Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney), a lawyer for the Gordon Aircraft Company, returns to his hometown having convinced the company's board of directors that Carvel should be the site of their new electronics factory. After negotiating the sale, the landowner (Vaughn Taylor) doubles the price of his acreage and tries to bribe Andy to accept the deal. Andy's childhood friend, Beezy Anderson (Joey Forman) offers his own land as an alternative and all seems well until the first landowner persuades the town council that the factory would be detrimental to Carvel and organizes a petition drive to change the zoning of Beezy's land. Andy appears before the council and argues that he only has Carvel's best interests in mind and intends to move his wife (Patricia Breslin) and children (Gina Gillespie and real-life son, Teddy Rooney) from Los Angeles if the factory is built. Discouraged by the comments of other Carvel residents, Andy and family prepare to return to Los Angeles when locals greet him outside the Hardy family home and announce that not only was his argument accepted by the council and the plant will be built, but they want to seat him in his father's former position as local judge. Beneath a portrait of his father, he accepts the position to the delight of his mother (Fay Holden) and Aunt Milly (Sara Haden).