Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946)
Home from wartime army service, Andy Hardy heads back to college expecting to pick up with his girl, only to learn she is marrying someone else. Nursing the heartbreak, he stumbles through campus life, a mortifyingly tall blind date, and his father's counsel before noticing the singer who has liked him all along.
The fifteenth Andy Hardy picture and the last built around Mickey Rooney as a young man, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy sends the character to college after the war before the long-running MGM series briefly wound down. The studio neglected to renew the copyright, and the film entered the public domain in 1974.
Background
Love Laughs at Andy Hardy is the fifteenth entry in MGM’s long-running Andy Hardy series, directed by Willis Goldbeck and released December 25, 1946, with Robert Sisk producing. It was the first picture in the series to directly acknowledge World War II: Mickey Rooney had spent time in the US Army between films, and the script sends Andy himself home from wartime service before returning him to college. Made on a budget of just over a million dollars, the film earned back more than double that at the box office, yet it marked a turning point, since MGM largely set the series aside for several years afterward.
What to watch for
The film follows Andy back to Carvel expecting to resume things with his old girlfriend, only to learn she is engaged to someone else, and much of the running time plays his wounded pride for comedy rather than melodrama — an awkward blind date, a lecture from his father Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), and his slow realization that the singer who has been nearby all along suits him better. Watching Rooney here against his prewar Hardy appearances shows an actor visibly older and more subdued than the brash teenager of the series’ earlier entries. The studio never renewed the copyright, so the film lapsed into the public domain in 1974.
