Andy Hardy Meets Debutante

1940 "Look out Broadway -- Here comes Mickey!"
Andy Hardy Meets Debutante
6.6| 1h28m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 05 July 1940 Released
Producted By: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Synopsis

Judge Hardy takes his family to New York City, where Andy quickly falls in love with a socialite. He finds the high society life too expensive, and eventually decides that he liked it better back home.

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Kevin-94 What were the most memorable parts of the film? 1. The title, which could probably benefit from a "the." 2. The goofy scene where the judge gives a small child to a strange man, who will keep the boy for the day and have fun with him. OK...3. The fact that when the Hardys visit New York City, there's a story about it in the local newspaper. And it's the lead story on the front page. (Man, that must be a small town, if people going away constitutes news.) I hope nobody broke into their house while they were away.4. The final image of the film, which seems to hint at Mickey Rooney's future marital life. (He was married a lot.)
bkoganbing Just by the title alone you know that Mickey Rooney is once again going to have some woman trouble. Andy Hardy Meets Debutante has the Hardy family going to New York to make a holiday of it because Lewis Stone has a court case there. Judge Hardy is stepping off the bench in Carvel and going to New York to represent an orphanage in Carvel that is in danger of closing due to a loophole in a trust agreement the Judge drew up while he was still in private practice. Rooney is once again putting his steady girlfriend Ann Rutherford on hold again while he fantasizes about Diana Lewis who is a Paris Hilton type débutante. When the Hardys arrive in New York they stay with Judy Garland's family whom we met in a previous Hardy film. And of course Andy in his naive way makes a huge fool of himself a few different ways in the film.Judy Garland's two songs are the highlight of the film. She sings I'm Nobody's Baby written for this film and Alone which MGM owned the copyright for having been sung most memorably by Allan Jones in A Night At The Opera. As it turns out she knows Diana Lewis and Judy plays little Miss Fixit and cures Rooney of his puppy love. Of course you know the next Hardy film, he'll be back and involved in some other romantic mess. Why Ann Rutherford just didn't give that boy the heave-ho is one of the screen's greatest mysteries.There is also a very touching scene one of the best father and son moments with Lewis Stone and Mickey Rooney when they visit New York City's Hall Of Fame at New York University Bronx campus. Rooney is wishing that the Hardys who are big-shots in Carvel had a little more class and were mixing easily in society with Diana Lewis's crowd. Stone gives him a most stern lecture about all the people in that Hall of Fame who started from nothing and made the country what it is. It was one of the best patriotic moments in an era where the screen was starting to fill with such sentiments I've ever seen.Andy Hardy Meets Debutante still holds up well and should be seen for Judy Garland's singing and Lewis Stone's very unsentimental but very real lecture on the spirit of America.
mark.waltz Andy Hardy may have been the shining member of his class in Carvel, but when his family goes to New York with the Judge on business, he finds he can't take it on as he did the less sophisticated people in his home town. He has lied to his girlfriend Polly that he has made friends with a rising young New York débutante named Daphne Fowler (Diana Lewis). She expects evidence or will put a doctored picture of Daphne and Andy on the school's newspaper. I guess Polly had access to some pre-historic version of photo shop because she sends him a copy of the cover she intends to use unless he comes back with proof. In New York, Andy runs into old pal Betsy Booth (Judy Garland) whom he still considers a little girl. But two years have turned Betsy into a lovely teenaged girl and she has moved gracefully out of adolescence into being rather sophisticated herself. She looks like Jane Wyman in the later "Lost Weekend" in her leopard coat and hat. Of course, she still gets two songs belittling her attempts to find romance-"Alone" and "I'm Nobody's Baby". She adds some comic twists to the first song in order to get Andy's attention, and finally does when she starts swingin' to the latter. Andy finally opens his eyes to what he has been missing and sees his feelings for the débutante for the infatuation it was.As far as the other Hardy's, Andy and Marian don't argue all that much in this one which is a nice omission from the previous films, and Fay Holden's ma finally is the more gentle "would you care for more pie?" type mom rather than the lightly nagging wife she was in the beginning of the series. Sara Haden is back as Aunt Millie although she doesn't appear in the opening credits. She is actually more sympathetic to Andy than his parents are, while some of Lewis Stone's fatherly advice is laughably preachy. French born George P. Breakston is the little boy (whom Andy first assumes is a little girl) who is used in a silly plot twist involving Judge Hardy's attempts to keep funding for the Carvel orphanage from being stopped.I can't highly recommend this film other than for die-hard Judy fans. It's another MGM moral lesson from Louis B. Mayer's one-sided mind of what the American family should be, never has been, and never could be. The saving grace in this aspect of the film is that Andy does get himself into a shopping cart load of trouble and is less than the peppy All-American teenager Andy was in his home town. Look for references and a photo of Lana Turner's character Cynthia, who is mentioned several times, and referenced to no longer living in town.
JLB-4 I am a huge fan of Judy so this review may be biased. I enjoyed this very much. "I'm Nobody's Baby" was typical early Judy. She and Mickey make a delightful team. They just make me smile when they come on screen. You can tell they had a blast working together. I especially like when Mickey goes out on the town and his shirt stud...I like at the very end of the movie when he looks at his photographs and says, "How one's women do mount up!" Just priceless.