So Long Mickey and Andy and Whitey and Homer and ...

I was in a district inservice on Internet safety today, and we were talking about Twitter. I logged on my account and clicked on #MickeyRooney. I go there from time to time, so I was not expecting to see that he had died yesterday. It was kind of a shock, even though he was 93 and could have died at any time. But it was still like hearing that an old friend had died, and you just happened by chance to find out about it. I have blogged a few times about Mickey Rooney and my favorite Rooney films and characters so I will just say, "Wow, Mickey and Judy together again. Let's put on a show!"

I found this picture, a theatre card, in my mother's 1930s movie star scrapbook.

My Mickey Rooney Film List

My wife is a member of a little group of teachers who call themselves “The Oldies but Goodies.” They used to be curriculum facilitators for Jordan School District and are now back as teachers in the classroom. They meet once a month to discuss curriculum. One of the group was able to obtain tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert featuring Deborah Voigt last night, so the oldies went together. My wife was happy to go, because she has gone with me to the HD broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and has seen Voigt in four operas. The other oldies had never heard of her, the low brows!

I got to stay home and babysit the dog, because our family didn’t enter the “lottery” for concert tickets this year after not getting tickets for the last four years. What did I do? I watched a Mickey Rooney movie at TCM On Demand: Stablemates co-staring Wallace Beery, with Margaret Hamilton before she was the Wicked Witch of the West. Rooney was 17, playing a14/15-year-old. Most of his teens and early twenties he was playing younger teens and he could cry with the best of them.

 

Mickey Rooney was in 147 films from Manhattan Melodrama 1934, to Night at the Museum 2006. This does not include the almost two hundred television movies and series episodes he appeared in from 1952 to 2008. I have seen 38 of the movies he appeared in between 1934 and 2006, most of which were made between 1934 and 1944. Some of these I have seen multiple times. Rooney was the star of 96, unless I miss counted, Mickey McGuire comedies, cartoon voices, and short comedies between 1926 (age 5) to 1934 (age13). I have only seen two of the Mickey McGuire shorts (silent), and I don’t recall the titles. Here is a list of the Mickey Rooney films I have seen with the year, character name, and Rooney’s age during filming:

Manhattan Melodrama 1934   Blackie as a boy (13)

 

A Midsummer Night Dream 1935   Puck or Robin Goodfellow (14)

Ah, Wilderness 1935   Tommy (14)

Little Lord Fauntleroy 1936    Dick (15)

The Devil Is a Sissy 1936   “Gig” Stevens (15) One of my favorites.

A Family Affair 1937   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (16)

Captains Courageous 1937   Dan (16)

Hoosier Schoolboy 1937   Shockey Carter (16)

Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry 1937  Timmie Donovan (16) First film with Judy Garland.

Your only Young Once 1937   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (16)

Judge Hardy’s Children 1938   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (17)

Love Finds Andy Hardy 1938   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (17)

Boys Town 1938   Whitey Marsh (17)

Stablemates 1938   Michael “Mickey” (17) Second horse race movie.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1939   Huckleberry Finn (17/18)

Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever 1939   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (18)

Babes in Arms 1939   Mickey Moran (18)

Judge Hardy and Son 1939   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (18/19)

Young Tom Edison 1940   Thomas Alva “Tom” Edison (19)

Andy Hardy Meets Debutante 1940   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (19)

Strike Up the Band 1940   Jimmy Connors (19)

Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary 1941   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (20)

Men of Boys Town 1941   Whitey marsh (20)

Babes on Broadway 1941   Tommy Williams (20/21)

A Yank at Eton 1942   Timothy Dennis (21)

Andy Hardy’s Double Life 1942   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (21/22)

The Human Comedy 1943   Homer Macauley (22) Another favorite.

Girl Crazy 1943   Danny Churchill, Jr. (22)

Andy Hardy’s Blond Trouble 1944   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (23)

National Velvet 1944   Mi Taylor (23)

Love Laughs at Andy Hardy 1946   Andrew “Andy” Hardy (25)

Words and Music 1948   Lorenz Hart (27)

The Bridges at Toko-Ri 1954   Mike Forney (33)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961    Mr. Yunioshi (40)

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 1963   Ding Bell (43)

Pete’s Dragon 1977   Lampie (56)

The Black Stallion 1979   Henry Dailey (58)

Night at the Museum 2006   Gus (85)

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Mickey

Happy ninety-third birthday, Mickey Rooney, A.K.A. Mickey McGuire, Andrew “Andy” Hardy, Puck, Tommy Miller, “Gig” Stevens, Dan, Shocky Carter, Jerry Crump, Timmie Donovan, Chick Evans, Terry O’Mulvaney, Whitey Marsh, Huckleberry Finn, Mickey Moran, young Tom Edison, Jimmy Conners, Tommy Williams, Timothy Dennis, Homer Macauley, Danny Churchill, Jr., Mi Taylor, Killer McCoy, Mr. Yunioshi, and so many others I can’t name here for lack of time and space. Thanks for all the happy memories you have given me and all your fans during the 87 years you have been in show business. Many happy returns of the day.

