Andy Hardy Comes Home ** (1958, Mickey Rooney, Fay Holden, Patricia Breslin, Sara Haden, Cecilia Parker) – Classic Movie Review 7360

Director Howard W Koch’s 1958 Andy Hardy Comes Home is a rather sad, belated, out-of-time sequel to the Thirties and Forties Andy Hardy series (1937-1946), filmed a decade too late, with a 40-something Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) coming home to Carvel with his wife and children as a successful lawyer and making a land deal.

The 16th and last in the series, this reprise has a well-meaning story and there is a pleasure to be found in seeing most of the series’s regulars (especially Fay Holden as Mrs Hardy, Cecilia Parker as Marian, and Sara Haden as Aunt Milly) still present and correct, though alas there is no Lewis Stone as the judge (the actor died in 1953) and Ann Rutherford decided not to return as Polly Benedict.

Some mild pleasure there may be, but somehow young Andy Hardy should never have grown up to be old Mickey Rooney.

Mickey Rooney’s own son Teddy Rooney plays his character’s son, Andy Hardy Jr.

MGM made a big feature of the fact that Mickey Rooney’s own son Teddy Rooney (who died on 2 June 2016, aged 66) plays his character’s son, Andy Hardy Jr. Also in the cast are Patricia Breslin as a new character of Jane Hardy, Jerry Colonna, Joey Forman, Vaughn Taylor, Frank Ferguson, William Leslie, Jeanne Baird, Gina Gillespie, Jimmy Bates and Tom Duggan.

The film ends with ‘To Be Continued’ but there were no further Hardy movies.

The much-missed Mickey Rooney died on 6 April 2014, aged 93.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7360

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