86 Facts About Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941, and one of the best-paid actors of that era.

At the height of a career marked by declines and comebacks, Mickey Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized mainstream United States self-image.

Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles in National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said Mickey Rooney was "the closest thing to a genius" with whom he had ever worked.

Mickey Rooney 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.

Mickey Rooney first performed in vaudeville as a child actor, and made his film debut at the age of six.

Mickey Rooney played the title character in the "Mickey McGuire" series of 78 short films, from age seven to 13.

Mickey Rooney received his second Academy Award nomination in the same category for his role as Homer Macauley in The Human Comedy.

However, numerous low-budget, but critically well-received films noir had Mickey Rooney playing the lead during this period and the 1950s.

Mickey Rooney's career was renewed with well-received supporting roles in films such as The Bold and the Brave, Requiem for a Heavyweight, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Pete's Dragon, and The Black Stallion.

Mickey Rooney made hundreds of appearances on TV, including dramas, variety programs, and talk shows.

Mickey Rooney's 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.

When Mickey Rooney was born, his parents were appearing together in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl.

Mickey Rooney 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.

Mickey Rooney's parents separated when he was four years old in 1924, and he and his mother moved to Hollywood the following year.

Mickey Rooney made his first film appearance at age six in 1926, in the short Not to be Trusted.

Mickey Rooney got bit parts in films such as The Beast of the City and The Life of Jimmy Dolan, which allowed him to work alongside stars such as Joel McCrea, Colleen Moore, Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Mickey Rooney enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School and later attended Fairfax High School.

Mickey Rooney's mother saw an advertisement for a child to play the role of "Mickey McGuire" in a series of short films.

Mickey Rooney made other films in his adolescence, including several more of the McGuire films.

Mickey 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.

In 1937, Mickey Rooney was selected to portray Andy Hardy in A Family Affair, which MGM had planned as a B-movie.

Mickey Rooney's character portrayed a typical "anxious, hyperactive, girl-crazy teenager", and he soon became the unintended main star of the films.

Behind the scenes Mickey Rooney was like the "hyperactive girl-crazy teenager" he portrayed on the screen.

In 1937, Mickey Rooney made his first film alongside Judy Garland with Thoroughbreds Don't Cry.

Garland and Mickey Rooney became close friends as they co-starred in future films and became a successful song-and-dance team.

In 1937, Mickey Rooney received top billing as Shockey Carter in Hoosier Schoolboy, but his breakthrough role as a dramatic actor came in 1938's Boys Town opposite Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, who runs a home for wayward and homeless boys.

Jane Ellen Wayne describes one of the "most famous scenes" in the film, where tough young Mickey Rooney is playing poker with a cigarette in his mouth, his hat is cocked, and his feet are up on the table.

Mickey Rooney was the biggest box-office draw in 1939,1940, and 1941.

Mickey Rooney appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1940, timed to coincide with the release of Young Tom Edison; the cover story began:.

Mickey Rooney's name was Mickey Rooney, and to a large part of the more articulate US cinema audience, his name was becoming a frequently used synonym for brat.

The fact that Mickey Rooney fully enjoyed his life as an actor played a large role in those changes:.

Mickey Rooney is the closest thing to a genius that I ever worked with.

In June 1944, Mickey Rooney was inducted into the United States Army, where he served more than 21 months entertaining the troops in America and Europe in Special Services.

Mickey Rooney spent part of the time as a radio personality on the American Forces Network, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for entertaining troops in combat zones.

Mickey Rooney appeared in the film Words and Music in 1948, which paired him for the last time with Garland on film.

Mickey Rooney briefly starred in a CBS radio series, Shorty Bell, in the summer of 1948, and reprised his role as Andy Hardy, with most of the original cast, in a syndicated radio version of The Hardy Family in 1949 and 1950.

Mickey Rooney starred as a ragingly egomaniacal television comedian, loosely based on Red Buttons, in the live 90-minute television drama The Comedian, in the Playhouse 90 series on the evening of Valentine's Day in 1957, and as himself in a 1960 revue called The Musical Revue of 1959, based on the 1929 film The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

In 1958, Mickey Rooney joined Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in hosting an episode of NBC's short-lived Club Oasis comedy and variety show.

In 1960, Mickey Rooney directed and starred in The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, an ambitious comedy known for its multiple flashbacks and many cameos.

Mickey Rooney accepted film roles in undistinguished films, but still appeared in better works, such as Requiem for a Heavyweight and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Mickey Rooney portrayed a Japanese character, Mr Yunioshi, in the 1961 film version of Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Mickey Rooney's performance was criticized by some in subsequent years as a racist caricature.

Mickey Rooney later said that he would not have taken the role if he had known it would offend people.

