Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer
- Thread starter Dave Mellor NJ
- Start date
Chuck Dempsey
Well-known member
Classic Cary Grant... Thanks for posting!
Keith True
Well-known member
Looks like a 31 Phaeton.While I really can't say for certain if it has a top panel in the radiator shell or those lines are reflections,it does look to have a stainless 31 emblem on it.Looks to have a few years on it anyway,bumpers are aged,and it's missing the wiper motor.Exactly the way I'd like to own it.
Chuck Dempsey
Well-known member
It's a 1947 film, so the car was 16-17 years old at the time. If I recall, Grant borrows it from a teenager....
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
What!?! No cowl lights, runningboard step plates at every door, Sportlite, bright-colored wheels, chromed horn, radiator stone guard or a Flying Quail radiator cap? Nope, this car wouldn't stand a chance of winning a People's Choice trophy at a car show. Too original factory-looking for modern tastes. 
Marshall
Marshall
Jeff/Illinois
Well-known member
Also, watching old movies with people driving Model A Fords, do you ever notice when starting the car NO ONE retards the spark? They hit the starter button and go
Probably a lot of Bendixes sold out of Western Auto in those days!
Probably a lot of Bendixes sold out of Western Auto in those days!
ModelA29
Well-known member
Andy Hardy had a 31 Roadster. It was always a source of trouble.
The Studio kept it until 1970. It was restored and sold at Bonhams for $23,400. https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/18...931-ford-model-a-roadster-engine-no-a4736318/
But knowing the movie biz and their knack of having a hero car and a stunt car and the price of Model As at the time I wonder which Andy Hardy Roadster it is.....
It was another one of those that lost money on the restoration. About 10 grand in total.
It was acquired on May 21, 1970 at an MGM auction of props and costumes by Glen W. Bell, Jr. for the princely sum of $6,000. In 1976 Bell commissioned its restoration by John R. Craig's Heritage Coachworks in Ramona, California. Even at Heritage's 1976-77 shop rate of $16/hour by the time the job was done it had absorbed another $27,171.74, neatly recorded in a classic hand on a ledger sheet which comes with the car.
The Studio kept it until 1970. It was restored and sold at Bonhams for $23,400. https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/18...931-ford-model-a-roadster-engine-no-a4736318/
But knowing the movie biz and their knack of having a hero car and a stunt car and the price of Model As at the time I wonder which Andy Hardy Roadster it is.....
It was another one of those that lost money on the restoration. About 10 grand in total.
It was acquired on May 21, 1970 at an MGM auction of props and costumes by Glen W. Bell, Jr. for the princely sum of $6,000. In 1976 Bell commissioned its restoration by John R. Craig's Heritage Coachworks in Ramona, California. Even at Heritage's 1976-77 shop rate of $16/hour by the time the job was done it had absorbed another $27,171.74, neatly recorded in a classic hand on a ledger sheet which comes with the car.
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Chuck Dempsey
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Bruce of MN
Well-known member
I don't see a horn.
Synchro909
Well-known member
Bruce, you beat me to it. I also see no horn on the car in post #1
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
Re: Andy Hardy's Model A Roadster: Boy, am I going to go off on a tangent here on the last day of this gd-damned horsesh*t year! At your own risk, here goes...
In the mid-1960's as an impressionable and malleable teenager still trying to figure out human nature, I was an avid "Tonight Show with Johnny Carson Show" devotee, owning a black and white TV in my upstairs bedroom. (My parents wanted to remove me from the rest of the down-to-earth family members in my isolation ward, so they gifted me this TV set to help towards that end) I rarely missed a Tonight Show episode. Lots of self-aggrandizing phony-baloney celebrities came and went each night, hawking their latest Hollywood achievement, deservedly or not. Usually not, as I slowly came to realize. Most were NBC plugs for upcoming network shows.
One night, Mickey Rooney was a guest: short, fat, bald, overbearing, interrupting, obnoxious and probably drunk as ever. Every celebrity was his dearest friend who loved him, according to him. Towards the end of the unbearably long conversation, Johnny said he had a surprise for Mickey. The curtain went up and there was the striped Andy Hardy Model A Roadster on stage that had appeared in most of the Andy Hardy film series. The audience applauded and while Mickey bounced up and down in his guest chair like a five year-old child (Who would have expected that???), Johnny off-handedly wondered if the car still ran. Although Mickey Rooney most certainly hadn't seen that car in 20+ years, he said "Sure, it runs!" and ran over to the Roadster and jumped into it, once again bouncing up and down. Just how the HELL did he "know" it still ran??? For all he knew, the engine was seized, the battery was dead and the gas tank was clogged with crud! I lost all respect for a very shallow Mickey Rooney celebrity after that. What a frigging know-it-all he came across as!!! That Tonight Show interview with an agonizing, irritating as Hell Mickey Rooney was tormenting enough without the self-assuredness, smugness and all-knowing attitude he had about that Model A's mechanical condition. He didn't even have the decency to thank Johnny or the Tonight Show staff for making the effort to locate and deliver the car to the show's sound stage. It was typically all about Mickey to the exclusion of other human beings. That night's show was a landmark in my opinion of "celebrities" that REALLY bothered me as a 13 year-old. It has continued to do so all these years later. I STILL get mad thinking about that night. Logical? Heck, no! But such are the life experiences that shape our view of the world. Even as a 75 year-old watching some of Mickey Rooney's "best" movies, I can't shake that evening where I saw how shallow and thoughtless some "celebrities" can be. I can't WAIT for the day that computer-generated movies replace "actors" who last year took your dinner order in a restaurant or scrubbed toilets in the local YMCA, who now tell us how we ought to vote and think. Yeah, these are the people we definitively ought to listen to to direct future action in this country.
