Turner Classic Movies has quickly assembled a Mickey Rooney tribute. Starting Sunday morning, they're running thirteen of his starring vehicles, none of them Andy Hardy pictures. (The Courtship of Andy Hardy is on this evening but that's not part of the marathon.)
[CORRECTION, added soon after: Hank Gillette writes, "There are two Andy Hardy movies in TCM's Mickey Rooney tribute: A Family Affair and You're Only Young Once. These are the first two in the series and before they started putting Andy Hardy in the title. A Family Affair is notable for having Lionel Barrymore in the role of Judge Hardy." Hank's right, I'm wrong. I never cared for any of the Andy Hardy movies so I don't know them as well as I should.]
The whole list and a lot of good background information can be found here. If you're only in the mood to watch one, watch Boys Town. It's a great film…easily the second-best to ever star Rooney and Spencer Tracy.
The Rooney films are followed by a nice string of classic films on Monday: The Maltese Falcon, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gaslight, Citizen Kane, Meet Me In St. Louis, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Singin' In The Rain and It Happened One Night. Oh — and I forgot to mention that early Sunday morning, they're running Disco Godfather, a Rudy Ray Moore film that's truly as crazy as its title would indicate. It's a classic of another kind.
Then next Wednesday, they're running If You Could Only Cook, a 1935 comedy that starred Jean Arthur. It was directed by William Seiter, who helmed what was arguably the best Laurel and Hardy feature, Sons of the Desert. If You Could Only Cook is a mildly fun affair but it occupies an interesting place in film history. It was produced at Columbia at a time when their biggest money-earner was producer-director Frank Capra and someone at the studio got the bright (!) idea that they could generate more rentals in the United Kingdom, and at a higher price, if they advertised If You Could Only Cook as a Frank Capra production, supervised by Frank Capra.
Mr. Capra — who hadn't heard of the film, let alone produced it — was furious and he sued Columbia to be released from his contract. It led to a year of Capra, who was then in his prime, not making movies for anyone while the lawsuit dragged on…and he eventually dropped it for reasons that remain murky. Capra, in his autobiography of dubious accuracy, said it was because Harry Cohn — the gruff, antagonistic head of Columbia — came to him and pleaded. Which is not impossible.
And an early alert: Starting in the wee, small hours of April 21, TCM is running darn near all of the American-International "beach party" type movies: Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Ski Party, Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Pajama Party, Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Record all eight or just record any one and watch it eight times. Buster Keaton is in the last three. For some reason, they're omitting the final one American-International made — The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini…a film that answers the question, "How bad does one of these things have to be that Frankie Avalon and Vincent Price wouldn't appear in it?"
That's one of the things I like about TCM. They run Gone With the Wind and Casablanca and then they run Disco Godfather and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. If you really love movies, you do that kind of thing.