Francis Ford Coppola had bought the rights to make The Black Stallion, and when casting it, he called Mickey Rooney and asked him if he thought he could play a jockey.

The story line had "Mickey Rooney" operating a resort hotel in Southern California.

Mickey Rooney turned Lear down, and the role eventually went to Carroll O'Connor.

Mickey Rooney garnered a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special for his role in 1981's Bill.

Mickey Rooney's acting quality in the film has been favorably compared to other actors who took on similar roles, including Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, and Tom Hanks.

Mickey Rooney reprised his role in 1983's Bill: On His Own, earning an Emmy nomination for the turn.

Mickey Rooney appeared in television commercials for Garden State Life Insurance Company in 2002.

Co-star Miller recalls that Mickey Rooney "never missed a performance or a chance to ad-lib or read the lines the same way twice, if he even stuck to the script".

Mickey Rooney toured Canada in a dinner theatre production of The Mind with the Naughty Man in the mid-1990s.

Mickey Rooney played The Wizard in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt at Madison Square Garden.

Mickey Rooney wrote a memoir titled Life is too Short, published by Villard Books in 1991.

Mickey Rooney declared bankruptcy for the second time in 1996 and described himself as "broke" in 2005.

Mickey Rooney kept performing on stage and in the movies, but his personal property was valued at only $18,000 when he died in 2014.

Vanity Fair called it "a homespun affair full of dog-eared jokes" that featured Mickey Rooney singing George Gershwin songs.

Mickey Rooney returned to play the role again in the sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in 2009, in a scene that was deleted from the final film.

On May 26,2007, Mickey Rooney was grand marshal at the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival.

Mickey Rooney made his British pantomime debut, playing Baron Hardup in Cinderella, at the Sunderland Empire Theatre over the 2007 Christmas period, a role he reprised at Bristol Hippodrome in 2008 and at the Milton Keynes theatre in 2009.

In 2011, Mickey Rooney made a cameo appearance in The Muppets, and in 2014, at age 93, six weeks before his death, he reprised his role as Gus in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, which was dedicated to Robin Williams, who died that year, and to him.

Mickey Rooney was just happy to be invited to the party.

An October 2015 article in The Hollywood Reporter maintained that Mickey Rooney was frequently abused and financially depleted by his closest relatives in the last years of his life.

Mickey Rooney died humiliated and betrayed, nearly broke, and often broken.

At the time of his death, Mickey Rooney was married to Jan Chamberlin Mickey Rooney, although they had separated in June 2012.

Mickey Rooney had nine children and two stepchildren, as well as 19 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Mickey Rooney had been addicted to sleeping pills, and overcame the addiction in 2000 when he was in his late 70s.

Mickey Rooney claimed that he was a victim of elder abuse.

On March 2,2011, Mickey Rooney appeared before a special US Senate committee that was considering legislation to curb elder abuse, testifying about the abuse he claimed to have suffered at the hands of family members.

In 2011, all of Mickey Rooney's finances were permanently handed over to a conservator, who called Mickey Rooney "completely competent".

Mickey Rooney was married eight times, with six of the marriages ending in divorce.

Mickey Rooney married actress Elaine Mahnken in 1952, and they divorced in 1958.

In 1958, Mickey Rooney married model and actress Barbara Ann Thomason.

Mickey Rooney was murdered in 1966 by stuntman and actor Milos Milos, who then shot himself.

Thomason and Milos had an affair while Mickey Rooney was traveling, and police theorized that Milos had shot her after she wanted to end it.

Mickey Rooney then married Barbara's best friend, Marge Lane, though the marriage lasted only 100 days.

Mickey Rooney was married to Carolyn Hockett from 1969 to 1975.

Mickey Rooney died of natural causes in Studio City, California, on April 6,2014, at the age of 93.

Mickey Rooney's eight surviving children said in a statement that they were barred from seeing Rooney during his final years.

Mickey Rooney died owing medical bills and back taxes, and contributions were solicited from the public.

Mickey Rooney was one of the last surviving actors of the silent-film era.

Mickey Rooney made 43 films between the ages of 15 and 25.

Thomson explains that Mickey Rooney's characters were able to cover a wide range of emotional types, and gives three examples where "Mickey Rooney is not just an actor of genius, but an artist able to maintain a stylized commentary on the demon impulse of the small, belligerent man:".

From child star to character actor, from movie shorts to television specials, and from films to Broadway, Mickey Rooney ultimately did prove he could do it all, do it well, and keep on doing it.

Mickey Rooney's is a unique career, both for its versatility and its longevity.

One of the most enduring performers in show business history, Mickey Rooney appeared in over 300 films in 88 years.