In one telling episode, screenwriter Carey Wilson was laboring on the script for Judge Hardy and Son, when Mayer burst into his office with the pages of Andy's emotional prayer scene for his mother who is hovering near death. Deeply unhappy with the scene as written, Mayer sharply criticized Wilson by saying, "You see, you're now a Hollywood character. You've forgotten your simple, honest boyhood. You don't remember how a real boy would pray. This is how a boy would do it." With that, Mayer dropped to his knees, lifted his hands and eyes up high, and said fervently, "Dear God, please don't let my mom die, because she's the best mom in the world. Thank you, God." The Mayer performance, complete with streaming tears down the cheek, went into the film verbatim and became the standard invocation to the divine in all subsequent studio films under Mayer.
Director: George B. Seitz
Producer: Lou L. Ostrow (uncredited)
Screenplay: Carey Wilson
Cinematography: Lester White
Editor: Ben Lewis
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Music: David Snell
Cast: Mickey Rooney ('Andy' Hardy), Lewis Stone (Judge James Hardy), Fay Holden (Mrs. Emily Hardy), Cecilia Parker (Marian Hardy), Ann Rutherford (Polly Benedict).
BW-90m.
By Scott McGee
