Hoosier Schoolboy

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.

"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

"Hoosier Schoolboy" is a film most notable because it stars Mickey Rooney. Although he would soon gain great fame with MGM, this was made for the ultra-low budget studio Monogram--and it shows. While the film has some very nice elements, it also seems incredibly rushed and falls a bit flat. Even for a B-movie, it's a bit underwhelming--though some of the acting is nice.

The film has several different plots--and they all center on some crappy little town. One plot involves the owner of the dairy. He's a real jerk and has decided to put the local dairy farmers out of business-- even if it costs him a fortune. Eventually his son joins forces with the farmers, as he's come to realize that his father is a jerk. There's also the new school teacher who has taken a real liking to a kid that others on the faculty think is bad news (Rooney) and she reforms him. And, then there's the father of the boy--a drunk who won the Medal of Honor. And, there's the bratty son of the dairy owner...in fact, there are SO many plots that they never really seem resolved when the movie very abruptly ends. It's a shame, as if the film was about 30 minutes longer, this all could have worked out well--as is, the film, at the end, was frustrating despite having a lot of good story elements and acting.

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.

This is a decent low-budget drama with some interesting themes, and it also includes solid performances by Anne Nagel and a young Mickey Rooney. It ties together several plot lines in a way that works rather well, and although most of the characters remain one-dimensional, the overall situation is interesting enough to hold your attention.

Nagel plays a strong but sensitive schoolteacher who arrives in a new town just as feelings are running high due to a strike by the local dairy farmers, who aren't getting the price they want for their cows' milk. Rooney plays one of the students, a cynical outcast with a father who is a shell-shocked former war hero. These issues would probably have struck a chord in a 1930s audience, and to some degree the ideas are still of some relevance now.

The story that develops moves a little unevenly, and eventually it gets a little predictable, which keeps it from being a better movie overall. But it never loses your interest, and it's not bad at all for such an inexpensively-made feature.