Hoosier Schoolboy

Nne Nagel takes up her post as history teacher in the school to find a town divided by a strike. The local dairy farmers can't get a fair price for their milk from dairy owner William Gould. He's losing money trucking in milk from other locations. As the strikers start to grow violent, Miss Nagel has to deal with Gould's well-meaning son, Frank Shields Sr. She also has a problem student in Mickey Rooney. His father, Edward Pawley, won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Great War, but has turned into a layabout drunk. Rooney uses his fists to quiet snickering about his old man.

Director William Nigh has to contend with a script that is telegraphic in its story telling. Nonetheless, he gets some fine performances, including that of Rooney, who would play a more extreme redemptive character in the following year's Boys Town Between the supporting players, including Harry Hayden, Doris Rankin, and Fred Kelsey -- for once, not playing a cop! -- there are fine moments in this movie that more than make up for its brusque plotting.

Highly Expert. (Five years could make a lot of difference back then!) Not a speck or instant of misplaced egg. Hokeyness is strictly avoided in spite of the emotional content - the kind of role, I assume, that made Rooney famous. The action moves smoothly, seamlessly, generating tension and resolution along realistic lines. Protagonist Shocky's school oppressors are ra-THER politically IN-correct. That would never go over today.

Hoosier Schoolboy was obviously a title that Monogram Pictures dreamed up to get people into the movie theater thinking they were seeing some Booth Tarkington piece of nostalgia. What the film is about is a paralyzing milk strike that's affecting a small Indiana town. William Gould is the owner of a dairy that's the chief employer in the town and he's squeezing the dairy farmers. They in turn have unionized.

That's the background for the story involving Mickey Rooney as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who lives with his shell shocked father from the First World War, Edward Pawley. He's constantly picked on because of his father until newly assigned teacher Anne Nagel takes an interest in him. She also has an interest in Gould's son Frank Shields.

It's not Tarkington flavored Hoosier nostalgia, but Hoosier Schoolboy is the kind of working class drama done far better at Warner Brothers. No reflection on Mickey Rooney who just left us and gives a fine performance. But I'm sure he missed the trappings of MGM.

"This easygoing rural drama stars Mickey Rooney as a young boy who idolizes his father, a shell-shocked alcoholic war veteran. The boy must protect his dad against the recriminations of the townsfolk," according to the DVD sleeve, "An understanding schoolteacher comes along to rescue Rooney and his father from a life of poverty." She arrives in the Indiana town in the middle of a milk farmer's strike.

In his last really low-budget (ie Monogram) feature before super-stardom, Mr. Rooney is refreshingly natural and scrappy as the typical "bad boy" saved by a good-natured soul. That role is supplied by sweet, pretty history teacher Anne Nagel (as Mary Evans). Her tentative romance with handsome Frank Shields (Brooke Shield's tennis pro grandfather) and the strikers' subplot tie the storyline together neatly.

***** Hoosier Schoolboy (7/7/37) William Nigh ~ Mickey Rooney, Anne Nagel, Frank Shields, Edward Pawley

Shockey Carter "Mickey Rooney" is the school bad boy. He fights with everyone and even knocks the books out of the hands of girls. His teacher wants to save him. Problem, Carter's father is a drunk. Teacher first must save the father. Mission to achieving this is a job for the dad. This film should have kept the plot of bad boy vs caring teacher. Half way thru the film a total new direction. Evil businessman vs the striking workers of his business. Two plots in one movie with the second one sinking the film the drain.