Mickey Rooney, 1920–2014

For almost a decade, Mickey Rooney was America’s favorite teenager. The actor starred as the scampish Andy Hardy in 15 films between 1937 and 1946, all of which revolved around the youngster making harmless mischief in his wholesome middle-American neighborhood. The series made more than $75 million at the box office—a huge sum at a time when theater tickets often cost 25 cents—and in 1939 the 18-year-old Rooney, who stood just 5-foot-2, was awarded a special Oscar for his “spirit and personification of youth.” But off-screen, Rooney was anything but a clean-cut Hardy boy. With reckless abandon, he chased women, partied in nightclubs, and bet on horses. “Behave yourself,” he was warned by MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer. “You’re Andy Hardy. You’re the United States.” Rooney didn’t listen. By 1962 he was bankrupt, having frittered away his $12 million fortune on booze, gambling debts, and alimony payments to his four ex-wives. (He’d marry four more times). “There have been crevices, fissures, and pits,” he said in 1979, “and I’ve fallen into a lot of them.”

Rooney lived most of his life in the limelight. Born Joseph Yule Jr. in Brooklyn, he “made his first stage appearance at 17 months as part of his comic father and dancer mother’s vaudeville performance,” said USA Today. His parents split when he was 4, each of them taking $20 of the $40 they had saved, and mother and son headed to Hollywood. Rooney made his film debut at age 5, as a midget in the silent Not to Be Trusted, and appeared in dozens of movie shorts based on the Mickey McGuirecomic-strip character. “Rooney was so closely identified with the little tough guy he played in the series,” said the Los Angeles Times, “he began using the name Mickey McGuire.” Legal issues forced him to drop the last name, and a studio publicist and his mother suggested “Rooney.”

“By age 14,” said The Boston Globe, “he’d signed a long-term contract with MGM Studios and blossomed into a major star.” In 1935 alone, he appeared in six films, including a big screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which his portrayal of the sprite Puck eclipsed James Cagney’s role as Bottom. But it was the 1937 movie A Family Affair—the first of the Hardy series—that turned Rooney into a household name and, from 1939 to 1941, America’s No. 1 box office star. More hits followed. Critics praised his role as the swaggering bully redeemed by Spencer Tracy’s Father Flanagan in 1938’s Boys Town, and he sang and danced his way to an Oscar nomination in the 1939 musical Babes in Arms.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Rooney’s success seemed unstoppable. But when he returned from World War II, having spent two years overseas entertaining troops, “his career fell apart,” said The Washington Post. He no longer looked like a child star, and the recent failure of his marriage to starlet Ava Gardner wrecked his family-friendly reputation. Rooney tried reinventing himself as a character actor, but by the 1960s, he said, “there was just no demand for me.” Desperate for money to fuel his expensive habits, he took every job he could, appearing in low-budget junk like the 1965 beach party film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. The perception grew that Rooney was a has-been, and stand-up comedians cracked jokes about his string of divorces. “It’s like my divorces were dastardly deeds,” Rooney said. But even he made fun of them. “My marriage license reads, ‘To whom it may concern,’” he once joked.

“In 1978 he found his final—and most lasting—marriage with the then-39-year-old country singer Jan Chamberlin,” said The Independent (U.K.), and his career began to pick up. At 59, Rooney made his Broadway debut in the 1979 song-and-dance spectacular Sugar Babies, earning him a Tony nomination. In 1982, Rooney won an Emmy for the TV drama Bill, about a mentally challenged man living on his own for the first time, and many critics called it his best performance. He kept bouncing along, making cameos in movies including the 2006 Ben Stiller comedy Night at the Museum and 2011’s The Muppets. Rooney said he simply couldn’t imagine retiring from the spotlight. “When I open a refrigerator door and the light goes on,” he often joked, “I want to perform.”