Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule Jr.; other pseudonym Mickey Maguire;[1] September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor, producer, radio entertainer, and vaudevillian. In a career spanning nearly nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent-film era.[2] He was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941,[3] and one of the best-paid actors of that era.[4] At the height of a career marked by declines and comebacks, Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized the mainstream United States self-image.
At the peak of his career between ages 15 and 25, he made 43 films, and was one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most consistently successful actors. A versatile performer, he became a celebrated character actor later in his career. Laurence Olivier once said he considered Rooney "the best there has ever been".[4] Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles in National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said Rooney was "the closest thing to a genius" with whom he had ever worked.[5] He won a Golden Globe Award in 1982 and an Emmy Award in the same year for the title role in a television movie Bill and was awarded the Academy Honorary Award in 1982.
Rooney first performed in vaudeville as a child actor, and made his film debut at the age of six. He played the title character in the "Mickey McGuire" series of 78 short films, from age seven to 13. At 14 and 15, he played Puck in the play and subsequent film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At the age of 16, he began playing Andy Hardy, and gained his first recognition at 17 as Whitey Marsh in Boys Town. At only 19, Rooney became the second-youngest Best Actor in a Leading Role nominee and the first teenager to be nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Mickey Moran in 1939 film adaptation of coming-of-age Broadway musical Babes in Arms; he was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award in 1939.[6] Rooney received his second Academy Award nomination in the same category for his role as Homer Macauley in The Human Comedy.
Drafted into the military during World War II, Rooney served nearly two years, entertaining over two million troops on stage and radio. He was awarded a Bronze Star for performing in combat zones. Returning in 1945, he was too old for juvenile roles, but too short at 5 ft 2 in (157 cm) for most adult roles, and was unable to gain as many starring roles. However, numerous low-budget, but critically well-received films noir had Rooney playing the lead during this period and the 1950s. Rooney's career was renewed with well-received supporting roles in films such as The Bold and the Brave (1956), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Pete's Dragon (1977), and The Black Stallion (1979). Rooney received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1957 for The Bold and the Brave, and 1980 for The Black Stallion. In the early 1980s, he returned to Broadway in Sugar Babies, a role that earned him nominations for Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. He made hundreds of appearances on TV, including dramas, variety programs, and talk shows.
Early life and acting background[edit]
Mickey Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr.,[7] in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on September 23, 1920, the only child of Nellie W. Carter and Joe Yule.[8] His mother was an American former chorus girl and burlesque performer from Kansas City, Missouri, while his father was a Scottish-born vaudevillian, who had emigrated to New York from Glasgow with his family at the age of three months.[4] They lived in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn.[9] When Rooney was born, his parents were appearing together in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl. He later recounted in his memoirs that he began performing at the age of 17 months as part of his parents' routine, wearing a specially tailored tuxedo.[10][11][12]
Career[edit]
1924–1926: Career beginnings as a child actor[edit]
Rooney's parents separated when he was four years old in 1924, and he and his mother moved to Hollywood the following year. He made his first film appearance at age six in 1926, in the short Not to be Trusted.[4][13] Rooney got bit parts in films such as The Beast of the City (1932) and The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933), which allowed him to work alongside stars such as Joel McCrea, Colleen Moore, Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Wayne, and Jean Harlow. He enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School and later attended Fairfax High School.[14]
1927–1936: Mickey McGuire[edit]
His mother saw an advertisement for a child to play the role of "Mickey McGuire" in a series of short films.[15] Rooney got the role and became "Mickey" for 78 of the films, running from 1927 to 1936, starting with Mickey's Circus (1927), his first starring role.[a][b] During this period, he also briefly voiced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Walter Lantz Productions.[19] He made other films in his adolescence, including several more of the McGuire films. At age 14, he played the role of Puck in the Warner Bros. all-star adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935. Critic David Thomson hailed his performance as "one of the cinema's most arresting pieces of magic". Rooney then moved to MGM, where he befriended Judy Garland, with whom he began making a series of musicals that propelled both of them to stardom.[20][21][22]
Bibliography
