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Britain Finds Andy Hardy: British Cinema Audiences and The American Way of Life in The Second World War

2011; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2011.620842

1465-3451

David Eldridge,

French Historical and Cultural Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeView correction statement:Erratum Notes 1. David Reynolds, Rich Relations: the American occupation of Britain, 1942–1945 (London, 1995), 36–37. 2. Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: home front morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (London, 1979), 263. 3. Reynolds, 177. 4. Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, Hollywood Goes to War: how politics, profits and propaganda shaped World War II movies (London, 1987), 160. 5. Reynolds, 177. 6. Ibid., 179. 7. K. R. M. Short, Cinematic support for Anglo-American detente, 1939–43, in: Philip Taylor (ed.), British Cinema in the Second World War (London, 1988), 135. 8. Ibid. 9. Lella Secor Florence, Our Private Lives (America and Britain, volume 3) (London, 1944), flyleaf. 10. Feature Script Review of The Escape of Roger Touhy, 16 March 1943, Office of War Information Bureau of Motion Pictures Script Reviews, f.7, Margaret Herrick Library, Special Collections, Los Angeles. 11. Reynolds, 181. 12. The New Statesman, 4 July 1942, n.p., Courtship of Andy Hardy microjacket, British Film Institute (hereafter BFI). 13. Ibid. 14. W. H. Mooring, Hollywood Once Over, Picturegoer, 28 November 1942. 15. The original run of films also included Out West With the Hardys (1938), The Hardys Run High (1939), Judge Hardy and Son (1939), Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940), and The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942). All were directed by George B. Seitz, along with a 1940 short, Andy Hardy's Dilemma, designed to promote the government's ‘Community Chest’ programme. After the war, MGM made a half-hearted effort to revive the series with Love Laughs At Andy Hardy (1946, dir. Willis Goldbeck); and later Mickey Rooney tried to kick-start a new series of adventures, with Andy now a father himself, in Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958, dir. Howard Koch). 16. See Mark Glancy, MGM film grosses, 1924–1948: the Eddie Mannix Ledger, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 12(2) (1992), 127–144, and related Appendix 1: MGM Financial Data. The Mannix Ledger records a total profit of $14 million accumulated by the Hardy films between the release of You’re Only Young Once and Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble. Foreign earnings therefore counted for more than half of the profits made by the series. 17. Mark Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: the Hollywood ‘British’ film, 1939–1945 (Manchester, 1999), 10. 18. See Picturegoer for 24 January 1942 and 23 January 1943, for lists of ‘the ten best international money-making stars in our theatres’. Noting Rooney's slide in the American rankings in 1942, the editor opined that ‘a comparison of the American and British lists suggest that British picturegoers are more faithful to the stars they like’ (3). 19. Sue Harper, Fragmentation and crisis: 1940s admissions figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26(3) (2006), 361–394. Similarly, the data in Julian Poole's study of the Majestic Cinema in Macclesfield, indicates ‘moderate success’ for most of the Hardy films and registers Andy Hardy's Private Secretary as one of the five most popular American films of 1941 at that cinema (Poole, British cinema attendance in wartime: audience preference at the Majestic, Macclesfield, 1939–1946, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 7(1) (1987), 15–34). 20. The Films, The Observer, 28 June 1942, 2. 21. Report on Happy Land, 13 March 1943, Office of War Information Feature and Serial Analysis, f.368, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 22. Trailer for Out West With the Hardys, available at http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/139073/Out-West-with-the-Hardys-Original-Trailer-.html 23. Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: the life and legend of Louis B. Mayer (London, 2005), 325. 24. Latest Film in Award Series, Los Angeles Times, 10 March 1943, 22. 25. Review of Out West With the Hardys, The Times, 17 April 1939, 10; review of Love Finds Andy Hardy, The Times, 5 September 1938, 12; review of The Hardys Ride High, The Times, 24 July 1939, 10. 26. Review of The Courtship of Andy Hardy, The Times, 26 June 1942, 6. 27. Review of Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, The Times, 25 September 1939, 6. When commenting on Out West With the Hardys, the reviewer did acknowledge that the Hardy family represented ‘an idealized and sentimentalized picture of middle-class life in America’, yet still presumed it ‘accurate enough to engage every heart yet sufficiently soft and flattering to quiet all self-criticism and anxiety in the [American] audience who see themselves thus described’ (17 April 1939, 10). 