Mickey Rooney Would Turn 100 Today.

horrid nasty little man

But often a surprisingly good actor—I recommend “The Human Comedy” on TCM tonight. One of his three competitive Oscar nominations and, IMO, his best.

R1 has better avoid TCM today.

Most certainly not, OP! There's lots of other people more deserving today.

His final days sounded very sad (elder abuse from his wife) according to an article I read. I don't know much about his personal life, but his wife sounded like an awful person.

Rooney went through decades of being a fairly horrible person himself--reactionary social views, insufferable to work with, etc. He made movies in the 50s and 60s never released in the US and had a ridiculous tv show plus his many, many marriages. He was ultimately a mess and wound up the way messy people often do.

who worked with him? first hand stories please / thanks in advance

One more argument for outlawing child labor in the entertainment industry. Yeah, yeah, I know that'll never happen.

how the fuck did he get Ava Gardner?

In 1966, Rooney's wife Barbara Ann Thomason was found murdered in Rooney's home with Rooney's gun, supposedly by her boyfriend Milos Milos who committed suicide immediately afterwards. Rooney claimed he and Barbara were separated at the time but there wasn't any evidence of that, apparently.

There have been rumors for decades that Rooney actually killed her and her boyfriend and got away with it.

I'm going to have a ham sandwich to mark the occasion.

I think he was the male Helen Lawson. On stage and screen, everybody loved him, but especially as he got older, he became wretched to deal with. I saw him with Ann Miller in "Sugar Babies" twice, then saw his tour of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", both at the Pantages in Hollywood. On a trip to New York, I saw "Let's Put on a Show!" at the Irish Rep. with last wife Jan Rooney. After that show, he was charging for autographs so I just left rather than stand around in the pandemonium in the teeny, tiny Off Broadway lobby. He was barely in the second act which was her nightclub performance, and I didn't care for her at all.

Still, I can watch his movies and hold the memory of seeing him live on stage. I am just glad I never had to deal with him on a personal level. He did little bit parts up until nearly the end, and is quite touching in "Babe: Pig in the City". He'll always be remembered as one of the biggest star of the late 1930's and early 40's, and for having one of the longest careers. The ending was sad with his knocked out teeth and stories of mistreatment by her family. No Andy Hardy life for Mickey Rooney!

He was a ginger twink for a short time.

His role in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was reason enough for him to find a dignified way into the sunset.

Miss Gorightry!!

Miss Gorightry!!

Even for those days, how the fuck was that not seen as insanely racist?

A few years I heard a veteran journalist say that his interview with an aged, angry Mickey Rooney was the most humiliating experience of his career. He was quite a diva.

Dana Carvey worked with him on either a short-lived sitcom or a pilot that never aired. He says that Mickey was a nasty bastard. Many of Dana's "loopy old man" impersonation characteristics are apparently based on Rooney.

Rooney had a pretty remarkable career for a man who was barely 5'2" tall. Lord Olivier called him the best film actor the US ever produced. Maybe he was an asshole, but it is a pity that life was not kind to him in the end.

I knew his wife. She was part of a feral cat rescue organization and went to their house a few times and met him once for a few seconds.

Unbelievably talented—he could do anything.

R18, his interview with Michael Enright of CBC. You can listen in below.

R21 Wow, Mickey was a feral cat? I knew he was talented, but that's incredible! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that in another life, he really was Pete's dragon!

I do have to say that interviewer didn't handle that interview well at all. Yeah, Rooney sounded like a crotchety windbag, but the interviewer was also very combative.

Hung?

He had eight wives.

He was a strange man. He was the #1 box office star in America from 1939-1941--during the absolutely height of the Golden Age of Hollywood--and gorgeous women like Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers found him desirable because he was so famous, and had a nice body, and had so much incredible energy. But then he got fat and no one was interested in him much any more. He kept getting character work, but his leading man days were over after he aged out of juvenile roles.

He became a total mess--at the time of his death, Vanity Fair called him "the original Hollywood train wreck." He had multiple addictions to cope with his bi-polar disorder, and claimed he was beaten by his family members. he attempted suicide multiple times. He left only $18K in his will.

I can't excuse his mistreatment of other people he worked with, but I do undetrstand why he became such a mess generally. The change in his career after 1941 must have been so shocking to him,

[quote] Dana Carvey worked with him on either a short-lived sitcom or a pilot that never aired. He says that Mickey was a nasty bastard. Many of Dana's "loopy old man" impersonation characteristics are apparently based on Rooney.

It was a short lived sitcom with Rooney, Carvey AND Nathan Lane.

I can't imagine what a shitshow that was backstage.

