Andy Hardy
| Andy Hardy | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Aurania Rouverol |
| Portrayed by | Mickey Rooney |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Andrew Hardy |
| Gender | Male |
| Family | Judge James Hardy (father) Emily Hardy (mother) Marian Hardy (sister) |
| Significant other(s) | Polly Benedict |
| Nationality | American |
Andrew "Andy" Hardy is a fictional character played by Mickey Rooney in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film series from 1937 to 1946, with an attempted revival film being released in 1958. Hardy and others were based on characters in the play Skidding by Aurania Rouverol. Early films in the series focused on the entire Hardy family, but later films in the series focused on the character of Andy Hardy. All of the films were sentimental comedies celebrating ordinary American life.
The initial Hardy film, A Family Affair (1937), was based directly on Rouverol's play and was produced without a view to producing a series. It featured Lionel Barrymore as Judge Hardy and Spring Byington as Mrs. Hardy, Andy's parents, and Margaret Marquis as Andy's on-again-off-again sweetheart, Polly Benedict.
When the series was launched, most of the cast was changed, with the exception of Rooney, Cecilia Parker, and Sara Haden as his Aunt Milly. The second and subsequent films starred Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy, Fay Holden as Mrs. Hardy, Cecilia Parker as Andy's older sister Marian Hardy, and Ann Rutherford as Andy's girlfriend Polly Benedict. The Hardys' oldest child, married daughter Joan Hardy Martin, appeared only in the first film.
Most of the movies were set in the Hardys' fictional hometown of Carvel, located in Idaho in the original play, but described in the films as being in the Midwest. All of the films were sentimental comedies celebrating ordinary American life. The people in Carvel were generally pious, patriotic, generous, and tolerant. The town represented movie mogul Louis B. Mayer's idealized vision of his adopted country.
The early movies focused on the Hardy family as a whole, but the character Andy soon became the center of the series, and his name was featured in the title of the fourth film and all films after the seventh (inclusive). They were a big factor in Rooney's rise to stardom. The first two Hardy films dealt with the danger of adultery among the younger generation, but the later ones avoided such controversial themes.
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