Watch A Family Affair For Free

Powerful

Memorable, crazy movie

Excellent adaptation.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Copyright 8 May 1937 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Rialto, 19 April 1937. U.S. release: 19 March 1937. 8 reels. 6,202 feet. 68 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Carvel, Idaho. Judge Hardy inflames his fellow townsmen when he issues an injunction stopping construction work on a major aqueducts project.NOTES: Aurania Rouverol's second stage play, "Skidding", won the Drama League Prize of Pasadena, California, in 1926. It opened on Broadway at the Bijou on 21 May 1928, with Carleton Macy, Clara Blandick, Louise Carter, Charles Eaton, Marguerite Churchill and Walter Abel in the parts of Judge Hardy, Mrs Hardy, Aunt Milly, Andy Hardy, Marian Hardy and Wayne Trent III (sic.), respectively. In addition, the play featured a Grandpa Hardy (Burr Caruth) and two married daughters, Estelle (Isabel Dawn) and Myra (Joan Madison). For the screen version, Grandpa was eliminated and the two married daughters combined. Despite not overly enthusiastic reviews, the play ran a mightily impressive 469 performances. The film rights were bought by MGM, re- titled "A Family Affair", and brought in under a strict budget by the studio's "B" unit, using a screenplay that considerably altered the plot, while retaining the philosophic emphases of the original. Thus was born the most successful series in movie history. Domestic (including Canadian) theater grosses up to 1946: a staggering $73 million.Academy Award to MGM for "its achievement in representing the American Way of Life". (Presented at the 1942 Awards.)COMMENT: The first installment of the Hardy family proves more watchable than some of the others, despite a spurious sub-plot about Joan, the judge's daughter, being left high and dry by her churlish husband. Would you believe, this verbally abused dishrag of a girl actually wants her boorish spouse to forgive her for allowing an admirer to steal a kiss during a meal at a roadhouse? And even more irritatingly unbelievable, the smarmy old male chauvinist judge doesn't sympathize with his browbeaten daughter at all. Instead, he puts in his two cracker-barrel cents for her bullying husband. The hypocritical old coot seems determined to antagonize not only the good citizens of Carvel, but the audience as well. Fortunately, he has more success with the main plot when it turns out that the town's savior developers are not the godsends they appear. Nonetheless, a man of balance and sense would have voiced his concerns from the very beginning. Instead, the judge is portrayed as an obstinate stickler/spoiler who sets out to justify his actions for no other reason than sheer cussedness. He happens to stumble across a "joker" in the contract by sheer chance — and an extremely outside chance at that. What would he have done if the developers hadn't over-reached themselves?For additional comments, see my review of "You're Only Young Once".

Directed by George B. Seitz, this average comedy drama was the first in the Andy Hardy series, and the only one to feature Lionel Barrymore as Judge Hardy before Lewis Stone would take over the role for a dozen or more movies made in the late 1930's through the middle of the next decade.Director Seitz, and actors: Mickey Rooney as Andy, Cecilia Parker as Marion Hardy, Fay Holden (taking over for this film's Spring Byington) as Mrs. Hardy, Ann Rutherford (replacing Margaret Marquis) as Polly Benedict (Andy's girlfriend), and Sara Haden as Aunt Milly, continued the series which began with You're Only Young Once (1937).The characters come from Aurania Rouverol's play Skidding. This film's focus is the judge, in lieu of Andy (whose name is usually in the title), who is struggling to be reelected against popular opinion because of his stance on a civic improvement issue. Julie Haydon plays Andy's older married (to Allen Vincent's character, Bill Martin) sister Joan, whose character doesn't continue in the series. Neither Bainter nor Haden is given much to do in this one.The town of Carvel, population 25,000, is about to get a coup, an aqueduct that promises to bring jobs and money to their small community. City leader Frank Redmond (Charley Grapewin) and the project's executive Hoyt Wells (Selmer Jackson) are upset that Judge Hardy has filed a restraining order against its construction because of a complaint by the town's newspaper owner J. Carroll Nichols (Robert Emmett Keane, uncredited). The judge protests that he's only following the law, but his campaign manager Oscar Stubbins (Harlan Briggs) warns him that, with the upcoming election, now is not a good time to go against the will of the people.But that's just the beginning of the judge's concerns: his eldest daughter Joan has separated from her husband and his other daughter Marion has returned home from college with a beau, Wayne Trent (Eric Linden), who's an engineer that's come to find work on the aqueduct project. Meanwhile, Andy is upset that his mother is "forcing" him to take a girl he hasn't seen from his childhood to a party, only to be pleasantly surprised that Polly has grown up quite nicely. Eventually, each of his daughters becomes part of the judge's conflict regarding the aqueduct project: Marion, who is angry with her father because Wayne can't get a job, and Joan, because Redmond and Wells threaten to expose an incident which, on the surface, looks like she had an affair, in order to besmirch his character before the vote. Andy tries to calm them by reading his sisters their father's oath of office.Through some sort of magic, a conversation we the audience aren't privy to, the judge gets Joan's husband Bill to stand up for her at the nominating convention, and then he reveals a secret clause in Wells's contract which would make Carvel beholden to other communities down river if the aqueduct project begins as planned. So, the judge saves the day and is unanimously reelected while all is well on the family front too.

