TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 2 -- Star of the Month -- Mickey Rooney

[Staph]

Tonight's theme is easy -- it's star of the month Mickey Rooney. The Mick started in film in a series of silent comedies as comic-strip character Mickey McGuire. Throughout today and this evening, we get to see the beginnings of his career in his first live-action talkie role in The Beast Of The City (1932), through the mid-1930s, to his breakout role as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). Enjoy!


5:15am -- MGM Parade Show #15 (1955)
George Murphy hosts a special Christmas show featuring Judy Garland performing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in a clip from "Meet Me in St. Louis."
BW-26 mins, TV-G


6:00am -- The Beast Of The City (1932)
A police captain leads the fight against a vicious gangland chief.
Cast: Walter Huston, Jean Harlow, Wallace Ford, Jean Hersholt
Dir: Charles Brabin
BW-86 mins, TV-14

Fifty-two minutes into the film Daisy (Jean Harlow) has a party at her place. On a small table against the back wall is a photo of Clark Gable, her co-star in Red Dust (1932) the same year.


7:30am -- Broadway To Hollywood (1933)
Three generations of vaudevillians fight for stardom on stage and screen.
Cast: Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Jackie Cooper, Russell Hardie
Dir: Willard Mack
BW-85 mins, TV-G

This film originated in an unreleased musical revue, The March of Time (1930), which was to have featured real and recreated vaudeville star acts. When that project was abandoned, MGM tried to salvage the footage by creating a new story into which they could insert footage shot for the earlier project. Some of the inserted footage contained shots of well-known performers who had only been in the earlier film, such as Fay Templeton, Marie Dressler, William Collier Sr., and DeWolf Hopper Sr., but since almost all of the incorporated footage was in long shot, most of these actors, if present, are impossible to identify. A copyright continuity of the film, however, suggests that they are present, even if unrecognizably so. Marie Dressler, however, is mentioned by characters in the movie.


9:00am -- The Chief (1933)
A fireman's son goes into politics.
Cast: Ed Wynn, Charles "Chic" Sale, Dorothy Mackaill, William Boyd
Dir: Charles F. Riesner
BW-65 mins, TV-PG

Ed Wynn basically recreated his popular radio character "The Fire Chief" in this movie. The original opening of the movie had Wynn describing a three-act opera on his radio show, but that sequence was cut from the final release print. But the ending, in which he describes on his radio show the fate of the characters in the opera, is in the movie.


10:15am -- The Life Of Jimmy Dolan (1933)
A boxer facing a murder charge finds refuge in a children's home.
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee
Dir: Archie Mayo
BW-88 mins, TV-G

Edward Arnold (Inspector Ennis) and Mickey Rooney (Freckles) appear in this film uncredited, though essential characters to the story.


11:45am -- Blind Date (1934)
A young woman is torn between a wealthy suitor who wants her body and the honest young man who wants what's best for her.
Cast: Ann Sothern, Neil Hamilton, Paul Kelly, Mickey Rooney
Dir: Roy William Neill
BW-72 mins, TV-G

Director Roy William Neill made his name a decade later as the director of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson.


1:00pm -- Death On The Diamond (1934)
A rookie pitcher tries to stop someone from killing the St. Louis Cardinals.
Cast: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Ted Healy
Dir: Edward Sedgwick
BW-71 mins, TV-G

Filmed at L.A.'s Wrigley Field and the old Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Several ballplayers appear including the Cardinals real center fielder Ernie Orsatti who is shot "by the camera" as he crosses the plate.


2:15pm -- Hide-Out (1934)
Farmers take in an injured racketeer and try to reform him.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Elizabeth Patterson
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Mauri Grashin

Remade as I'll Wait For You (1941), starring Robert Sterling and Marsha Hunt. Joe Yule Sr. (Mickey Rooney's father) plays a small role in the remake.


3:45pm -- Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
Boyhood friends grow up on opposite sides of the law.
Cast: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Leo Carrillo
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Arthur Caesar

This was the movie that bank robber John Dillinger had just seen before he was gunned down in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. He had been set up by Anna Sage, the madam of a brothel, who knew Dillinger's girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. Sage was facing deportation and thought the tip might get her off. She told FBI agent Melvin Purvis that she would be wearing orange which appeared red, leading her to be dubbed "The Woman in Red". Dillinger was shot three times when he tried to escape, and Sage wound up being sent back to Romania.


5:30pm -- Upper World (1934)
A wealthy man escapes his wife's social pretensions in the arms of a burlesque queen.
Cast: Warren William, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Andy Devine
Dir: Roy Del Ruth
BW-73 mins, TV-G

Mickey Rooney's scenes were deleted.