'Sorry. *****, *****, *****. That's my personal connection with this striped Andy Hardy Model A Roadster. 'Got a more visceral one than that???
Marshall
In the mid-1960's as an impressionable and malleable teenager still trying to figure out human nature, I was an avid "Tonight Show with Johnny Carson Show" devotee, owning a black and white TV in my upstairs bedroom. (My parents wanted to remove me from the rest of the down-to-earth family members in my isolation ward, so they gifted me this TV set to help towards that end) I rarely missed a Tonight Show episode. Lots of self-aggrandizing phony-baloney celebrities came and went each night, hawking their latest Hollywood achievement, deservedly or not. Usually not, as I slowly came to realize. Most were NBC plugs for upcoming network shows.
One night, Mickey Rooney was a guest: short, fat, bald, overbearing, interrupting, obnoxious and probably drunk as ever. Every celebrity was his dearest friend who loved him, according to him. Towards the end of the unbearably long conversation, Johnny said he had a surprise for Mickey. The curtain went up and there was the striped Andy Hardy Model A Roadster on stage that had appeared in most of the Andy Hardy film series. The audience applauded and while Mickey bounced up and down in his guest chair like a five year-old child (Who would have expected that???), Johnny off-handedly wondered if the car still ran. Although Mickey Rooney most certainly hadn't seen that car in 20+ years, he said "Sure, it runs!" and ran over to the Roadster and jumped into it, once again bouncing up and down. Just how the HELL did he "know" it still ran??? For all he knew, the engine was seized, the battery was dead and the gas tank was clogged with crud! I lost all respect for a very shallow Mickey Rooney celebrity after that. What a frigging know-it-all he came across as!!! That Tonight Show interview with an agonizing, irritating as Hell Mickey Rooney was tormenting enough without the self-assuredness, smugness and all-knowing attitude he had about that Model A's mechanical condition. He didn't even have the decency to thank Johnny or the Tonight Show staff for making the effort to locate and deliver the car to the show's sound stage. It was typically all about Mickey to the exclusion of other human beings. That night's show was a landmark in my opinion of "celebrities" that REALLY bothered me as a 13 year-old. It has continued to do so all these years later. I STILL get mad thinking about that night. Logical? Heck, no! But such are the life experiences that shape our view of the world. Even as a 75 year-old watching some of Mickey Rooney's "best" movies, I can't shake that evening where I saw how shallow and thoughtless some "celebrities" can be. I can't WAIT for the day that computer-generated movies replace "actors" who last year took your dinner order in a restaurant or scrubbed toilets in the local YMCA, who now tell us how we ought to vote and think. Yeah, these are the people we definitively ought to listen to to direct future action in this country.
'Sorry. *****, *****, *****. That's my personal connection with this striped Andy Hardy Model A Roadster. 'Got a more visceral one than that???
Marshall
updraught
Well-known member
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2936520985/?playlistId=tt0039169&ref_=tt_ov_ov_vi
Movie trailer for those of us too young to remember the 30's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZYcNdIB30
Movie trailer for those of us too young to remember the 30's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZYcNdIB30
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Model A Canuck
Senior Member
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Bruce of MN
Well-known member
You must really love "reality" shows!
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
Nope. 'Never watch them. There is nothing as unreal as reality shows, the modern version of Pro Wrestling.
M.
M.
ModelA29
Well-known member
I did a lot of work at the studios in the 70s. Some real folks but mostly self promoting egotists. All were afraid of "you'll never work in this town again". A friend was working on cable channel "reality" stuff. They were at one time fielding 1,200 show ideas a week. All were scripted and all included people acting like idiots. The Foose Overhauling series was good and 90% unscripted the early Bitchin Rides were scripted but without the antics.
Marshall V. Daut
Well-known member
I don't recall, but I rather doubt that they started the engine in the enclosed confines of the "Tonight Show" studio due to the exhaust fumes that would hang around for quite a while, certain to make some audience members sick - if Mickey hadn't already accomplished that by then. By the way for whatever it's worth, his real name was Joseph Yule, Jr. His father (the "Sr." Yule) was in show business, too, and appeared in at least one "Our Gang" sound short.
M.
M.