Mickey Rooney: Short, and short-tempered, movie star
1920-2014
MICKEY Rooney, the actor who has died at the age of 93, was in the 1930s and 1940s the very image of how Americans liked to think of themselves — brash, energetic and eternally young.
As a child star and later a teenager, he epitomised American get-upand-go with a cheeky, cocksure arrogance that won him a wide following, especially in the US.
Although he never received an Oscar for his work, in 1938 he shared a special award with Deanna Durbin “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement”. In keeping with their stature, the awards were pint-size Oscars.
Diminutive but pugnacious, Rooney managed to look like an adolescent until well into maturity. He was still playing Andy Hardy, the chirpy judge’s son and his most famous role, until the late ’40s, when he was nearly 30.
Like many young players renowned in their teens, however, Rooney found it difficult to land suitable adult roles. He continued to work and was prolific into, and beyond, his 70s— at the age of 90 he filmed a cameo for The Muppets (2011) — but many of his films barely received a cinema release even in the US.
He became better known for his private life. A prodigious earner at the peak of his popularity, he amassed $12-million (R125-million) but kept none of it. Most of it went in back taxes and to pay alimony to his many wives (he had eight, of whom the first, Ava Gardner, was the best known). By 1962, he had to file for bankruptcy.
Drink was also a problem, but one to which a solution appeared in remarkable circumstances. As he recounted it, he was dining in a Los Angeles restaurant when up stepped a heavenly messenger with bright golden hair.
“God loves you,” the angel said. From that moment Rooney was a born-again Christian and mended his ways.
He was the only actor on record to have come to blows with MGM’s feared studio boss
Rooney’s real name was Joe Yule jnr. He was born in Brooklyn on September 23 1920, the son of vaudeville performers Joe Yule and Nell Carter, who divorced when he was seven. At the age of only 15 months he appeared on stage as a midget, dressed in a tuxedo and sporting a huge rubber cigar. At six he was a movie actor, making his screen debut (again as a midget) in Not to Be Trusted (1926).
His real screen career began when his mother saw an advert placed by the cartoonist Fontaine Fox, who was looking for a child to impersonate his comic strip character Mickey McGuire.
Fox took a shine to the boy and he got the job, appearing in 80 episodes between 1926 and 1932. In fact, he was so closely identified with the part that his mother wanted him to adopt the name Mickey McGuire professionally. Fox refused, so he became Mickey Rooney instead.
Rooney was placed under contract by MGM, which reserved the right to loan him to other studios.
One such arrangement, with Warner Bros, resulted in the best performance of Rooney’s career: as the mischievous Puck in Max Reinhardt’s 1935 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Barely 15 at the time, he was perfect casting — impish and with a gurgling laugh that might be construed as innocent or knowing; it was hard to tell.
At MGM, his career took off in 1937 when he first played Andy Hardy, son of Lionel Barrymore’s Judge Hardy in A Family Affair. Planned only as a programme filler, the series ran to 15 episodes over the next 10 years.
Rooney appeared in much else besides, often opposite the equally youthful Judy Garland. He played a juvenile delinquent opposite Spencer Tracy in Boys’ Town (1938) and its 1941 sequel, Men of Boys’ Town , and took the title role in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939).
Increasingly bumptious and swollen-headed, he was the only actor on record to have come to blows with MGM’s feared studio boss, Louis B Mayer.
Rooney wanted the rights to do the Andy Hardy series on radio as well and lost his temper when Mayer said no. Rooney got a hike in salary out of the fracas, but Andy Hardy was never broadcast.
Rooney’s eighth wife, Jan Chamberlin, survives him. He had seven children. — London