28. Review of The Hardys Ride High, New Statesman, 29 July 1939. 29. Kinematograph Weekly, n.d., Andy Hardy's Private Secretary microjacket, BFI. 30. The Hardy Family Again, The Times, 28 July 1941, 8. 31. Florence, Our Private Lives, 47. 32. This is again reinforced later in the film when fellow father Stephen Land reflects: ‘When I watched those three youngsters of ours walk into that fine big free high school together, I realised what was wrong with America … Absolutely nothing!’ 33. Florence, 50–51. 34. McLaine, Ministry of Morale, 264. 35. Report on Feelings About America and the Americans, 22 January 1943, 4, File Report 1569, Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex (hereafter MOA). Mass Observation asked respondents ‘what are your present feelings about Americans?’ in October 1940, January 1942, January 1943, March 1943, and February–March 1945. 36. Mutual Anglo-American Feelings, First Draft, 1 April 1943, 1, FR 1656, MOA. 37. McLaine, 264. 38. 1943 Ministry of Information Report, quoted in McLaine, 268. 39. Review of Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Kinematograph Weekly, 29 August 1940; Mickie Again, clipped review of unidentified provenance in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante microjacket, BFI; Kinematograph Weekly, 29 August 1940. This aspect of Andy Hardy Meets Debutante actually generated some quite hostile reviews, with some dismissing it as ‘interlarded with sententious and slightly smarmy sentiments about American democracy’ (Basil Wright, review of Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Spectator, 18 October 1940). However, released in December 1940, the reception of Meets Debutante coincided with a spate of widespread criticism in the United Kingdom that, although President Roosevelt and other American leaders had ‘stated repeatedly that the war was a crusade for the fundamental principles of democracy’, they had so far ‘done nothing to come into the war actively themselves’ (Feelings About America and the Americans, 22 January 1943, 6, FR 1569, MOA.) 40. J. P. Mayer, British Cinemas and Their Audiences (London, 1948), 206. 41. Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London, 1994), 42. 42. J. P. Mayer, Sociology of Film (New York, 1972), 195. 43. Dilys Powell, Variable Stars, Sight and Sound, 9(36) (Winter 1940–41), 66. 44. Kinematograph Weekly, 11 May 1939; The New Statesman, 4 July 1942. 45. Mass Observation's directive replies for October 1940 and January 1942 record respondents DR 1593, DR 2466, DR 2668 and DR 3139 criticizing Americans for ‘worshipping the Almighty Dollar’ (MOA). 46. Although very similar in style to the Hardy Family series, even down to casting Mickey Rooney as the lead, The Human Comedy (written by Armenian-American playwright William Saroyan) includes a sequence set at a community picnic, exhibiting ‘members of nearly every conceivable (white) ethnic group, dressed in traditional costumes and happily singing and dancing’. See Michael Anderegg, Home front America and the denial of death in MGM's The Human Comedy, Cinema Journal, 34(1) (Autumn 1994), 8. 47. See Jeffery Dennis, Love Laughs At Andy Hardy, Genders, 41 (2005), http://www.genders.org/g41/g41_dennis.html 48. M-O Panel on The Americans, March 1945, 14, FR-2222, MOA. 49. DR 2512 and DR 1016, replies to October 1940 Directive, MOA. 50. Kinematograph Weekly, n.d., Andy Hardy's Private Secretary microjacket, BFI; Mass Observation report on Cinema-Going in Worktown, quoted in Jeffrey Richards, Mass Observation at the Movies (London, 1987), 41. 51. Picturegoer, 23 December 1939, 2. 52. The Films, The Observer, 28 June 1942, 2. 53. Draft Report on The Film and Family Life, 13 June 1944, TC Films 1937–1448, 3/I, MOA. [Assuming Carvel is in Idaho, as it is in Aurania Rouverol's source play, the distance would be closer to 4800 miles; the location of Carvel in the series, however, is never defined. As Robert Ray notes, it is quite literally a ‘utopia—a no-place’ (The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 165).] 54. Don Jordan and Edward Connor, Judge Hardy and Son: an American story, Films in Review, January 1974, 1. 55. Review of Love Finds Andy Hardy, Kinematograph Weekly, 18 August 1938, n.p. 56. Andy Hardy's Double Life. 57. Courtship of Andy Hardy. Similarly in Judge Hardy and Son, when Emily pulls through after a dangerous illness, she tells her family that ‘You’re the best husband and best children a mother ever had or deserved—and I’ve been spared because of my great love for you.’ 58. Mayer, British Cinemas and Their Audiences, 134 59. Ibid. 60. Mayer, Sociology of Film, 197. 61. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 51. 62. Angus Calder, The People's War: Britain 1939–45 (London, 1969), 315. 63. Ibid., 35. 4.5 million British men were conscripted into the armed forces by D-Day, usually quartered far from home (Reynolds, 51). 1.3 million individuals moved out of London alone in the first evacuation of 1 September 1939, while an estimated further 2 million people privately evacuated themselves. 