'I am an imperfect piece of perfection'
He was only 5ft 2in, but to the world he was a giant. Being a ball of energy was his way to compensate for his lack of height. And it was that irrepressible energy that mesmerised audiences. He was simply larger than life.
Mickey Rooney epitomised Hollywood. He made more than 350 films (‘more,’ he would boast, ‘than anyone else in Hollywood’), and he was the last star to have successfully transcended the sound barrier, moving from silent films into talkies.
He sang, danced, acted, played the piano, wrote books, played golf, flew planes, painted, and was an inventor. Most of all, he was a character, and his death on 6 April, at 93, made me reflect on the many hours I spent with him. I first interviewed Rooney in the early 1980s. He was in a playful mood, cracking jokes and sharing recipes for Mexican tamales. But the mood didn’t last. The phone kept ringing, and he was starting to lose it.
‘If that goddamn phone rings again,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll fix it so it won’t ring again. I’ll yank it out by the roots.’
And then the phone rang again: ‘OK,’ he screamed, ‘I’ve had it!’ He leapt across the room, yelling obscenities, and ripped it out of the wall.
‘That’ll do it!’ he beamed. And as if nothing had happened, asked, ‘Now, where were we, Barb?’
Mickey was a chameleon. Much of the time he was relatively calm, but he had a short fuse. And a fast, agile mind. He was always busy. He established a self-study, mail-order acting course, with plans to open acting schools. He had already enrolled 11,000 students and the advertising stretched as far as Britain – ‘not that anybody in England needs to take acting lessons from Mickey Rooney!’ he’d say. Then there were the dinner theatres that he was hoping to build across America. And his restaurants, where ‘the most popular hamburger on the menu is the Mighty Mick’.
One of his more outlandish inventions was a line of disposable underwear: ‘paper underpants for men called “rip-offs” and paper bras for women called “tip-offs”. ‘They’re disposable, that’s all. Like babies’ diapers,’ he reasoned. ‘It cuts down on the laundry bill. I don’t know why nobody else thought of it.’
And there was Thirst, his soft drink: ‘Thirst come, thirst served.’ There seemed no end to Rooney’s creativity. He even wrote a symphony, Melodante, as well as several books.
‘I didn’t used to like myself,’ he told me. ‘I’ve learnt to like some portions of myself much better than I used to. I’m an imperfect piece of perfection. I know the faults I have and I’ve learnt to live with them. It would have been an awful thing to continue the way I was. If there was no improvement, I’d want to hang this suit up and go to a tailor and get a new one. A new Mickey Rooney of some kind.’
He was 21 when he met starlet Ava Gardner in 1941. MGM tried to snuff out the romance. Rooney was number one at the box office and studio head Louis B Mayer feared he might lose popularity. But the couple were married after just four dinner dates (‘both our mothers were present, along with 1,400 press agents’). Mayer was less than thrilled when, barely a year later, they divorced.
One day Ava had exploded. ‘You know, Mick, I’m goddamned tired of living with a midget,’ she told him, and with that she was gone. She later wrote that she didn’t fit in with Rooney’s ‘boozing, broads, golfing, and hangers-on’.
He was ultimately divorced seven times and each of his wives said the same thing: Rooney had a fiery temper and would disappear for weeks at a time. With eighth wife Jan, he finally seemed to settle down. Although they eventually separated in 2012, their marriage of 34 years lasted longer than all the others put together. Jan could stand up to him.
Over the years, Rooney saw much change in Hollywood – and he could be wistful. ‘Hollywood has unfortunately become a memory,’ he frequently wailed. ‘It’s nothing but a sign on the side of a hill. And I’m the one that’s keeping it going.’ (When Hollywood became rundown in the 1990s, he tried to organise the city council into cleaning up the town, but his efforts ultimately failed.)
During the 1950s he had lived the high life. Before he turned 40, he had earned $12m and spent even more. He declared that he was only following WH Auden’s advice: ‘Thou shalt not live within thy means,’ but in 1962 declared the first of two bankruptcies, blaming gambling and alimony for the loss of his fortune. By then he was married for the fifth time – to Barbara Ann Thomason, who had four children with Rooney and would be killed in a murder-suicide by her lover in 1966.
In the 1970s, Rooney became a born-again Christian, after a strange encounter in a Lake Tahoe casino coffee shop with a ‘bus boy’ who leaned towards him and whispered in his ear, ‘Jesus Christ loves you very much,’ before disappearing. He was a changed man after that. ‘I’m always proud to tell people I’m a Christian. I try to do the right thing, but inevitably and unfortunately I do the wrong thing. I suffer from being human.’