Meandering Through A Bitter Sweet Melancholy

I was listening to my Johnny Crawford play list on YouTube while cataloging new Spanish language books I am adding to the library collection for the dual language students. As I was typing along filling in all the necessary information to make a "clean" MARC record for the library online catalog, I started feeling a bit of that bitter-sweet melancholy with which I am sometimes afflicted when I listen to the "old" songs from the '50s and '60s. It is not a depression, but a profound feeling of loss: a sadness that brings a lump to the throat, a weight to the heart, and sometimes a moistness to the eyes. I have noticed that this melancholy occurs more often as I have passed "middle age" and am speeding toward the end. Usually, when this phenomenon starts to take hold of me, I stop listening to the '50s and '60s pop and rock and roll and rescue my mental health by fleeing to my classical or movie theme playlist. (Bach is stupendous for the uplifting of the spirit and the recreation of the mind.) Silence doesn't help much as the songs and the memories they have conjured linger like fog.

I did not try to escape this time. I started replaying multiple times some of the songs like "Living in the Past" (1963), "When I Fall in Love" (1963), and "Lonesome Town" (1962). (I have always been a sucker for a good ol' ballad.) While I listened, my cataloging became slower as my mind meandered from one thought stream to another.

For some reason known only to my subconscious mind, I replayed Crawford's version of "Moon River" again and again until I could hear it without playing it. I like most of the versions of this song by Andy Williams and others. Even Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's version has its charm. But Johnny Crawford's rendition has become my favorite. As the old melancholy crept over me, I began a metacognition (good education buzz-word) about why these old songs from my youth tend to affect me this way.

As my mind flitted pell mell from one thought stream to another, I settled on Breakfast at Tiffany's, the film for which "Moon River" was written. I pondered the fact that all the actors in Breakfast at Tiffany's, excepting Mickey Rooney and maybe Beverly Powers, are dead, and many of them died at a younger age than I am now. And I am not old. This is true as well of many friends and family members who were around when Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini won the 1961 Oscar for best song for "Moon River."    "... Must give us pause ..."

My thoughts skipped over to the play Our Town, specifically the third act when the newly deceased Emily Webb goes back to a point in her life to relive a happy day. I played the part of the Stage Manager in Our Town when I was a senior in high school.* This play used to be, and may still be, a staple of high school drama departments performed by adolescents who couldn't possibly understand the painful depths of the third act, having themselves such little personal past and a paucity of experience to reflect upon. The Stage Manager warns Emily that going back to experience a day, even a good, happy day will be more pain than joy. No, Emily, you can't go back, even in reverie, and have a completely happy time. Even a good, happy day is shrouded with a thin veil of sadness. The moment is gone; the time, the place, and the people are gone.

The memory is sweet, but the reality is bitter. The two mingled together is a heady mix. I am addicted to it, but if I want to accomplish anything of worth, I must not indulge too often. Ah, time for an antidote.

______________________
*Ten years later, while working at BUY as the Pardoe Theatre stage manager during a production of Our Town, I was an emergency four-performance stand-in for the part of the constable. The actor had a death in his family, and I was the only one who was tall enough to wear his costume. The other cast members were worried I would ruin their production; they knew me only as a stage tech and not as an actor. (I did receive rave reviews from the director during cast notes before my second performance.)

Happy Birthday Andy Hardy

Mickey Rooney surrounded by Judy Garland, Ann Rutherford, and Lana Turner.

Today Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) turns 92., born Joe Jule, Jr. in 1920. I loved watching the Andy Hardy movies on television when I was growing up in the '60s in Huntington Beach, California. Los Angeles had several local stations then that showed "old" movies throughout the day. Of course, the films of the nineteen thirties and forties were not really old in the nineteen sixties. Watching those films then is like watching films from the eighties today. (That would include "classics" like ET - The Extraterrestrial, the first three Indiana Jones adventures, The Road Warrior, Ferris Bueller's Day Off,  or even from the seventies like Star Wars, Jaws, etc. etc. etc...)

Anyway, I still love all those movies I saw back then, the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals like Babes in Arms and Strike Up the Band, all the Busby Berkley movies, The Andy Hardy series, the witty comedies, the World War Two propaganda films, and on and on and on... And they were all clean, too. No vulgar, gutter language and no graphic, gratuitous sexual content. Ah for the day when, though some people, even some of the actors we admired, may have been vulgar in the real world, we were not assaulted with such crassness in our entertainment.

But I wander from the good tidings of the day. Happy birthday, Mickey, and many returns of the day! You said in 1958: "I was a 14-year-old boy for 30 years," and you are still young for your age with 328 films to your credit and more to come.

P.S. This is one of my favorite photos of the young Mickey Rooney, because it belonged to my mother. I found it in her movie star scrapbook which she kept as a young teenager in the nineteen thirties. This picture is different from the rest of those in her book. It is a photograph, a theatre lobby card, while all the others are clippings from  the Sunday supplement of a newspaper.

Joe Jule Jr., as Mickey McGuire, AKA Mickey Rooney.

More on Mickey: In 1979, when he made his Broadway debut in the review, Sugar Babies, at the age of 59, Jim Watters wrote:

"Rooney's been performing since the age of two, when his vaudevillian parents made him part of the act. By his early teens he was getting raves playing brats, bullies, midgets and a vivid Puck in the all-star A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1939 he toppled the giants-Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby [also Tyron Power, Spencer Tracy, Shirley Temple, Bette Davis, Alice Faye, and Errol Flinn who were on the top ten list that year]-as the number one box-office draw."

Actually, in the golden decade before the decline and fall of the Hollywood studio system, 1936-1945, Mickey Rooney was in the top ten studio money makers list six out of those ten years. He was number four in 1938 and 1942, number one in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and ninth in 1943. Mickey was a "triple threat," an actor, singer and dancer. Whom do we have today that is comparable to his heyday? Justin Bieber? I think not.

 Here is a triple threat in one of my favorite films of 1936, The Devil Is a Sissy: Mickey, Freddie Bartholomew, and Jackie Cooper!

Mickey's swim party.

Musings for a dreary January day:

1) I was watching one of my favorite movies last week, which I haven't seen for a couple of years. A real schmaltzy melodrama from 1936, staring Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper, and Freddie Bartholomew: The Devil Is a Sissy. Rooney was 15, Cooper 13, and Freddie 12, but by 1936 they were all experienced, veteran movie stars. The boys end up in trouble with the law, but haven't broken any big ones, and have to meet with a juvenile court judge played by Jonathan Hale, who has a beautiful speaking voice by the way. He tells the boys that the devil is a "weak sister" a sissy because he can't take the heat; he causes trouble and runs away. A real "tough guy" takes his medicine, takes responsibility for his actions, fixes his mistakes. It seems to me that there are an awful lot of sissies in the U.S .of A. today. The slightest bit of rough going and they run away, or if they are big shots with huge screw-ups they run to the Federal Gummit to bail them out. Then there are all the "weak sisters" in the congress who are directly responsible for such things as the housing market collapse because they strong armed lending institutions to make home loans to minorities who had no conceivable way to make the payments. They whine and blather on and run away from their responsibility for the collapse by blaming others who had no hand in the sordid affair.
Anyway, I really like the movie. You can watch the whole film on you-tube starting at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ4Coolb8F8&feature=PlayList&p=DC4658260FF5DBCA&index=0&playnext=1


One small section of the film is missing from the clips, but it doesn't hurt the story line.

Here are Mickey, Freddie, and Jackie from a production still of the film.

2) I watched the coronation of the new messiah on Tuesday. After the inaugural speech, I thought maybe we were all supposed to quit our jobs and let the Great Gummit take care of us. I was disconcerted by the hate and disrespect that was shown to President Bush by the peace, love, tolerance and diversity crowd. Is it not strange how liberal socialist/progressives who preach love, tolerance, and diversity, not to mention environmental "green," spew forth such hate, close-mindedness,and utter contempt for opinions not their own, not to mention leaving the mall looking like a county garbage dump. Yes, I know that there are some conservatives who can be close-minded, hateful, and litter-bugs to boot, but conservatives don't claim, as liberal socialist/progressives do, to being THE party of love, tolerance, diversity, and uber protectors of the environment. So, it is difficult to over look when they are joyfully hateful and intolerant, and act like a bunch of "pigs." Oops! I shouldn't say that; it's not fair to the pigs. And who pushed over the porta-potties anyway?

3) It seems to me that all past Presidents have done some good and some bad things. Some have done more good than bad and vice-verse, they are only human beings, after all. But it really worries me when the majority of the people choose a president who says and does things that are not constant with the founding principles of our country, like capitalism. That to me spells BIG BAD. We have had a few BIG BADS in the past century, and it took years to overcome the damage.