64. Henry Buckton, The Children's Front: the impact of the Second World War on British children (Chichester, 2009), 46–47. 65. Ray, The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy, 165. 66. E. R. Chamberlin, Life in Wartime Britain (London, Batsford, 1972), 67. 67. Ibid. 68. Out West With the Hardys. 69. Rather oddly, Joan not only does not appear in any subsequent Hardy film, but she is never even mentioned again! 70. According to Angus Calder, the divorce rate ‘soared during and after the war. In 1938 there were just under ten thousand divorce petitions filed, forty-six percent by the husbands. In 1945, there were twenty-five thousand, fifty-eight percent by the husbands, and seventy percent on the grounds of adultery’ (Calder, The People's War, 314). 71. Although dismissed by many as overly sentimental, there are often some very understated touching moments in the series, notably a moment in You’re Only Young Once when we find out, in passing, that James and Emily lost their first child in its infancy. 72. George Custen has described how 20th Century-Fox's small town musicals of the 1930s and 1940s specifically appealed to a demographic that had ‘abandoned the small towns in the Midwest’ but ‘still nurtured a nostalgia for the small-town, Midwestern home left behind’ that ‘the audience would forever long for’ (Custen, Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the culture of Hollywood (New York, 1997), 223–224. 73. Review of Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, The Times, 25 September 1939, 6. A similar effect was attributed by reviewers to the small-town atmosphere of Meet Me in St Louis: ‘There is in it that ache we have for lost times when the sun was warmer, the days and nights longer, and everything was cosy and safe’ (Richard Wilmington, New Chronicle, 24 February 1945). 74. Review of Life Begins for Andy Hardy, Kinematograph Weekly, 30 October 1941. 75. A letter sent to Picturegoer early in 1941, and held in the Mass Observation archives, noted how such films of ‘ordinary happenings’ ‘remind us that these things still exist and have an added value during these unrestful days’. Report on Picturegoer Letters, 13 January 1941, Topic Collection 17-5-A, MOA. 76. Malcolm Phillips, Where Does Rooney Go From Here?, Picturegoer, 17 May 1941. 77. Mickey Rooney, Life Is Too Short (New York, 1991), 156. 78. Phillips, Where Does Rooney Go From Here? 79. Review of Love Finds Andy Hardy, The Observer, 4 September 1938, 10. New Statesman review of Spring Fever, 30 September 1939; Monthly Film Bulletin, review of Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, 4 August 1940; Real Kid Grows Up, Picturegoer, 12 March, 1939. 80. Letter to Editor, K.J. Cowbrun, Picturegoer, 21 June 1941, 23. 81. See http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/legacy/ceremony/11th.html 82. Rooney, 86. 83. Quoted in Rooney, 117. 84. Reynolds, 37. Obviously, proving direct influence of any particular film on an individual's way of thinking is nigh on impossible, but at least one Mass Observation respondent referred to ‘Andy Hardy’ in a brief list of cultural texts (including Life magazine, and the novels of Sinclair Lewis and William Faulkner) that had given him ‘a pretty good idea of the Americans’ (DR 1264, reply to January 1942 Directive, MOA). This respondent, a young journalist from Tunbridge Wells, also kept a diary for Mass Observation, so we know, for instance, that he went to see Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever on his 23rd birthday. Unfortunately, he did not record his reflections on such feature films, thinking that the ‘only thing of interest’ to Mass Observation was his thoughts on the accompanying newsreel (D 5010, diary for 13 January 1940, 407; diary for 17 November 1939, 328, MOA). 85. DR 1313, reply to January 1942 Directive; DR 2727, reply to January 1942 Directive; DR 1078, reply to January 1942 Directive; DR 3230, reply to January 1943 Directive; DR 3378, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 86. Out West With the Hardys. 87. Andy Hardy's Private Secretary. 88. Today's Cinema, July 1941, n.p., Andy Hardy's Private Secretary microjacket, BFI; Kinematograph Weekly, n.d., Judge Hardy's Children microjacket, BFI; Real Kid Grows Up, Picturegoer, 13 March 1939; Review of Andy Hardy's Double Life, The Times, 15 March 1943. The Mass Observation Panel on The Americans report parallels this in recording respondents as describing Americans as ‘go-getters’, ‘so kind and friendly’, ‘exuberant’ and ‘troubled with fewer inhibitions than we’ (March 1945, 10, FR-2222, MOA). 89. DR 1622, reply to January 1942 Directive, MOA; Brook Sherburne, Letter to Editor, Picturegoer 21 June 1941, 23. This characteristic is acknowledged within the films, too, as in Andy Hardy's Double Life when Emily describes her children as ‘full of life and living’. 90. DR 3230, reply to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA; Review of Andy Hardy's Double Life, The Observer, 14 March 1943. 91. M-O Panel on The Americans, March 1945, 10, FR-2222, MOA. 92. DR 3307, reply to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA. 93. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood film-making in the studio era (London, 1998), 257. 94. Ibid. 95. TC Films 1937–1948, 17/5/C, Letters to Picturegoer Weekly, Donald Hill, 23 October 1940, MOA . The series also featured Judy Garland three times as Betsy Booth, a younger girl with a crush on Andy, who is perhaps the most interesting and sympathetic of all of the female characters. 96. Max Allan Collins, For the Boys: the racy pin-ups of World War II (Motorbooks, 2003), 5. 97. Report on Feelings About America and the Americans, 22 January 1943, 35, FR 1569, MOA; DR 3269, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 98. Review of Judge Hardy and Son, The Times, 22 April 1940, 4. 99. Love Finds Andy Hardy; DR 3184 and DR 2512, replies to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA. 100. M-O Panel on the Americans, March 1945, 5–6, FR-2222, MOA. 101. DR 2315, reply to January 1942 Directive, MOA. 102. DR 2315, reply to October 1940 Directive; DR 2910, reply to January 1942 Directive, MOA. 103. DR 2675, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 104. DR 1313, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 105. M-O Panel on The Americans, March 1945, 6, FR-2222, MOA. 106. DR 2512, reply to March 1943 Directive, MOA. 107. DR 2529, reply to March 1943 Directive, MOA. 108. DR 3184, reply to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA. 109. Review of Life Begins for Andy Hardy, The Manchester Guardian, 31 October 1941, 3 110. Review of Andy Hardy's Double Life, The Manchester Guardian, 15 June 1943, 3. 111. Review of Life Begins for Andy Hardy, The Manchester Guardian, 6 January 1942, 6; DR 2906, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 112. Reynolds, 181. These figures seems rather less than impressive when you consider that (as noted above), 16,000 people in Portsmouth alone went to see Andy Hardy's Private Secretary. 113. W.H. Mooring, Hollywood Once-Over, Picturegoer, 26 July 1941, 5. 114. Review of Judge Hardy and Son, Kinematograph Weekly, 15 February 1940. 115. Rooney, 86. 116. Grand Old Man of the Screen, Picturegoer, 25 July 1942, 5. 117. DR 3184, reply to February–March 1945 Directive; DR 2918, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. 118. Judge Hardy's Children. 119. Life Begins for Andy Hardy. 120. DR 3269, reply to January 1943 Directive, MOA. The bemusement of Andy's parents at his use of contemporary slang became a regular source of humour in the series, with all his talk of ‘flunking out’, ‘drizzling down to one particular cookie’, ‘wolves’ who ‘smooch’ ‘love-lorn dillies’, and ‘giraffe parties’ (which he hopes will involve a long ‘neck’). As much as the Judge wishes that Andy's language was a little less obscure, in Andy Hardy's Double Life he finally recognizes that he must accept it for what it is, since his generation also ‘had a language of our own: 23-Skidoo; Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat; That was a loo-loo.’ 121. Report on Andy Hardy's Double Life, February 1943, Office of War Information Feature and Serial Analysis f.311, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. The same report describes the character of Andy as ‘Lively, brash, naive, boyishly susceptible to opposite sex, imitative of elders.’ 122. DR 2176, reply to October 1940 Directive, MOA. 123. In Out West With the Hardys, for example, the Judge recognizes that Andy's self-conceit is only ‘the latest stage of your development—only a phase that all boys go through’. 124. DR 3158, reply to March 1943 Directive; DR 1099, reply to January 1942 Directive, MOA. 125. DR 3362, reply to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA. 126. DR 1669, reply to January 1943 Directive; DR 2539, reply to February–March 1945 Directive, MOA. 127. Austin, G.C #3158 (directive March 1943) 128. Review of The Courtship of Andy Hardy, The Times, 26 June 1942, 6. 129. DR 2691, reply to February–March Directive, MOA. Another respondent directly stated that he liked the ‘jollier atmosphere of [American] families’ as ‘evidenced in their films’ (DR 2547, reply to February–March Directive, MOA). 130. Reynolds, 174. 131. Review of The Courtship of Andy Hardy, New Statesman, 4 July 1942. 132. Mutual Anglo-American Feelings, First Draft, 1 April 1943, 1–2, FR 1656, MOA. 133. DR 3223 and DR 2670, replies to January 1943 Directive, MOA. This perspective chimes with a consistent theme within contemporary accounts of the Hardy series, from reviews of 1939's Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, which described Rooney's performance as a ‘cleverly shaded exposition of youth on the threshold of maturity, that moment when it would confidently assume the responsibilities of manhood’ (Today's Cinema, 16 August 1939, microfiche clipping, BFI), through to his need in 1943's Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble to finally ‘shoulder the responsibilities of college, without the benefit of his father's advice’ (Pressbook, Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble microfiche, BFI).