Born in 1920 to vaudeville entertainers Joe and Nell (Carter) Yule, Mickey had become the star of his parents’ act by the age of two. When he turned four, his parents split up and mother and son headed for Hollywood. There, Mickey made his film debut as a cigar-puffing dwarf. At six, he was cast in Mickey’s Circus as Mickey McGuire, the cocky little kid of the popular comic strips.
One lunch break while filming the Mickey McGuire comedies, he walked by an open office at Warner Brothers studio, poked his head in, and introduced himself. Mickey told me this story himself, with great relish. I was never sure whether to believe him.
‘“Who are you?” I asked the guy working there.
“My name is Walt Disney,” he said. “Come over and sit on my lap.”
‘So I went over and sat on his lap, and on the table was a mouse he had drawn. “My gosh, that’s a good-looking mouse, Mr Disney.”
“It sure is, Mickey,” he said, and he stopped and looked into space for a minute. “Mickey, Mickey,” he said. “Tell me something, how would you like me to name this mouse after you?”
‘And I said, “I sure would like that, but right now I got to go and get a tuna sandwich.” And I jumped down. You can believe me, it’s a true story.’
When he was 13, he was cast as Clark Gable as a boy in Manhattan Melodrama. The film led to an MGM contract and by 1937, Rooney had become a star, thanks to A Family Affair, the movie in which he first played Andy Hardy. Andy was the classic boy next door – mischievous, lively, ambitious. In that role, Mickey became America’s favourite teenager. He would reprise the role 14 times.
Off screen, Rooney was chasing women and attending nightclubs, something Louis B Mayer objected to. ‘I don’t care what you do off camera,’ he warned, ‘just don’t do it in public. You’re Andy Hardy! You’re a symbol!’
Mickey earned his first of four Oscar nominations for Babes In Arms, in which he featured with Judy Garland. They worked together in a series of successful musicals that launched them as one of Hollywood’s great teams. As war broke out in Europe, Mickey was escorting Judy Garland to the premiere of The Wizard Of Oz. ‘It was a flop at first,’ he recalled. ‘The studio didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what Judy thought of it. I took her to the premiere and we left before it was over. She didn’t want to see any more.’
Was Judy in love with him, I asked. ‘No. We just liked each other a lot and we loved working together.’ But Mickey’s voice cracked and his eyes became moist. ‘There’ll never be another Judy Garland. She was the greatest entertainer in the world, but unfortunately she never found the happiness she so rightly deserved.’
He left to go to war in 1943. He spent two years entertaining the troops on the front line and was awarded the Bronze Star by General Patton – ‘the highest award I ever got’. But when he returned to Hollywood, personal troubles had eroded his polished image. His relationship with MGM ended and Mickey reinvented himself as a character actor, receiving another Oscar nomination for 1956 war movie The Bold And The Brave. Two more Oscar nominations would follow, and, in 1982, an honorary Academy Award.
He credited wife Jan for his rebirth. At her urging, he took the role in Sugar Babies, a musical that eulogised his show-business roots. In 1979, he made his Broadway debut opposite Ann Miller in the burlesque tribute to vaudeville and it was a massive hit. There were more films and musical tours, and for three years (2007-2009), Rooney appeared in the British pantomime Cinderella as Baron Hardup. He loved that because he was a devoted Anglophile. He was also, he said, like a rubber ball – always bouncing back.
His last three years, however, were mired in a vicious family row. He took out a restraining order against Jan’s son Christopher. Mickey accused him of verbal, emotional and financial abuse, with withholding food and medicine and forcing him to sign over his assets.
After that, Mickey and Jan separated. In his will, updated less than a month before his death, Mickey left his entire estate to another son. His wife and other children were disinherited. The value of the estate was just $18,000 (£12,000).
But there were still good times. Only months before his death, he attended the Academy Awards. ‘It’s such a thrill to be here!’ he beamed, as he waved to the crowd. Just for that moment, he might have felt his Hollywood hadn’t changed that much after all. He’d had it all and lost it all but Mickey always boomeranged back. For next to God, what he loved most was an audience. ‘I’m very, very proud to have been given the opportunity to perform,’ he told me. He acted right up to the end. He’d just completed Night At The Museum 3 (‘the most fun I’ve ever had on a picture’) and a new film version of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde.
‘Thank God for the normality of it all,’ he told me the last time we were together. ‘I am blessed to be in a business where you’re an eternal child. That’s all actors are, grown-up children, and they get paid handsomely for playing make-believe. I never want to grow up.’
