The film was one in a long line of "B" pictures based on characters created by Aurania Rouverol, which had spawned the Andy Hardy series. The popularity had Mickey Rooney surpassing Shirley Temple as the nation's number one box-office attraction in 1939. MGM, wanting to cash in and put Rooney in film after film, bounced him from "A" pictures like Boys' Town (1938) to Bs like the Hardy series.
With the working title The Hardys at Home, The Hardys Ride High went into production on January 13, 1939, with retakes shot in February. Anne Nagel was originally cast in the role of Susan Bowen (which later went to Marsha Hunt). The director of the series was George Seitz, who Rooney praised in his autobiography. "Naturally, when you are playing a part, you are, also, someone else. But you become that someone in your own way. How do you cry on camera? You get into the story, you react to the story, you learn to listen. That's what I was doing in my Andy Hardy pictures. Creating Andy Hardy. Becoming Andy Hardy. Being Andy Hardy. And I could do this in my own way because I had a director on the Hardy pictures who encouraged my individuality - partly because he was such an individual himself. His name was George B. Seitz....Mr. [Louis B.] Mayer hired him in 1933 and in seven years there he did forty-two films. I think he was able to work fast because he had the kind of overview of his films that allowed him to cut scenes in his head. (Otto Preminger had the same kind of film genius.) That's one of the things I admired about him. I have another reason for thinking of him as a great director, one of the best I ever had: he didn't take himself too seriously. He didn't try to play the tyrant. He let things happen....And so, bang, bang, bang, under Seitz's direction, we did three Hardys in a row, each bigger at the box office than the one before, each featuring this cocky (but always ready to be humble) kid who didn't mind listening to his dad, the judge. Those father-and-son chats became fixtures in every Hardy film. People liked them. There was something refreshing about a kid like me being so candid with his dad. [...] The Hardy pictures were great box office - and getting greater. We grossed $3.7 million for Hardy numbers two three, and four, on an outlay of a half million. Was Mr. Mayer happy? He was delirious."
Frank Nugent wrote in his film review for The New York Times, "[W]here the Hardys ride, you must know, in the inconceivable circumstance that you don't know already, there rides Mickey Rooney, the Lord help us all. That gnomish prodigy, that half-human, half-goblin man-child, who is as old in cinema ways as Wallace Beery and twice as cute, inexorably dominates the Hardy series, as Pearl White used to dominate The Perils of Pauline. [The plot is] an excuse for a cinematic solo by Master Rooney. Mickey in a top hat, trying with the most successful non-success to be a man of the world; Mickey turning down cigarettes and strong drink, fleeing madly from the blandishments of a chorus girl; Mickey being a little man at last and admitting with a catch in his voice that honesty is better than millions...These are the high spots of The Hardys Ride High, and if they leave you in low spirits, you must be pretty low yourself. A veritable beast in human form."
Producer: Lou L. Ostrow (uncredited)
Director: George B. Seitz
Screenplay: Agnes Christine Johnston, William Ludwig, Kay Van Riper; Aurania Rouverol (characters)
Cinematography: Lester White; John F. Seitz (uncredited)
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Music: David Snell
Film Editing: Ben Lewis
Cast: Mickey Rooney (Andrew 'Andy' Hardy), Lewis Stone (Judge James K. Hardy), Fay Holden (Mrs. Emily Hardy), Cecilia Parker (Marian Hardy), Ann Rutherford (Polly Benedict), Sara Haden (Mildred 'Aunt Milly' Forrest), Virginia Grey (Consuela MacNish), Minor Watson (Mr. Terry B. Archer), John King (Philip 'Phil' Westcott), John T. Murray (Don Davis, the Druggist), George Irving (Mr. Jonas Bronell), Halliwell Hobbes (Dobbs, the Butler), Aileen Pringle (Miss Booth, Dress Saleslady), Marsha Hunt (Susan Bowen), Donald Briggs (Caleb Bowen), William Orr (Dick Bannersly).
BW-81m. Closed Captioning.
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
The AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Beck, Sanderson The Movie Mirrors Index
Nugent, Frank "The Hardys Ride High at the Capitol", The New York Times 14 April 39
Rooney, Mickey Life's Too Short
