JUDGE HARDY'S CHILDREN

US, 1938, 78 minutes, Black and white.
Lewis Stone, Fay Holden, Mickey Rooney, Cecilia Parker, Sara Haden, Ann Rutherford, Ruth Hussey.
Directed by George B. Seitz.

Judge Hardy's Children is the third in the hardy Family series. It dates from 1938 - and focuses attention on modern 1938: family attitudes, relationship between parents and children, children at school as well as political and social themes, especially monopolies, political graft and corruption. (There is also a use of recording conversations - on disc - as a means of political blackmail.)

The film focuses on Cecilia Parker as Marian and Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy. Judge Hardy, Lewis Stone, is as just as ever in the courts (this time opening with a condemnation of students wanting to be rebels). Later he takes his son Andy on a tour of Washington and explains the integrity of Washington as a statesman rather than as a mere protester.

Judge Hardy is invited to Washington to head a commission about monopolies on public utilities. Some suave lobbyists try to take advantage, especially of Marian's naivety and pumping her for information from her father. Extricating Marian from this dilemma, linking her up with her fiance and trying to show that rather than her being used, Judge Hardy decided to use her as a means for false information ultimately wins the day. This latter is Andy's idea. he was also involved with the rebel students. Polly Benedict wants him to wear a tuxedo. He enjoys Washington, is attracted by a young French girl who is heavily chaperoned. While they dance jazz, the chaperones rush in from the next room to stop all the enjoyment. However, Andy decides that he can wear a tuxedo - though lie almost doesn't after confessing to his father about being one of the school rebels.

The mother and aunt are the same traditional characters, Polly Benedict doesn't appear particularly much in the film - and it all works to the already now familiar ingredients which were to make the staple of the series.