This shows how much energy he had and what a very nice body he had at the height of his career--this is his impersonation of Carmen Miranda (who as just then making a huge sensation in American film at Fox) in "Babes of Broadway" (1941). It's actually quite a good impersonation.

It's funny looking at that clip at how awful the Hollywood experience was for all those child stars. Rooney lived the longest, but had a miserable life, and so did garland. Virginia Weidler retired from the screen in 1943 and never spoke publicly of her Hollywood career again and gave no interviews until her early death from a heart condition at 41.

[quote]When asked about her career in her later years, her husband Lionel Krisel said that Virginia "would always change the subject as quickly as possible without being rude. She never watched her old movies or replied to requests for interviews. Although she was never one to criticize, I think our boys got the impression that their mother didn't think very much of the motion picture industry".

I thought he turned 100 two decades ago.

Irgun is Weidler was talented as well.

He really could do it all! He was a fine actor, both in comedy and drama, a terrific dancer, and a talented drummer. He was also an excellent impressionist and he could sing, as well. If you've not seen "The Human Comedy" watch it tonight on TCM. It is very moving and he is brilliant in it. I know little of his off-screen life and can neither judge nor justify any bad behavior but he gave some truly top-notch performances that are a joy to watch, even today.

I remember an interview with him and he was denying that there were gay men working at MGM when he was there.

When pressed he said, "Well, if they were there, they weren't in the closet, they were locked in a safe!"

It seemed like such an odd -- stupid -- thing to say.

He wouldn't have been the first actor to have "gone out of fashion" or squandered his career---he probably could have had a durable career as a character actor. Instead, he took just about anything and never re-established himself as an actor. From the Vanity Fair article, it sounded like he was a mess back in the 40s, with hangers-on and a gambling problem. This makes me think he wasn't bipolar (which is something that tends to come on at an older age), but just unstable.

[quote] This makes me think he wasn't bipolar (which is something that tends to come on at an older age), but just unstable.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

He also quit MGM (after playing gay Lorenz Hart as a straight man) thinking he would go on to bigger and better things.

He did not.

The bipolar thing comes from some biographer and seems more like speculation. My main p[oint is that his problems were evident way back in the 40s and all his problems later are just an extension of that.

A lot of people in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, 10s, and 20s were RAGING alcoholics.

So the armchair diagnosis of "bipolar" may miss the mark.

It may have been less about manic/depressive and more about pre/post the cocktail hour.

He clearly was an asshole. He somehow attracted the ladies, although things ran down hill after Ava.

[quote]He somehow attracted the ladies

He was HUNG and a movie star.

No mystery there.

He let Lana use MY douche. Nasty bastard.

When you're 5' tall, you don't have to be well endowed to look big.

He would have to be older than 100.

The last picture I saw of him he looked 125!

He and Andy Rooney were both so damn cranky.

Has anyone watched episodes of his short-lived sitcom "Mickey'? Was it the hilarious inspiration for Fawlty Towers?

"Mickey Grady leaves the Coast Guard to manage a ritzy beach Newport Beach hotel with his wife Nora plus boys Timmy and Buddy. But former supervisor Sammy has left problems that creates crazy situations for the by the book Mickey."

"Brought to you by Clairol's Five-Minute Color"

"how the fuck did he get Ava Gardner?"

He was one of the biggest movie stars in the world at that time. That's how. He was married to this incomparably gorgeous young woman, but of course he cheated on her. In their marriage bed. In his memoir he described her genitalia and nipples. What a classy guy.

Mickey Rooney...I'd have to say he was very talented, a very dynamic and energetic performer. He and Judy Garland made a perfect screen couple. They were even the right size for each other, both being very short. He always had nice things to say about Judy, but she had no liking for him, dismissing him as an asshole in her later years. Maybe that's because he dissed her as a romantic interest for him. He claimed in his memoir he might have fallen in love with her if only she'd been his type, that is, sexually attractive. No wonder she hated him.

By all accounts Mickey Rooney was a dick, a Hollywood creep. I think some biography of him claimed that someone walked in on him getting a blowjob from Elizabeth Taylor, who would have been 14 at the time. I don't know if that's true or not, but he was imaginably sleazy.

A rage-filled homunculus.

R17 'Breakfast at Tiffanys' was made by a moron whose speciality was slapstick comedy.

It was made in 1961 when the word 'racist' was almost unknown.

Ava Gardner enjoyed her sex life with Rooney, according to Lee Server in his bio of her "Love is Nothing" (I recommend that book. It dishes a lot of tasty things, including that, essentially, Gardner perpetrated emotional and mental abuse on Sinatra, not that he didn't have it coming, given how he could dish it out).

