The Courtship of Andy Hardy

Courtship of Andy Hardy, The (1942)

*** (out of 4)

The twelfth entry in the series finds Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) in all sorts of trouble. For starters, he decides to open his own towing company but after a freak accident he's accused of stealing the man's car, which gets him a date in court. He's also got two or three different women he wants but Judge (Lewis Stone) asks him to take a less popular girl (Donna Reed) to a dance so that she can try and forget her parents rocky divorce. Also troubling the Hardy's the the sisters desire to wear more liberal clothing. I had heard mixed things about this entry but for the most part I found it to be entertaining even if it didn't have as many laughs as previous entries that I've seen. I think, for the most part, the film is a straight drama as there are some pretty dark elements scattered throughout. Not only to we have the ugly divorce harming a child but we even have a drunk scene where Judge gets to tell everything a moral story about it. The majority of the film is centered around the "ugly girl turned pretty" storyline, which doesn't really work here too well as Donna Reed looked good in both forms of her character. They really didn't try to ugly her up very much so it's hard to really understand why no one wanted her already. The performances are all what you'd expect with Rooney being as jumpy and lively as ever and Stone coming through with that stern but fair approach. Reed makes quite an impression in her early appearance.

In The Courtship Of Andy Hardy, Lewis Stone gets Andy to actually help him out with one of his troubling domestic cases. In small town Carvel where everybody knows everybody and everybody's business, I guess this extralegal activity is expected especially from one who takes his obligations of office seriously as Judge Hardy did.

The ongoing battles between divorced parents Harvey Stephens and Frieda Inescourt are having deleterious effect on their daughter Donna Reed. Donna plays a plain Jane sort who doesn't socialize much. As Stone knows the parents he fixes Andy up with Reed. He can do so because Andy's steady girl Ann Rutherford is out of town. That's a running Hardy series gimmick, Polly Benedict goes out of town and Andy gets to play around.

Not all the family problems are with Andy in this film. Cecelia Parker as sister Marian has herself involved with William Lundigan, a decent enough fellow, but with a severe drinking problem. Again the personal and professional roles of Judge Hardy get kind of mixed in this situation as well.

The Courtship Of Andy Hardy is not a bad example of what this series was all about. But were families ever as wholesome as the Hardys?

Many skeptics scoff at these types of movies, where America is great, clean and pure, where problems have simply solutions. Simply, yes, we complicate things and movies like this remind us how fine life can be.

Andy Hardy movies are just this, fine and simple.

Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone) is in charge of the contentious Nesbit divorce. Their daughter Melodie Nesbit (Donna Reed) had become a ward of the state. The Judge orders that she sees her father but she refuses. Marian Hardy (Cecilia Parker) is back home from the big city. Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) is operating a tow truck and gets mistaken in a car theft. He's also not happy with Marian's new city style.

The franchise seems to be going back to the basics. It's back to the family. It's back to the small town of Carvel. It's back to the comfort of the all-knowing Judge. It does try to deal with the changing styles and divorce. It also has newcomer Donna Reed in one of her early roles. I do wonder if the franchise is getting stale. It's the 12th of 16 movies in the series.

When this film was first screened, viewers were aware of two major changes since the last Andy Hardy film. First, Mickey Rooney had married Ava Gardner. Secondly, the country had just entered World War II after the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor. One might surmise that they were curious to see Rooney and they yearned for the comfort of an Andy Hardy film to remind them of life before the harsh realities of wartime.

The stories in this film have to do with the return of sister Marian to the small-town life of Carvel and a divorce case being handled by Judge Hardy.

Marian rebels against the provincial ways of Carvel, trying to assert her new-found sensibilities and her freedom as an adult.

Meanwhile, Judge Hardy involves Andy in his case, asking him to date the socially awkward daughter of the bitterly divorcing parents. The daughter, Melodie, is played by Donna Reed in her sixth film role. At age twenty or twenty-one, Miss Reed plays a younger girl who has never been on a date. Her performance is excellent. In only four years, she will appear in "It's A Wonderful Life'.

As always, this Hardy family film delivers morals to warm the heart and, perhaps, to remind America of its central values. The virtues of the family unit and sobriety are promoted quite strongly.

The central themes compete. An ancillary story about a mail order purchase by Mrs. Hardy serves to further complicate the narrative. Still, this is a satisfying Hardy story with a pleasant resolution.