Film legend Mickey Rooney has passed away at age 93, after an 87-year career in cinema. Rooney, born in Brooklyn, was famous for roles in movies like Boys Town, Babes in Arms, National Velvet, and The Black Stallion. He was married eight times, including to Ava Gardner and Barbara Ann Thompson.
Mickey Rooney, who was born as Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920, made his stage debut at 18 months old on his parents' vaudeville act.
Rooney turned to television, starring as fast-talking TV studio page Mickey Mulligan in the 1954-55 sitcom The Mickey Rooney Show, but up against The Jackie Gleason Show, the show lasted just 39 episodes. (He would star in two other short-lived TV comedies: 1964’s Mickey, in which he operates a hotel in Southern California, and 1982’s One of the Boys, in which his character moves in with grandson Dana Carvey and roommate Nathan Lane. He also reportedly passed on the chance to play Archie Bunker in Norman Lear’s All in the Family.)
Rooney received Emmy nominations for dramatic turns in 1957, 1958 and 1961 installments of the anthology series Playhouse 90, Alcoa Theatre and The Dick Powell Theatre, respectively, but in the early 1960s, he was playing in nightclubs and dinner theaters, gambling on the horses too much and forced to file for bankruptcy. A series of regrettable film roles (like in 1965’s How to Stuff a Wild Bikini) followed.
Said a tearful Rooney upon accepting his Honorary Oscar in 1983: “When I was 19 years old, I was the No. 1 star of the world, for two years. When I was 40, nobody wanted me. I couldn’t get a job. And then a professor from the University of Tennessee got a show together with Terry Allen Kramer and Harry Rigby called Sugar Babies, and it resurrected my career.”
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Mickey Rooney with Judy Garland in 1939's "Babes in Arms."
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From 1990-93, Rooney reprised his role as the trainer in The New Adventures of the Black Stallion for the Family Channel. He wrote and acted in Outlaws: The Legend of O.B. Taggart (1994), starred in a 1998 stage version of The Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt and was seen in such films as Babe: Pig in the City (1998), Night at the Museum (2006), Now Here (2010) and The Muppets (2011).
Meanwhile, he traveled with his wife doing the multimedia live stage production Let’s Put on a Show! recounting his eventful life in show business. His motto: “Don’t retire, inspire!”
Rooney wrote several songs early in his career, including “Have a Heart,” “Oceans Apart,” “That’s What Love Will Do for You” and the prophetic “I Can’t Afford to Fall in Love.”
He composed a three-movement symphony titled Melodante, which he performed on the piano at Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 Inauguration Gala in Constitution Hall.
In addition to his wife and stepchildren, Rooney’s survivors include his children Mickey Jr., Theodore, Kelly, Kerry, Kimmy, Michael (a choreographer), Jonelle and Jimmy. Another son, Tim — like Mickey Jr. a member of The Mickey Mouse Club in the ’50s — died in 2006.
In March 2011, Rooney accused Christopher and his wife of taking his money, denying him his medication and withholding food.
“All I want to do is live a peaceful life, to regain my life and be happy,” Rooney wrote to his fans. “I pray to God each day to protect us, help us endure and guide those other senior citizens who are also suffering.”
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