old, if they
gave it a chance. I expected it to be corny, but what I saw was very clever. I
expected it to be plodding, but it’s fast-paced. Also, it’s well scripted and
good-natured, and features a very funny teenager who—the experts say—happens to
be the first teenager ever featured in a film.
No comments:
Post a Comment