6:45pm -- Down The Stretch (1936)
A disgraced jockey's son fights to clear the family name.
Cast: Patricia Ellis, Mickey Rooney, Dennis Moore, William Best
Dir: William Clemens
BW-66 mins, TV-G

Also featured in the cast is Willie Best (1913-1962), a talented African-American actor who did fine work, much of it comic, despite the stereotypical roles black actors were confined to at the time. Best came to Hollywood as the chauffeur for a Mississippi couple on vacation and decided to stay to break into show business. He made his first film in 1930 and over the next 20 years appeared in more than 100 pictures. He finished out his career working on television in the 1950s. Bob Hope, who worked with Best in The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Nothing But the Truth (1941) considered Best one of the finest talents he had ever worked with. Typical of the treatment of black actors in this period, Best's credit in the trailer for Down the Stretch referred to him as "the newest dark cloud of comedy." On the other hand, he received fourth billing in the film, a rare high spot for African-American players in the studio age.


What's On Tonight: Star of the Month -- Mickey Rooney


8:00pm -- A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Shakespeare's classic about two pairs of lovers and an amateur actor who get mixed up with fairies.
Cast: Ian Hunter, Verree Teasdale, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dick Powell
Dir: Max Reinhardt
BW-143 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Hal Mohr (First and only write-in nominee to actually win), and Best Film Editing -- Ralph Dawson

Nominated for Oscars for Best Assistant Director -- Sherry Shourds, and Best Picture

When the forest that Max Reinhardt designed could not be lit properly, cinematographer Hal Mohr thinned the trees slightly, sprayed them with aluminum paint and covered them with cobwebs and tiny metal particles to reflect the light. As a result, he became the first (and only) write-in winner of an Academy Award.


10:30pm -- Ah, Wilderness! (1935)
In his only comedy, Eugene O'Neill captures the trials of growing up in small-town America.
Cast: Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Aline MacMahon, Eric Linden
Dir: Clarence Brown
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Will Rogers planned to play Nat Miller (eventually played by Lionel Barrymore) in this film, but eventually backed out of the project, enabling him to make the ill-fated airplane trip with Wiley Post to Alaska. The plane crashed, killing them both.


12:15am -- Riffraff (1936)
Young marrieds in the fishing business run afoul of the law.
Cast: Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy, Una Merkel, Joseph Calleia
Dir: J. Walter Ruben
BW-94 mins, TV-G

A charge of negligence was brought against MGM by the California State Industrial Welfare Committee on behalf of the 40 female extras who were drenched in the prison rainstorm sequence. It contended that women who lost work because of illness after that sequence should be compensated. Each of the extras received an extra $15 as an initial compensation.


2:00am -- The Devil Is A Sissy (1936)
A British boy in New York tries to join a tenement gang.
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Ian Hunter
Dir: Rowland Brown
BW-92 mins, TV-G

Rowland Brown was the original director, but he was replaced after one week by W.S. Van Dyke, who reshot most of Brown's footage. This was the 4th time another director completed a film which Brown started.


3:39am -- One Reel Wonders: Victoria And Vancouver (1936)
This "Traveltalk" teaches us the history, customs, and landscapes of Victoria and Vancouver.
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
Dir: Benjamin D. Sharpe
C-9 mins

Vancouver is a coastal city located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is named for British Captain George Vancouver, who explored the area in the 1790s. The name Vancouver itself originates from the Dutch "van Coevorden", denoting somebody from Coevorden, a city in the Netherlands.


4:00am -- Live, Love And Learn (1937)
A bohemian artist and a society girl try to adjust to marriage.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Robert Benchley, Helen Vinson
Dir: Geo. Fitzmaurice
BW-79 mins, TV-G

The opening credits feature a large sketchbook with caricatures of the three main stars. Followed by a hand ripping pages off to reveal more credits.


5:30am -- Now Playing December (2010)

[Staph]

1. Mickey Rooney Profile

Mickey Rooney was a little man who enjoyed a big career and a larger-than-life persona. Born into a family of vaudeville performers, he was pushed on stage before he could talk and never let up, appearing in hundreds of movies, TV shows, plays, casinos and gossip columns. He had a hunger for life and work that belied his small stature, marrying eight times, earning and losing millions of dollars on several occasions, and seemingly accepting any invitation to perform, whether it was a dinner theater or the Academy Awards. Outliving most of his Golden Age contemporaries, he carved out a unique place in show business history that spanned generations of fans. And even though his career reached its peak in the 1930s with his onscreen partnership with Judy Garland, he continued to win awards and accolades well into the 21st century.