And he never did.
Mickey Rooney epitomised Hollywood. He made more than 350 films (‘more,’ he would boast, ‘than anyone else in Hollywood’), and he was the last star to have successfully transcended the sound barrier, moving from silent films into talkies.
He sang, danced, acted, played the piano, wrote books, played golf, flew planes, painted, and was an inventor. Most of all, he was a character, and his death on 6 April, at 93, made me reflect on the many hours I spent with him. I first interviewed Rooney in the early 1980s. He was in a playful mood, cracking jokes and sharing recipes for Mexican tamales. But the mood didn’t last. The phone kept ringing, and he was starting to lose it.
‘If that goddamn phone rings again,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll fix it so it won’t ring again. I’ll yank it out by the roots.’
And then the phone rang again: ‘OK,’ he screamed, ‘I’ve had it!’ He leapt across the room, yelling obscenities, and ripped it out of the wall.
‘That’ll do it!’ he beamed. And as if nothing had happened, asked, ‘Now, where were we, Barb?’
Mickey was a chameleon. Much of the time he was relatively calm, but he had a short fuse. And a fast, agile mind. He was always busy. He established a self-study, mail-order acting course, with plans to open acting schools. He had already enrolled 11,000 students and the advertising stretched as far as Britain – ‘not that anybody in England needs to take acting lessons from Mickey Rooney!’ he’d say. Then there were the dinner theatres that he was hoping to build across America. And his restaurants, where ‘the most popular hamburger on the menu is the Mighty Mick’.
One of his more outlandish inventions was a line of disposable underwear: ‘paper underpants for men called “rip-offs” and paper bras for women called “tip-offs”. ‘They’re disposable, that’s all. Like babies’ diapers,’ he reasoned. ‘It cuts down on the laundry bill. I don’t know why nobody else thought of it.’
And there was Thirst, his soft drink: ‘Thirst come, thirst served.’ There seemed no end to Rooney’s creativity. He even wrote a symphony, Melodante, as well as several books.
‘I didn’t used to like myself,’ he told me. ‘I’ve learnt to like some portions of myself much better than I used to. I’m an imperfect piece of perfection. I know the faults I have and I’ve learnt to live with them. It would have been an awful thing to continue the way I was. If there was no improvement, I’d want to hang this suit up and go to a tailor and get a new one. A new Mickey Rooney of some kind.’
He was 21 when he met starlet Ava Gardner in 1941. MGM tried to snuff out the romance. Rooney was number one at the box office and studio head Louis B Mayer feared he might lose popularity. But the couple were married after just four dinner dates (‘both our mothers were present, along with 1,400 press agents’). Mayer was less than thrilled when, barely a year later, they divorced.
One day Ava had exploded. ‘You know, Mick, I’m goddamned tired of living with a midget,’ she told him, and with that she was gone. She later wrote that she didn’t fit in with Rooney’s ‘boozing, broads, golfing, and hangers-on’.
He was ultimately divorced seven times and each of his wives said the same thing: Rooney had a fiery temper and would disappear for weeks at a time. With eighth wife Jan, he finally seemed to settle down. Although they eventually separated in 2012, their marriage of 34 years lasted longer than all the others put together. Jan could stand up to him.
Over the years, Rooney saw much change in Hollywood – and he could be wistful. ‘Hollywood has unfortunately become a memory,’ he frequently wailed. ‘It’s nothing but a sign on the side of a hill. And I’m the one that’s keeping it going.’ (When Hollywood became rundown in the 1990s, he tried to organise the city council into cleaning up the town, but his efforts ultimately failed.)
During the 1950s he had lived the high life. Before he turned 40, he had earned $12m and spent even more. He declared that he was only following WH Auden’s advice: ‘Thou shalt not live within thy means,’ but in 1962 declared the first of two bankruptcies, blaming gambling and alimony for the loss of his fortune. By then he was married for the fifth time – to Barbara Ann Thomason, who had four children with Rooney and would be killed in a murder-suicide by her lover in 1966.
In the 1970s, Rooney became a born-again Christian, after a strange encounter in a Lake Tahoe casino coffee shop with a ‘bus boy’ who leaned towards him and whispered in his ear, ‘Jesus Christ loves you very much,’ before disappearing. He was a changed man after that. ‘I’m always proud to tell people I’m a Christian. I try to do the right thing, but inevitably and unfortunately I do the wrong thing. I suffer from being human.’