The Hardy Family made its debut for MGM in this film, A Family Affair. But to those who've seen other films of the series it looks like Mickey Rooney, Cecilia Parker, and Sara Haden were all dropped into another family of Hardys in an alternate universe Carvel.Judge and Mrs. Hardy started out here as Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington and they had another older daughter played by Julia Haydon. Haydon has marriage problems with her estranged husband Allen Vincent. Parker is quarreling with her boyfriend Eric Linden and Mickey Rooney is having his eternal problems with the opposite sex. All that however plays into the main plot line of this film, Judge Hardy's re-election is in peril over an injunction he issued against building a dam.That was the difference between this Hardy films and the rest to follow with Lewis Stone and Fay Holden as the Hardy parents. The kids even Mickey Rooney are clearly in support of Lionel Barrymore. That would not be the case in the rest of the series.Talk about judicial activism, when the man who originally brought the suit wants to the withdraw because he's been bribed, Barrymore throws him out on his ear. I can't think of another judge anywhere in the real world who wouldn't want to clear his docket if the parties settled out of court. He continues on and Barrymore's political opponents who have a vested and hidden interest in the dam played by Selmer Jackson and Charley Grapewin try to block his party from renominating him.Of course it all works out in the end as it always did. Lionel Barrymore was no less wise and no less honest than Lewis Stone in subsequent films.A Family Affair is certainly a tribute to the simpler times it was made in, but still nice viewing.

This is the first of the Hardy Family series of movies. The formula for that series is well known and a part of film lore. This film helps establish some of the values that made America fall in love with The Hardy's, but there are differences in this film that set it apart.The actors who portray the Hardy's are not all the same. Mickey Rooney, who later became the focus of the family by dint of his energetic and lovable performances, is here. But Judge Hardy and his wife are played by Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington. It would be easy to prefer the actors who carried on these roles in the later episodes, but Barrymore plays the judge with an energy that is suited for this story (see the scene where he physically throws a man out of his chambers) and Byington, in a subordinate role, really displays the love of a mother and wife (note her reaction when her eldest daughter reveals the path her marriage has taken).It is true that the Andy Hardy movies are anchored in the values that middle America sees as sacrosanct: good citizenship, democracy, the primacy of the family, a religious outlook. This film establishes those values, but if one looks closer, it is easy to see (in this film) how flimsy those values may be. In even a more dramatic way than Inge's Picnic demonstrates, A Family Affair reveals how shallow people and society may be.Good citizenship may be an established basis for societies and their governments, but the political process is depicted in this film as run by a corrupt political machine designed to profit ruthless men who care only about their own wealth. Judge Hardy is an exception--an educated man who is willing to suffer scorn in the name of duty and the concept of justice.Religious values may be advertised as charitable and forgiving, but this film shows that the measure of a town's morals is not how many churches dot the landscape or how many Bible verses are read. In a small town where a man's reputation is his measure and agreements are made on the basis of handshakes, we see that many delight in ruining reputations and that the mob mentality prevails when times get tough.Democracy might be touted as the cornerstone of American governmental process, but the rule of the majority is nothing more than mob rule. Government's true rule is to protect the rights of those in the minority also.In the end, it is strength of the Hardy family unit--personified by Judge Hardy--that pulls the family through the crises of its individuals and its external stresses. When Judge Hardy strides into the convention and Andy yells "Give it to them with both barrels, Dad," he has no inkling what his father intends. He displays a fundamental faith in his father and the principles he stands for. His father beams in response, because it is that trust he most cherishes, knowing it binds the family and protects them against any threats.The primacy of the family is a theme that runs through all of the Hardy Family films and it is one of the reasons this series was so popular. A Family Affair is well worth seeing, both because it is the first in a series and because it stands apart from the others. There is even a great chase scene. Such action was not used in the later Hardy Family films, which focused entirely on personal interactions.