Mickey Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. on Sept. 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, NY. His name was plain but his family was colorful. Rooney's father, Joe Yule, was a Scottish-born vaudeville performer and his mother, Nell, was a chorus girl from Kansas City, MO. Soon after his first birthday Rooney was appearing on stage with his parents and traveling around the country by train. The vagaries of show business did not encourage domestic bliss, leading to Rooney's parents breaking up in 1924. Nell took custody of her son and, in the grand and often grotesque tradition of frustrated performers, channeled her hopes and dreams into her child. She moved with her son out to California, where she balanced managing a tourist home and overseeing Rooney's growing career. She was not skilled at either, going broke and moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Kansas City to receive financial help from her family. It was a grim existence until Rooney got his big break playing, ironically, a midget. The movie "Not to Be Trusted" (1926) was not a film classic, but it jump-started Rooney's career.

Nell used some old fashioned derring-do to land Rooney his next job. Learning that the popular comic strip "Mickey McGuire" was going to be turned into a series of short films, she put her son up for the part. Rooney was still named Joe Yule, Jr. at this point, but Nell offered to legally change his name to Mickey McGuire so that the producers of the films could circumvent paying the writer of the comic strip royalties. This cold-hearted ploy did not work, but Nell still had her son's name changed to the apparently more marquee-friendly "Mickey Rooney." Regardless, Rooney got the part and went on to star in dozens of shorts based on the McGuire character, starting with "Mickey's Circus" (1927). And it truly was a circus, as Rooney worked non-stop for the next 10 years until finally wrapping up the McGuire series with "Mickey's Derby Day" (1936).

The "Mickey McGuire" movies made Mickey Rooney a star, but his next film series propelled him into the top tier of Hollywood actors. Although he had received good reviews for his work in several features, most notably as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), his appearance as Andy Hardy in A Family Affair (1937) changed his life forever. Playing the son of Judge James K. Hardy (Lionel Barrymore), Rooney helped MGM's little B-movie become a monster hit. He played the same role in 13 more homespun "Andy Hardy" films produced between 1937 and 1946, giving venerable MGM one of its most profitable franchises. The early movies were about the entire Hardy clan, but by the fourth film in the series, Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), Rooney's exuberant personality had pushed his character to the top of the marquee. His portrayal of the all-American boy became an archetype of old-fashioned, Midwestern wholesomeness.

Ironically Andy Hardy's squeaky-clean image was quite a contrast to the real-life Rooney. As he became more famous, the actor became more reckless, known around Hollywood for his late night carousing and numerous affairs. The most scandalous liaison came to light years later in Rooney's autobiography, in which he claimed that in 1938, when he was just 18, he had a relationship with the A-list actress Norma Shearer, then 38, and the widow of MGM's "Boy Wonder" production chief, Irving Thalberg. Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM and a mentor to Thalberg, used his considerable influence to end the affair and keep it from the press. Whether this was out of loyalty to his late protégé or merely a cynical attempt to keep Rooney's public image more in line with that of Andy Hardy, was impossible to say, but it definitely allowed the actor to continue starring in MGM's cash cow franchise without any backlash from his adoring fans.

While Rooney's off-screen romances often got him into trouble, his on-screen relationship with Judy Garland became one of the most famous partnerships in film history. First appearing together in Love Finds Andy Hardy, where the then starlet had a guest appearance, they starred together as equals in the musical Babes in Arms (1939), directed by the great Busby Berkeley. The movie was a hit and the couple's chemistry and bright-eyed enthusiasm was real. They became friends and stayed close until her tragic death in 1969. Together they made numerous popular features together, including several more Andy Hardy movies and Busby Berkeley musicals, among them Strike up the Band (1940) and Babes on Broadway (1941) - most of which were of the "Comon kids, let's put on a show!" variety.

But Rooney's popularity was not contingent upon Garland, who shot to worldwide fame playing Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939). Rather, his appeal came from his infectious energy and innate fearlessness as an actor. Whether sharing the screen with giants like Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore in Captains Courageous (1937), and again with Tracy in Boys Town (1938) - for which Tracy received an Academy Award - Rooney more than held his own. And, of course, the public adored him. From 1939 through 1941, Rooney was the number one box office actor in the United States, as he would proudly continue to remind the world even years later. As America entered World War II, his Andy Hardy films continued to be wildly popular and Rooney worked steadily. He somehow found the time to marry and divorce the gorgeous then-starlet Ava Gardner (the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra) between 1942 and 1943 before hitting his professional peak opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the horse racing drama, National Velvet (1944). But when Rooney was drafted into the military, everything changed.

During WWII, Rooney went to war to entertain the troops, only serving 21 months. But while he did not suffer any physical harm while abroad, when he came home his career was damaged. Post-war America was less innocent than the one that had embraced Andy Hardy. Moreover, Rooney was now 26 years old and thus, a little too long in the tooth to continue playing teenagers. His professional life started a long, slow slide. While he was never at a loss for work, the quality of the material was inferior to his earlier films. To make matters worse his on-screen partnership with Judy Garland came to a close with the musical Words and Music (1948). Rooney gamely soldiered on, while his former co-star's career eclipsed his. Not only because he loved to work but also because he had to. He fit in a few more failed marriages, including one to actress Martha Vickers, while trying to find good parts to pay his alimony. There were bright spots like the Korean War drama "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" (1954), but more often than not Rooney did whatever slop he was offered, including "The Fireball" (1950) and "The Atomic Kid" (1954). Like many movie stars before him whose stars were starting to fade, he turned to television.

