“Don’t retire – inspire,” said Mickey Rooney to the Associated Press in 2008. And inspire he did. Mickey Rooney died at the humble age of 93, after 80 years in movies. He worked in all types of films from silent comedies to theatre, television, musicals and Shakespearean dramas. Rooney died with his family, in his home in North Hollywood yesterday.
His most memorable movie in recent years was the 2006 film, A Night at the Museum. But the people who read Starts at Sixty will remember him for much much more. He was awarded two Academy Awards in his lifetime from four nominations, along with an Emmy and a Tony. Quite an achievement.
He was famous for his comebacks to theatre and films. “I’ve been coming back like a rubber ball for years,” was what he said when he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Black Stallion, in 1979.
Rooney was among the last to die from the era of the big bombshell movies. He worked with many of the most famous founding starts of the silver screen including Cark Gable, in 1934, in Manhattan Melodrama, James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1935 and National Velvet in 1944, where he worked with Elizabeth Taylor.
He then went off to war and entertained the troops of World War Two for years. When he returned, he found it much harder to settle in his career. Films like Off Limits, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and Requiem for a Heavyweight were all films that added weight to his career without glory, then he had fun starring in Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn.
Then he went on to be praised again, with his Oscar nomination for Black Stallion. He played in The Sugar Babies, a hit show that captivated New York, London, Las Vegas and major US cities. Then he gave his voice to a series of animated features like The Fox and the Hound, The Care Bears Movie and Finding Nemo.
Rooney appeared in four television series’: The Mickey Rooney Show (1954-1955), a comedy sit-com in 1964 with Sanunee Tong called Mickey, One of the Boys in 1982 with Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane, and the Adventures of the Black Stallion from 1990-1993.
Then finally, in 1983, Rooney was presented with an honorary Oscar for his “60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances.”
Still a long life was left… between 1983 and 2014.
He had eight wives during his life but died single. After years of challenges, media reports speak of him having some tough years, abused financially by someone in his own family. He stepped forward to raise awareness of the issue of elder abuse testifying to the US congress in 2011.
“I felt trapped, scared, used and frustrated,” Rooney told a special Senate committee “when a man feels helpless, it’s terrible.”
What is your finest memory of Mickey Rooney?