Saturday, January 17, 2009

Movie review – Hardy #13 – “Andy Hardy’s Double Life” (1942) **1/2

Picks up exactly after The Courtship of Andy Hardy – it’s Andy’s last week before heading off to college, Marian still likes drunk driver Jeff (William Lundigan) from Courtship, Andy needs to pick up the car he left in New York in Life Begins.

There’s a complicated romantic plot where Polly seems to want Andy back – so winds up setting him up with her cousin (Esther Williams!) in order to teach him a lesson. So Andy romances them both… and they both seem to be up to it. At the end he winds up in a1942 MGM version of a threesome, kissing them both at the same time. For all the no-sex rules of these films, things seemed pretty laissez faire when it came to pashing. Esther goes for a swim, and her scenes with Andy are quite hot, with Esther claiming she wants to kiss him for her psych studies. If she and Polly Benedict are playing a joke on Andy all I can say is Esther especially seems to be enjoying her work.

The legal plot involves one of MGM’s standbys, a little kid with a widowed mother. The kid is played by none other than young Bobby Blake. Better is the father-son plot about the Judge wanting to come along with Andy to college, where the Judge was a big wheel… not noticing that Andy doesn’t really want him to come along.

Sweet moments: Marian advising Andy on how to get a girl to cool off, Aunt Milly admitting to Andy he’s the son she never had, and best of all the scene where Andy finally tells his father to back off… and he’s in the right.

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