AH, WILDERNESS! (1935)

This MGM adaptation of a Eugene O'Neill coming-of-age comedy feels like it might have been the inspiration for MGM's Andy Hardy series which began two years later. The episodic film is set in a small American town and covers two important events during the summer of 1906: high school graduation and the 4th of July celebration. Eric Linden is Dick, the graduate with a slightly inflated (and melodramatic) sense of self. He wants to give a rabble-rousing anti-establishment speech but is flummoxed out of it by his well-intentioned father (Lionel Barrymore). Later, Linden tries to expose his girlfriend (Cecila Parker) to the erotic poetry of Swinburne, but gets in trouble with her father (Charley Grapewin). He also catches hell for reading Shaw and Wilde. In the climactic episode, he goes off with a college-age friend of his brother's on a double date and winds up sadder but wiser in the company of a "loose woman of the world" (Helen Flint). Other subplots are provided by a large supporting cast: Wallace Beery, who gets top billing, is an alcoholic uncle (played for sympathetic laughs) who can't quite keep a steady job without the help of Barrymore; Aline MacMahon is an aunt with an abiding affection for Beery; Spring Byington is the mother (coming off like a down-to-earth Billie Burke-type); Frank Albertson is the older brother; Mickey Rooney and Bonita Granville are the younger siblings. Linden is in a bit over his head with all the overacting pros around him, but both the character and the film have interesting edgy qualities that the Andy Hardy films lacked. The first Hardy film, A FAMILY AFFAIR, from 1937, featured Rooney, Barrymore, Linden, Byington, Parker, and Grapewin. This seems to have been Linden's last big major-studio role. [TCM]