Born in 1920 to vaudeville entertainers Joe and Nell (Carter) Yule, Mickey had become the star of his parents’ act by the age of two. When he turned four, his parents split up and mother and son headed for Hollywood. There, Mickey made his film debut as a cigar-puffing dwarf. At six, he was cast in Mickey’s Circus as Mickey McGuire, the cocky little kid of the popular comic strips.
One lunch break while filming the Mickey McGuire comedies, he walked by an open office at Warner Brothers studio, poked his head in, and introduced himself. Mickey told me this story himself, with great relish. I was never sure whether to believe him.
‘“Who are you?” I asked the guy working there.
“My name is Walt Disney,” he said. “Come over and sit on my lap.”
‘So I went over and sat on his lap, and on the table was a mouse he had drawn. “My gosh, that’s a good-looking mouse, Mr Disney.”
“It sure is, Mickey,” he said, and he stopped and looked into space for a minute. “Mickey, Mickey,” he said. “Tell me something, how would you like me to name this mouse after you?”
‘And I said, “I sure would like that, but right now I got to go and get a tuna sandwich.” And I jumped down. You can believe me, it’s a true story.’
When he was 13, he was cast as Clark Gable as a boy in Manhattan Melodrama. The film led to an MGM contract and by 1937, Rooney had become a star, thanks to A Family Affair, the movie in which he first played Andy Hardy. Andy was the classic boy next door – mischievous, lively, ambitious. In that role, Mickey became America’s favourite teenager. He would reprise the role 14 times.
Off screen, Rooney was chasing women and attending nightclubs, something Louis B Mayer objected to. ‘I don’t care what you do off camera,’ he warned, ‘just don’t do it in public. You’re Andy Hardy! You’re a symbol!’
Mickey earned his first of four Oscar nominations for Babes In Arms, in which he featured with Judy Garland. They worked together in a series of successful musicals that launched them as one of Hollywood’s great teams. As war broke out in Europe, Mickey was escorting Judy Garland to the premiere of The Wizard Of Oz. ‘It was a flop at first,’ he recalled. ‘The studio didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what Judy thought of it. I took her to the premiere and we left before it was over. She didn’t want to see any more.’
Was Judy in love with him, I asked. ‘No. We just liked each other a lot and we loved working together.’ But Mickey’s voice cracked and his eyes became moist. ‘There’ll never be another Judy Garland. She was the greatest entertainer in the world, but unfortunately she never found the happiness she so rightly deserved.’
He left to go to war in 1943. He spent two years entertaining the troops on the front line and was awarded the Bronze Star by General Patton – ‘the highest award I ever got’. But when he returned to Hollywood, personal troubles had eroded his polished image. His relationship with MGM ended and Mickey reinvented himself as a character actor, receiving another Oscar nomination for 1956 war movie The Bold And The Brave. Two more Oscar nominations would follow, and, in 1982, an honorary Academy Award.
He credited wife Jan for his rebirth. At her urging, he took the role in Sugar Babies, a musical that eulogised his show-business roots. In 1979, he made his Broadway debut opposite Ann Miller in the burlesque tribute to vaudeville and it was a massive hit. There were more films and musical tours, and for three years (2007-2009), Rooney appeared in the British pantomime Cinderella as Baron Hardup. He loved that because he was a devoted Anglophile. He was also, he said, like a rubber ball – always bouncing back.
His last three years, however, were mired in a vicious family row. He took out a restraining order against Jan’s son Christopher. Mickey accused him of verbal, emotional and financial abuse, with withholding food and medicine and forcing him to sign over his assets.
After that, Mickey and Jan separated. In his will, updated less than a month before his death, Mickey left his entire estate to another son. His wife and other children were disinherited. The value of the estate was just $18,000 (£12,000).
But there were still good times. Only months before his death, he attended the Academy Awards. ‘It’s such a thrill to be here!’ he beamed, as he waved to the crowd. Just for that moment, he might have felt his Hollywood hadn’t changed that much after all. He’d had it all and lost it all but Mickey always boomeranged back. For next to God, what he loved most was an audience. ‘I’m very, very proud to have been given the opportunity to perform,’ he told me. He acted right up to the end. He’d just completed Night At The Museum 3 (‘the most fun I’ve ever had on a picture’) and a new film version of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde.
‘Thank God for the normality of it all,’ he told me the last time we were together. ‘I am blessed to be in a business where you’re an eternal child. That’s all actors are, grown-up children, and they get paid handsomely for playing make-believe. I never want to grow up.’
And he never did.