"The Mickey Rooney Show" (NBC, 1954-55) - also known as "Hey, Mulligan" - featured Rooney playing a fast-talking teenager. The fact that Rooney, in his mid-30s, was essentially reprising his Andy Hardy character may have had something to do with the show's cancellation after 39 episodes. Still, it had to be more satisfying work than starring opposite Francis the Talking Mule in "Francis in the Haunted House" (1956). With live television attracting some of the best young directors and writers, Rooney kept returning to the small screen. He scored an artistic triumph and an Emmy nomination in "The Comedian" (1957), an episode of the famous series "Playhouse 90" (CBS, 1956-1961). The late 1950s were the Golden Age of live TV and it gave Rooney's career a shot in the arm. He continued to work on TV shows like "Alcoa Theater" (NBC, 1957-1960) while landing the occasional film role. He was a natural fit for the film "Baby Face Nelson" (1957), playing a murderous gangster who looks like a choirboy and he (mercifully) put the Andy Hardy series to rest with the feature Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958). Finally, in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) he found a role he could sink his teeth into. Unfortunately, they were a set of fake buckteeth that set off the biggest controversy of his career. Blake Edwards, who had worked on Rooney's TV show as a writer, directed "Breakfast at Tiffany's," an adaptation of Truman Capote's novel. The director and actor were close friends, and perhaps this influenced Edwards not reigning in Rooney's broad performance of a stereotypical, bucktoothed Japanese man. Rooney's overacting marred an otherwise popular and well-reviewed film, but his sub-par work was the least of his problems.

Rooney's latest marriage - his fifth - was falling apart during this period. He had married the beauty queen and B-movie actress, Barbara Ann Thomason (a.k.a Carolyn Mitchell), in 1958. While Thomason had put her career on hold to raise the kids, Rooney worked non-stop to support his ex-wives, his gambling habit, and a growing family. He tried directing, but the dismal comedy "The Private Lives of Adam and Eve" (1960) should have stayed private. Hack TV work kept the money rolling in, and there was a cinematic bright spot with his supporting turn in the drama Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), but lightweight fluff like "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" (1965) was more representative of Rooney's output at the time. Now in his forties, he nevertheless continued his extra-marital affairs; a favor returned by his young wife. When Rooney was in the Philippines filming the war movie Ambush Bay, he was literally ambushed by tragic news: Thomason's jealous lover had murdered her in the Rooney's Brentwood home. Rooney returned to the states and a cauldron of controversy. The sordid and dysfunctional personal life of the man who had played the All-American boy became fodder for the tabloids and permanently tarnished Rooney's image. He continued plugging away in mediocre movies like "Skidoo" (1968) in an attempt to keep the demons at bay, but Judy Garland's death from an accidental overdose of barbiturates in 1969 was an even worse punishment.

Nearing fifty and rocked by personal tragedy and professional disappointment, it would have been easy for Rooney to pack it in. But Rooney's vaudeville training had instilled in him a powerful ethos that "the show must go on." He kept working throughout the 1970s, seemingly in any production that would pay him. Wary of more controversy, he passed up the role of the racist Archie Bunker in the TV classic "All in the Family" (CBS, 1971-79); instead turning to family friendly fare like "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" (ABC, 1970), "The Year Without a Santa Claus" (ABC, 1974), and "Journey Back to Oz" (1974). An inveterate gambler and horse racing aficionado, his love of the ponies found artistic triumph in the film classic The Black Stallion (1979). Rooney turned in one of his great performances playing Henry Dailey, a once successful horse trainer who gets one last shot at immortality. Rooney received some of the best reviews of his career for a role that was a metaphor for his own creative resurrection.

Rooney followed up his Academy Award-nominated performance in "The Black Stallion" with a starring role opposite dancer Ann Miller in the long running Broadway hit "Sugar Babies" (1970-1982). Earning a Tony nomination for his stage work, he scored again with an Emmy win playing a mentally handicapped man in the TV drama "Bill" (CBS, 1981). It was the high-water mark of Rooney's career: film, stage, and TV work of the highest quality all within a couple years and late in the game. And while he did not hit such a hot streak again, Rooney had proven to his loyal fans and vocal detractors that he still had the goods. He continued working steadily in TV and movies, as well as the theater. He even traveled the world in a multi-media live stage production called "Let's Put on a Show!" recounting his long, eventful life in show business to his still sizable fan base.

Biographical data provided by TCMdb

* Films in Bold Type Will Air on TCM in December