Movie review – Hardy #2 – “You’re Only Young Once” (1937) **1/2

The film that kicked off the Hardy film series properly, with the cast, director and theme song who would become regulars. Mickey Rooney and Cecilia Parker are back as the two kids, ditto Sara Haden as the spinster aunt, they dump the eldest daughter, Lewis Stone and Fay Holden take over the parent roles and Ann Rutherford. Rutherford is a terrific addition to the series (although in defence of the girl who first played the role she didn’t get much of a chance to do anything). Lewis Stone is a bit more serious and solemn than Lionel Barrymore, who always had the whiff of fire and brimstone about him (albeit tempered with humour); he’s not quite as imposing as Barrymore, which means he doesn’t quite dominate his scenes in the same way. Fay Holden seems a little bored and lacking warmth; certainly she’s not as good as Spring Byington.

There is story continuity – a newspaper editor has gone broke through buying land in the hope the aqueduct went through but Judge Hardy blocked it, there’s a return of the shonky businessman involved in the same project, Marian is writing love letters to the engineer she romanced, and Andy’s relationship with Polly Benedict is developing. But the main plot involves the Hardies going on holiday to Catalina Island. Both Andy and Marian have romances, despite their attachments elsewhere – Andy with a fast-living jitterbugger (daughter of a divorcee), Miriam with a lifeguard (separated from his wife). The jitterbugger helps Andy learn how to pash but who is high maintenance; she wants to have been everywhere and done everything by the time she’s eighteen, which means a guaranteed root for Andy, but not for the last time in the series he begs off. (However, his pashing does improve – thus pleasing Polly Benedict).

There’s a kind of creepy scene where Judge Hardy strikes up a conversation with the girlfriend and then tells Andy the girl is no good – because she’s a bit fast and immoral. I also didn’t like it when Hardy talks Marian out of marrying a man who’s separated because “you can’t beat society… codes of convention that have been forged over hundreds of years”. Then he gets the family to cross examine the guy about his love for her – which makes him break up with her. Keen to stuff up his kid’s sex lives, this judge! (Although Marian refers to having “lost her wings” one night – did he root her? And to be fair the guy turns out to be a cad.)

(On that point - the lifeguard proposes to Marian in order to romance her - that's an awful lot of trouble to go to.)

It should be pointed out that for all Dad dispensing romantic advice, he’s still dim enough to get himself into financial strife by going guarantor for some idiot businessman. He only gets out of trouble with the old grandad-actually-owns-this-from-the-civil-war deux ex machina, used in Darling Buds of May.

Apart from this little plot, which only features at the very beginning and end, Mum and Dad mostly serve as sounding boards for the kids. Dad does go fishing, but Mum and Aunt Milly seem to spend the holidays cooking and washing up. Watching this I couldn’t help thinking – did Aunt Milly and Judge Hardy have something going on? Maybe they were secret polygamists, a la Big Love, with Milly as a secret number two wife. The Hardies apparently lived in Idaho - not tha far from Utah.

Mickey Rooney is excellent as always; I also enjoyed Cecilia Parker a lot. Watching these films again I’m struck how much her character to the success of the series – sweet, pretty (though she had a bit of a gut – check out her in the swimsuit scene), always getting her heart broken, snapping at Andy.

Structure wise I think they should have kept all the action in Catalina – it feels awkward to have all this stuff about Hardy guaranteeing a debt shoved in at the end. At the end of the film Lewis Stone appears announcing more adventures.