Actors - Mickey Rooney

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Mickey Rooney

	Actors - Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr., September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York), is an American film actor.

Biography

Born into a vaudeville family, Rooney began performing at the age of 17 months in 1922. His father was from a Scottish background, whilst his mother came from the southern US. His adopted name means that he is often mistakenly referred to as an Irish - American. He is five feet tall.

Entering the movie business in 1927, he literally made his name as the title character in the Mickey McGuire shorts. These were a series of over forty silent, two-reel comedies adapted from the Toonerville Trolley comic strip, in which he starred through 1936. For a time he billed himself as Mickey McGuire, but legally changed his name to Mickey Rooney in 1932. Also during this period he met Walt Disney, and later he would claim Disney had named Mickey Mouse after him. It is difficult to verify, and others have made similar claims, but Rooney takes credit for giving rising starlet Norma Jean Baker the stage name Marilyn Monroe.

In 1934 he signed to MGM and was educated at the studio's School for Professional Children.

Rooney's successful role as Andy Hardy in A Family Affair (1937) led to fourteen further films featuring that character from 1938 to 1958. His first role as the top-billed star in a feature film was as Shockey Carter in Hoosier Schoolboy (1937) with Edward Pawley playing his father. His breakthrough serious role came in 1938's Boys Town opposite Spencer Tracy as Whitey Marsh, which opened shortly before his 18th birthday. His fame peaked in World War II with a string of successful musicals with Judy Garland, including the Oscar nominated Babes in Arms (1939) as well as more serious roles in films such as The Human Comedy
(1943) and National Velvet
(1944).

In 1944 Rooney entered military service for 21 months during World War II, during which time he was a radio personality on the American Forces Network; after his return his career slumped. He appeared in a number of indifferent films, including Words and Music in 1948 which paired him for the last time with Garland on film (he appeared with her on one episode as a guest on her CBS variety series in the early 60's), and one final Andy Hardy film in the late 1950s. The Mickey Rooney Show, also known as Hey Mulligan, appeared on NBC for 39 episodes during 1954 and 1955. In 1960 he directed and starred in The Private Lives of Adam and Eve an ambitious comedy known for its multiple flashbacks and many cameos. In the 1960s Rooney returned to theatrical entertainment. He still accepted film roles in undistinguished movies, but occasionally he would appear in better works such as Requiem for a Heavyweight
(1962) and The Black Stallion
(1979). On Dec 31, 1961, he appeared on televisions "What's My Line" and mentioned that he had already started enrolling students in the MRSE (Mickey Rooney School of Entertainment).

He was awarded an Academy Juvenile Award in 1938, and in 1983 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted him their Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime of achievement. Laurence Olivier called Rooney "the single best film actor America ever produced." Judy Garland stated that Rooney was "the world's greatest talent."

Rooney did the voices for three Christmas TV animated/stop action specials: Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), and Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July—always playing Santa Claus.

He continued to be busy in stage and television work through the 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the acclaimed stage play Sugar Babies with Ann Miller beginning in 1979, starring in a long-running TV series based on The Black Stallion, touring Canada in a dinner theatre production of The Mind with the Naughty Man in the mid-1990s, and playing The Wizard in a stage production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt. He also appeared in the documentary That's Entertainment III.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mickey Rooney ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Mickey Rooney; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Mickey Rooney

Biography

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay