Hoosier Schoolboy

Hoosier Schoolboy was obviously a title that Monogram Pictures dreamed up to get people into the movie theater thinking they were seeing some Booth Tarkington piece of nostalgia. What the film is about is a paralyzing milk strike that's affecting a small Indiana town. William Gould is the owner of a dairy that's the chief employer in the town and he's squeezing the dairy farmers. They in turn have unionized.

That's the background for the story involving Mickey Rooney as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who lives with his shell shocked father from the First World War, Edward Pawley. He's constantly picked on because of his father until newly assigned teacher Anne Nagel takes an interest in him. She also has an interest in Gould's son Frank Shields.

It's not Tarkington flavored Hoosier nostalgia, but Hoosier Schoolboy is the kind of working class drama done far better at Warner Brothers. No reflection on Mickey Rooney who just left us and gives a fine performance. But I'm sure he missed the trappings of MGM.