Blaaaaaaackie Blaaaackie Waaaaaaaaa Blaaaaackie
Ugh
Haj
No! I like Mickey Rooney! :mad:
I know wrut you meeeeen, Misssh Gorightry… I meeeen Missh Goden!
(Oddly enough, despite the horribly racist stereotypes, that was the only role I enjoyed him in.)
. . . Well, we can still declare it nearly unanimous . . .
To me, he’s always been 90% icky and about 7% . . . sexy in a kind of fetishistically trollish way–call the remaining 3% equal parts confused and disturbed.
Who was Robert Osborne quoting the other day, some short list of hollywood royalty who claimed to feel that Mickey Rooney was the greatest actor they’d ever worked with?
That must have been Bertha Stinchfield, who was a bit player in National Velvet, and never mader another film.
I wonder what Frank Sinatra thought of boffing a woman who was also boffed by Mickey Rooney?
Heh. When my husband was coming back from Vietnam, he met Mickey Rooney on the plane and got his autograph. I found it in a drawer a couple years back. It’s one of his prized possessions (I found it right next to his official “Free Trip To The Moon” ticket…sigh…).
Awww, c’mon…Mickey’s not as bad as all that. At least, not in the '40s. Anything as an adult has a creep factor of 10K.
And he must’ve paid all those wives to consumate the marriage. I wouldn’t do him on his best day! I think it’s the insincere smile…
No, well, actually, seriously: Olivier or someone like that. Orson Welles. I don’t remember. He rattled off a list of people who claimed that their favorite actor was Mickey Rooney. Not that this proves anything, except perhaps that it was a whole nother world back then.
Let me (mildly) defend the Mickster by saying that his Puck is perversely irresistable in an already bizarre enterprise, his Baby Face Nelson showed he could act if he needed to, and his performance in The Black Stallion emotionally grounds the (already brilliant) film in an essential way.
Still, whenever he’s supposed to be charismatic and likable is when he’s the most creepily manic.
Wow. That’s an even better techinique than the “think about baseball” one. Of course that one might be too good if you know what I mean.
Haj
I can’t watch those Andy Hardy movies either. No wonder Judy took drugs! I blame Mickey for her addiction - if I had to pretend to be his girlfriend, I’d want to be under the influence too. I was never able to figure out the Ava thing, and I’m a big fan of hers. I like to think she was still a H’wood newbie.
Howard Stern played a great prank on Mickey and he was completely clueless. He called him to present some kind of phony “listeners award” and Mickey fell for it all the way - although they also have a hilarious bit on tape where Stuttering John asks him about all the chicks he’s had and Mickey calls “Security!” on him.
That’s why Mickey’s career went under in the 1940s—he wasn’t away at war: he was having sex with Ava Gardner, and fell in. He was only pulled out again years later by Sinatra.
Ava: “Christ, I thought that was a tampon!”
Wow. I didn’t know that.
That explains a lot.
I didn’t like him before (other than in Bill), but I met him a couple of years ago and quickly learned to despise him. He’s one of the most obnoxious and foul-tempered little trolls on Earth and a homophobe to boot.
He and Mrs. Rooney VIII were appearing in their cabaret show (One Man, One Wife) at the Rylander Theater in Americus, GA, a small college city that I lived in at the time. (Show business rule-of-thumb: when your act is playing in Americus, GA, it’s time to get a license to cut hair or sell real estate.) He arrived by limo from Atlanta and I happened to be eating dinner in the gorgeous-and-to-die-for Windsor Hotel (an old Gothic ruin of a place that is totally nonsequitur with the rest of that small if not uncharming city). Several people in the lobby recognized him, called him by name and asked for autographs and the little troll actually told them “Get away from me! I haven’t even checked in yet!” (Remember that this is the Deep South™, where manners are as ritualized as they ever dared be in feudal Japan- you don’t raise your voice to a soft-spoken stranger.) After he checked in he said in a huff “Now… who wants autographs?” and when a young male college student stepped forward he yelled at him that “there are ladies present! You’d break ahead of a lady in line?” (Point of fact: none of the ladies present was in line for his autograph.)
A moment later a reporter from the local paper arrived and Mickey was instantly transformed into a smiling and waving babboon, practically dancing and so sweet he could kill a diabetic by phone. While he was in town he also gave an interview on the campus radio station (to a kid who obviously didn’t know who he was, but was nice- and while I can imagine that is irritating you have to understand- your heydey was before her mother was born [though she was born a long long time ago, her mother would kno… where was I).
Anyway, pointless story long, during the interview he began talking about his born-again views and how (Eve may particularly love this tidbit of Hollywood trivia) there were no gays in Hollywood when he was a star. (Eight marriages isn’t immoral, you see, but those queers are a disgusting mockery of marriage.)
He also said that since two of his wives died, he’s only been divorced five times and therefore isn’t quite as bad as often portrayed.
I didn’t see the little troll’s dog-and-pony show, but I understand that other than his wife doing a passable Patsy Cline it was a complete waste of $10. A few weeks later he and bride filed for bankruptcy for the third time, so even the hip audiences of Americus couldn’t save them.
Ava: “Christ, I thought that was a tampon!”
Frank: “God damn it, Ava! I told you to wrap Andy Rooney in some toilet paper or something when you take him out! The god damn dog has chewed him up and there’s bloody Andy Rooney all over the fucking bathroom!”
Grrr! Why do people like that just keep going, allowed to live and bother humanity? There should be a hit-squad that specializes in people like him.
My mum had a permanent hatred of Mickey Rooney because he bumped her off a flight from Germany home to Canada in the 1950s, preventing her from making it to my grandmother’s hospital bed before she died.
You know what I think made Mickey Rooney so creepy? A whole lotta amphetamine.
You know what I think made Mickey Rooney attractive to Judy Garland? A whole lotta amphetamine.
Just a guess.
That would have been much funnier had I not screwed the name up; however, Andy Rooney’s eyebrows have always reminded me of tampons so I think I should get a pass.
What’s worse, they were in mid-flight . . .
Plnnr, I think “Andy” Rooney made it even funnier!