Justice for Polly Benedict!

Picture it: Easter Monday, 8am. You’re the only one awake and you put on Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939) to pass the time.

Next thing you know it’s mid-afternoon and you’ve been trapped watching an Andy Hardy marathon—words you never thought you’d type because you’re not a Mickey Rooney fan by any stretch of the imagination—but it’s finally time to pause and do literally anything else because you’re finally bored.

Why? Because that rapscallion, that ne’er-do-well, that inexplicable box office titan Andy Hardy has graduated from Carvel High and boarded the train to Wainwright, leaving his family, and more importantly, his sweetheart, Polly Benedict, behind.

Without Polly, what’s the point?*

Yes, that’s right. I sat down and watched a marathon of Andy Hardy films (Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary, Andy Hardy’s Double Life, Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, and Andy Hardy Comes Home) over the course of three days and my takeaway is that I’m a diehard Polly Benedict fan.

How do I get to the alternate universe where Ann Rutherford was the breakout MGM star who had a series of films about the affable girl next door, Polly Benedict, who just wants to be a model citizen and student but who has to put up with the always-outsized antics of her wacky boyfriend Andy Hardy?

Much like how Aunt Albertina was the breakout star of Gidget Goes to Rome (and the lady I want to become when I’m in my dotage), for me, Polly is the star of the Andy Hardy series. I could watch this whole series again from her perspective. What was it like watching Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Kathryn Grayson, Donna Reed and Judy Garland show up in Carvel and have your boyfriend lose himself over them? Did she want to be a journalist or an actress, or go live with family out of town, or become the drama teacher?

In all likelihood, Polly settled down with a classmate and chalked up her puppy love with Andy Hardy to the teenage experience. But we don’t know that for sure, because for whatever inexplicable reason, she doesn’t pop up in Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958)!** A movie meant to launch a second series of Andy Hardy films and Polly’s not around but Beezy is? 

Polly is just so naturally charming and funny, and sure, she’s the straight man to Andy’s antics and the ever-patient, ever-forgiving galpal who’ll always take him back, but she’s just so fun to watch scheme and stew and prove how much more together she is over Andy. 

For the time period, she accomplished what she was supposed to do: put up with Andy’s antics and stick by him through whatever drama he stirs up (and the kid managed to conjure up 16 films’ worth of dramatics, that’s how much pull Mickey Rooney had at MGM). 

But it was so fun to watch her try to mess with him, like trying to embarrass him with the front cover of the high school magazine (in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, when she threatens to put a poorly-made collage of Andy and the debutante on the cover lest he can provide a real picture, which, of course, he does at the last second) or with a college girl (in Andy Hardy’s Double Life, where Esther Williams plays a trick on him).

If I ever sit down and watch all of these, in order, I know that I'll draw the same conclusion I have now: without Polly, these movies just aren't as fun! 

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*You obviously do continue, it just takes you a few extra days to finish Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble, Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, and Andy Hardy Comes Home.

**Okay, so the intention was for Ann Rutherford to return but she didn’t like the script and her salary demands were too high so she reportedly made up an excuse to not make it. She said in an interview: “It's titillating to do the occasional film, but really, I don't need it. I suppose, if you were a Helen Hayes, it might mean something if you left the business. You'd be depriving the show world of something. I'm depriving that world of nothing.” You break my heart, Ann.

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