According to Server, even after Gardner and Rooney broke up, they would booty-call each other until she broke his heart by falling in love with, iirc, Artie Shaw and then she ghosted him.

He and Gardner were only married for a year. She took up with Artie Shaw not long after. It's not a significant part of his long, wasted life.

I quite liked the little troll in Pete's Dragon and Black Stallion...two of my favorite movies as a little gayling.

I'm just glad he turned down the role of Archie Bunker.

He made a laughable effort to be a "tough guy" in the late 40s and early 50s Film Noir.

"Quicksand" is a pretty good B film noir where he doesn't sneer or act overly tough and confident like he did in "Boy's Town". I can't stand him in that film although otherwise it is excellent. But the late 50's he did a lot of those sneering midget roles ("The Last Mile", "The Big Operator", "King of the Roaring 20's: The Story of Arnold Rothstein"), and mixed in with "Breakfast at Tiffany's", he came as a joke. He fortunately underplayed in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", but that period after his Oscar nomination for "The Bold and the Brave" up until "The Black Stallion" and "Bill" (combined with his success in "Sugar Babies") was pretty bad for him, and that was over 20 years.

SKIDOO is a terrible movie, but Rooney is actually quite good in it. When he was older, he pulled off the tough guy act really well. He may have been terrible at in in the 1940s and 1950s, but by the 1960s he had it down pat.

He was universally lauded for REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, which is dated nowadays but still very effective.

[quote]It was made in 1961 when the word 'racist' was almost unknown.

Good to know.

R57 I forgot Rooney was in "Skidoo". I guess when you see Carol Channing in all yellow looking like Big Bird with a matching purse and the various older actors on psychadelic drugs, someone like MR will skip your mind, especially in the senseless conclusion that has Channing in a pirate costume singing the title song. He was also in another big studio disaster: "The Extraordinary Seaman" that came and went and was quickly forgotten except by movie bomb fans like me.

Never heard this, but Mickey claims to have given Norma Jean her Screen name. For a moment I thought uncle Miltie was gonna sock him. The combination of Berle and Rooney yelling at each other almost makes Robert Wagner appear soulful.

We need someone to die so we can have a new Larry King thread.

Mickey Rooney is a challenge to sum up. He seems to have been an absolute asshole for most of his life, but he also had wonderful talent and presence.

His later performances in Bill and Babe: Pig in the City (which is a masterwork in case you missed it) show a moving and sympathetic vulnerability at complete odds with his private persona of arrogant jackass.

I think I hate MIckey Rooney the person, but I can't hate the performer.

[quote] Mickey claims to have given Norma Jean her Screen name.

Mickey Rooney was so full of shit. He said he met Marylin in 1936 and she told him she'd been married at 14. In 1936, she was 10.

And she did not get her last name because Mickey Rooney had just heard it on the phone. It was her mother's name.

Sometimes when he'd talk about Judy, he'd speak so softly as if a saint, and I just wanted to smack him.

R59, I LOVE Skidoo.

I saw it at the Castro about 30 years ago. I think most of the audience had little idea exactly what we were in for. There was a sense of bewilderment and euphoria in the theater, peaking at the point Carol showed up in the pirate outfit to save the day. I clearly remember one queen having to be helped out of the theater such was the state of disorientation and disbelief.

R64 That description sounds like Tallulah Bankhead being dragged out of Carnegie Hall in shits and giggles after hearing Florence Foster Jenkins "sing".

Rooney is quite good in this Columbia studios film noir. He really captures a shy loner car mechanic who falls for a hot woman who's just using him for a criminal scheme. Well worth watching.

I can't take a man seriously if they look like a footstool.

[quote]Sometimes when he'd talk about Judy, he'd speak so softly as if a saint

He really hurt her feelings. Judy Garland had a huge crush on him. But Mickey told her that she wasn't his "type" -- i.e., she wasn't pretty enough.

I bet she took no small satisfaction in watching that midget lose his hair and turn into an unattractive troll overnight.

Trying to humanize a vile human being with some intermittent shows of talent makes no sense. It would be easier to do with Sinatra who was violent but not always a selfish, useless human being, as well as more respectful of Ava Gardner.

The people in this thread keep saying he has a nice body, but I don't think I've ever actually seen his body. He always seemed fat to me, even during his Garland years, but maybe that's just because he had a fat face.

Anybody got any good pics of this supposedly "hot" Rooney body that attracted all the ladies?

1947, but still unacceptably short.

R59, I saw both of those movies as a kid on our local PBS station. Everyone involved in SEAMAN looked embarrassed, and I was young enough to be very confused.

But I was entranced by Carol Channing in a long wig, dressed as a pirate.