Thursday Minute
No. 5 | January 7, 2010

Celluloid Heroes

Our theme this week
The celluloid heroes of “Celluloid Heroes”

Featured this week
Monday         —   Greta Garbo
Tuesday         —   Rudolph Valentino / Béla Lugosi
Wednesday    —   Bette Davis / George Sanders

Mickey Rooney

And if you stamped on Mickey Rooney
He would still turn round and smile

The essentials
Where do you begin with Mickey Rooney?  Let’s start with now.  Mickey Rooney is still living—so in one respect, he’s unlike the other performers featured this week.  Not only is Rooney living, he’s still working, and working a lot for a man who’ll turn 90 in September, with more than ten films and more than 20 credits in all over the past decade.  Not bad for a guy who got his start in movies during the silent era.

The son of vaudeville performers, Rooney grew up on stage and started in movies at an age most kids start school.  During the ’20s and ’30s, he appeared as Mickey McGuire in dozens of shorts (first silents, then talkies).  His antics at a table tennis competition caught the eye of David O. Selznick, who cast him as the younger version of Clark Gable in the 1934 crime story Manhattan Melodrama (notably, the movie that gangster John Dillinger had seen the night he was killed leaving the theater).  The next year Rooney was Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an indelible performance that has garnered a mix of reactions:  “a masterpiece” (David Thomson), “exceedingly obstreperous” (J. Hoberman).  In 1937 he appeared in A Family Affair, an MGM film whose success launched the “Andy Hardy” series, which in turn vaulted Rooney to a new level of popularity.  He played the adventurous young man who would get himself into one small-town jam after another, often finding a solution after a talk with his stern-but-kind father, Judge Hardy.  Also in 1937, Rooney made Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, the first of ten films with his song-and-dance partner Judy Garland (she appeared in three of the Andy Hardy films).  Their comedy-musical hits included Babes in Arms (1939), for which Rooney became the first teenager nominated for an Oscar, and Babes on Broadway (1941).  Boys Town (1938) earned Rooney critical acclaim as the tough bully Whitey Marsh, who keeps running away but is saved in the end by Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy), the priest who believes “there is no such thing as a bad boy.”  Rooney’s energy and talent won favor with audiences.  He was among the top ten box office draws each year from 1938 to 1943, and number one among Hollywood stars in 1939, 1940, and 1941.  He played the horse trainer Mi Taylor in National Velvet (1944), opposite the young Elizabeth Taylor.  He returned to Hollywood after the war, and in adult roles he never was as big a star as he had been in his youth.  He did became a fine character actor, though, working steadily in the decades since.  Some of his notable performances include the scary, manic lead in the Don Siegel-directed Baby Face Nelson (1957) and the trainer of a washed-up boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962).  He was the completely over-the-top landlord Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), an ethnic characterization that drew criticism (in the years since, director Blake Edwards expressed regrets and producer Richard Shepherd apologized).  Rooney earned good reviews and an Oscar nomination for the 1979 adaptation of The Black Stallion.  It was his fourth acting nomination.  He was awarded a special “juvenile” Oscar in 1938 and an Honorary Oscar in 1983.  Rooney has also worked on Broadway and in television, and he’s written several books.  Through his long career, mixed in with some work that’s no doubt forgettable, he’s turned in many memorable performances, comedic and dramatic.  Mickey Rooney is an important figure in movie history, a star of the first order.  Not to mention, he’s not done yet.

Beyond the final credits
Mickey Rooney kept the Hollywood press busy, marrying famously and often.  His first marriage was to teen bride Ava Gardner, and he married eight times in all.  Perhaps he finally learned the trick.  He and his current wife, Jan, have been married since 1978, a longer stretch than all of Rooney’s previous marriages combined.

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Strike Up the Band (1940)
Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland

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MAD FilmFest 101 Hint:
Two of the people who are namesakes of presidents were major league ballplayers.  (It’ll help to know their full name.)

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Award Spotlight
Presented each year since 1948 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the BAFTA awards are Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.  The first three films to win Best British Film were Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, and The Third Man.  All three were directed by Carol Reed.

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