Apparently, Mickey played Clark Gable’s character as a kid in “Manhattan Melodrama.” Huh?
Except I don’t believe Mickey was ever really a kid. It seems to me he was born 40.
Incidentally, I was trying to find out if any of the online transcript services had a transcript of the Mickey Rooney interview in Americus. (I actually have found copies of transcripts of interviews they did with authors and a couple of politicians.) I couldn’t, but here are two interviews with him that show him for the insane little egomaniac that he is.
1
This one discusses his marriage and later-relationship with La Belle Ava.
In this one he goes into some of his wackier views and stories (how an Angel saved him in a Florida diner, for example) and his views on gays.
I have to stop reading this. Everytime I read a quote of Rooney’s I get angrier!
What is frightening are those shorts (movies, not pants) he made as a “small” child (I know) under the name “Mickey McGwire” - he’s even more terrifying than he was as Puck and that’s saying a lot.
Oh, that face! That voice! Pass me the pepto-bismol.
For your delectation, Mickey McGuire . . .
Regrettably, though, he has never lost his Puckishness . . .
(How often do you get to use that word literally?)
Blecch! The only redeeming thing about that photo is the adorable dog (who looks quite similar to my own.)
The fact that Rooney has outlived almost everyone else enables him to tell his ridiculously tall tales (the hub swears he saw Rooney say that MM gave the best bj’s in Hollywood - I shudder at the thought.)
“(the hub swears he saw Rooney say that MM gave the best bj’s in Hollywood - I shudder at the thought.)”
I’ve seen it reported in several places that it was actually Nancy Davis (later Nancy Reagan) that was the best fellatiatrix (fellater? blow job giver?) in all of Hollywood.
Other claims (in addition to the “no queers in Hollywood’s Golden Era” thing):
-that Mickey Mouse was named for him (absolute B.S.)
-that he was the Number 1 Box Office Attraction for 10 years (he was only number 1 if you categorize the lists, and even then it wasn’t for 10 years)
-that Ava Gardner regarded him (not Frank Sinatra) as the love of her life
As far as best b.j.s in Hollywood, I always heard that was Cesar Romero.
Gah! I just watched BAT for the first time this weekend. Imagine my surprise when I saw the credits at the beginning “…And Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi.” 
Very disturbing.
The only performance of his I even mildly enjoyed was that of Whitey Marsh in Boys’ Town, and mostly just when Spencer Tracy’s character was slapping him around.
BTW, wasn’t the Whitey Marsh character the model for Lampwick the poolhouse punk in Disney’s Pinocchio?
Laurence Olivier is the name I always have heard in this context. I don’t know who the others were.
Mickey Rooney was initially popular as a singer and dancer. He also played several instruments well, and was just an all around talent. I’d say that in his youth he traded primarily on his “small-guy-but-with-the-drive-of-a-locomotive” appearance and general demeanor. He certainly exuded confidence in his early roles, and if what I’ve been hearing from the female Dopers, when asked what makes men attractive, is half true, they should be all over him.
His first notable role was as Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream; he was great in that because, IMO, he played it completely without the effeminacy that usually goes with sprite or fairy type roles. According to this that was considered one of the greatest juvenile performances in the history of film.
In short, he was a huge star because he was a huge talent. I think in retrospect his rep has suffered due to the datedness of many of his old fims. You couldn’t make Andy Hardy movies today, nor the Boys Town series. Also, he did have some very regrettable roles such as that of the buck-toothed Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I thought he was well cast in The Bridges At Toki Ri but the rest of this has been pretty disturbing, especially the thought of Ava slipping herself a Mickey.
Eve, you jinxed me. Milburn and I spent the weekend in Palm Springs and that little **troll’s ** face was *everywhere! * Seems he and his wife are doing their musical act there soon, AND he has a star on the “walk of fame.”
Did you do one of your patented “Mrs. Drysdale Appalled Dowager Swoons?”
Hell, he was even creepy in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
I see the guy got to boff a 19-year-old Ava Gardner though…Sinatra had to settle for sloppy thirds, after Artie Shaw had a whack at her in the mid-1940s.
Who is his wife, anyway?
I just saw a documentary about child-stars. Mickey Rooney is scary, his wife pretty annoying. She talked to him as if he’s a kid and tried to steal his thunder [well…, rumblings] every time the interviewer asked something. When needed at a certain spot, she’d grab him by the shoulders - she’s two heads taller than him - and put him there as if he was silly putty. So, Is she his ‘Nurse Ratched’, or merely a concerned spouse?
“I see the guy got to boff a 19-year-old Ava Gardner though…Sinatra had to settle for sloppy thirds, after Artie Shaw had a whack at her in the mid-1940s.”
Sorry for the slight hijack here, but I’ve read in several places that Artie Shaw is something of a renaissance man and a genius. Sort of a rose between two thorns as far as Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra are concerned.
Ava Gardner’s sloppy thirds…I don’t care - that woman was scaldingly hot.
Of course, dear. We wanted to deface his star and then take a photo so I could post it here, but we never got around to it. However, as they were on the cover of the free Palm Springs info-guide, his ugly mug was everywhere.
Not to mention a 19-year-old Lana Turner! What did Artie Shaw do, turn them out of doors when they became 20?
Doris Dowling wasn’t too bad herself (though her sister was prettier); she war around that age when they married.
He was also married to one of my favorite novelists, Kathleen Winsor of Forever Amber fame, who was quite pretty herself- she claimed she was 27 when they married but she was probably older. (Winsor basically fictionalized her husband’s doctoral thesis and never had to work again after the Hays Office, Catholic Index [and, after the movie premiered, the Legion of Decency], Massachusetts Atty. General and every other conservative organization banned the book as filth for its
)
Shaw’s last wife was Scarlett’s baby sister, Evelyn Keyes (he was her fifth husband, she was his eighth wife, but they were married for more than 30 years before separating). A few years ago Johnny Depp was attempting to do a biopic of Shaw, becoming friends with Shaw (who is reclusive) and even learning clarinet, but apparently it was dropped.