A Family Affair

The Hardy Family made its debut for MGM in this film, A Family Affair. But to those who've seen other films of the series it looks like Mickey Rooney, Cecilia Parker, and Sara Haden were all dropped into another family of Hardys in an alternate universe Carvel.

Judge and Mrs. Hardy started out here as Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington and they had another older daughter played by Julia Haydon. Haydon has marriage problems with her estranged husband Allen Vincent. Parker is quarreling with her boyfriend Eric Linden and Mickey Rooney is having his eternal problems with the opposite sex. All that however plays into the main plot line of this film, Judge Hardy's re-election is in peril over an injunction he issued against building a dam.

That was the difference between this Hardy films and the rest to follow with Lewis Stone and Fay Holden as the Hardy parents. The kids even Mickey Rooney are clearly in support of Lionel Barrymore. That would not be the case in the rest of the series.

Talk about judicial activism, when the man who originally brought the suit wants to the withdraw because he's been bribed, Barrymore throws him out on his ear. I can't think of another judge anywhere in the real world who wouldn't want to clear his docket if the parties settled out of court. He continues on and Barrymore's political opponents who have a vested and hidden interest in the dam played by Selmer Jackson and Charley Grapewin try to block his party from renominating him.

Of course it all works out in the end as it always did. Lionel Barrymore was no less wise and no less honest than Lewis Stone in subsequent films.

A Family Affair is certainly a tribute to the simpler times it was made in, but still nice viewing.