I saw Mickey Rooney "perform" tonight at the Cinegrill in Hollywood

I did see him live on stage once in a touring revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum back in the late eighties, and actually he wasn't bad at all. Snuck in a few quips that were sorta dull but during one part where one of the Proteans' shoes suddenly went flying after a dance kick, he played along with it beautifully, mock-burying it and the like, even while the cast and audience were cracking up. So I'll give him that.

Now the greater question perhaps is, why were you at this show again? And will you be at the FAP today to tell us more about it? ;-)

He was more like Michael J Fox, only with a longer peak and much more annoying.

Saw him on Broadway in 1980 in Sugar Babies with Ann Miller, and he still sold all the corny smutty stuff.

But anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f30D3LSe-kY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhollywood%2Delsewhere%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=114

hmm YouTube embed not showing up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f30D3LSe-kY

After battling drug addiction and a near bankruptcy caused by gambling and bad investments,[11] Rooney became a born-again Christian in the 1970s, reportedly after an angel appeared to him in a coffee shop.[12]

Cocaines a helluva etc etc.

Perrin on his fave Rooney performance, a live-TV play written by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2011/05/where-sharks-laugh.html

Leonardo DiCaprio is the Mickey Rooney of his day.
― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, June 12, 2004 7:25 AM (6 years ago)

He's already well on his way to Rooney-dom.
― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Saturday, June 12, 2004 7:25 AM (6 years ago)

At this point it's more like the Sonny Tufts.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, June 12, 2004 7:26 AM (6 years ago)

Well, guess we were wrong there.

The eternal comment:

i can't believe he's still alive - he was already like 90 years old when i was a kid!!
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, June 12, 2004

Well, guess we were wrong there.

Baby Face Nelson > Inception

Meant more in terms of commercial profile, which I realize is anathema to you and all.

I git that

anyhoo I read that Mick behaved badly at the recent TCM filmfest, so that Serling TV play sounds close to the bone.

RIP

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/mickey-rooney-golden-age-box-office-giant-dies-at-93-1201153308/

Interestingly, Mickey Rooney's first film was just rediscovered in the Netherlands:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lost-mickey-rooney-film-found-692160

i feel like i need to watch a few of his movies, if only to try and obscure the memory of Dana Carvey going "back zoom THE WORLD"

er, bang zoom

Isn't that Jackie Gleason catchphrase?

Carvey was on a sitcom w/ MR.

who has seen Baby Face Nelson?

RIP Mickey

Only saw the Bugs Bunny parody, Morbs.

YT link here, along with praise for his role opp Caine in Pulp:

http://www.movingpictureblog.com/2014/04/rip-mickey-rooney-1920-2014.html

the real stuff

“What was my appeal?” The question wasn’t entirely rhetorical, as he went on to explain: “I was a gnomish prodigy – half-human, half-goblin, man-child, child-man.”

Those qualities were as nothing compared to his flirting technique, which he characterised as “a combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud”. It was this, perhaps, that led his lover and co-star Lana Turner to dub him, in reference to his best-known role as Andy Hardy, “Andy Hard-on”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10750247/Mickey-Rooneys-amazing-sex-life.html

jimminy jillickers

All I've seen, I think, is his scandalous Tiffany's role and (ages ago) The Black Stallion. I don't think I've ever seen any of his films with Garland, or Boys Town, or anything. What I most associate him with is one of the Academy Awards broadcasts, maybe 10 years ago, where he was stuck sitting way in the back. Forget who the host was, but he/she said something to the effect of, "Apologies to Mickey Rooney for the lousy seat--as you know, we had to make room up front for the Rock."

I was a big fan of National Velvet as a kid - him and Liz were great together in that, imo

ace wrapup by Farran Nehme

Rooney made his first indelible mark as Puck in Max Reinhardt’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both on stage and on screen. In the movie he was about 15 years old, and so good as to be almost freakish. This is not a normal kid. That laugh is positively sinister. It originates somewhere under the loincloth, rolls up past the collarbone and sprays out like a firehose. It’s not his eyes that sparkle, it’s those teeth. Any minute you feel this Puck may attach himself to someone’s ankle, terrier-style. Rooney is all the amoral mischief of childhood rolled up into one half-naked package.

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.de/2014/04/in-memoriam-mickey-rooney-1920-2014.html

I was sure that Babes in Arms was the one Mickey-Judy film I'd seen, but reading her summary, no, I'd have remembered that...

Isn't Kenneth Anger in that?

legend I think

Cagney is v good in it

Isn't Kenneth Anger in that?

y'know, I've never seen anything that confirms Anger's claims about his childhood onscreen exploits

Olivia remembers

http://time.com/57843/mickey-rooney-olivia-de-havilland/

Serling/Frankenheimer's "The Comedian," complete. Mel Torme!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9vdpFeiS2A

Heard on the radio this morning he's being buried in the same cemetery as Cecil B. DeMille. He's ready for his close-up.

Wow I really didn't realize Olivia's still with us!

Had trouble parsing her story for a bit. Looking forward to The Comedian.

wow, The Comedian was good. Depressing, but good.

Only got to watch the first few minutes so far, but it looked promising. Plus anything involving Rod Serling and an ulcer-ridden alpha male yelling at his staff is probably worth a look.

Olivia is the last '30s movie star standing. People really don't know Luise Rainer (age 104) anymore.

Luise Rainer is still with us? Didn't know

I watched a Mickey-Judy musical all the way through for the first time yesterday -- the first one, Babes in Arms (a Rodgers & Hart Broadway hit from which MGM, in their wisdom, jettisoned all but two of the R&H songs). Rooney's amphetaminism is tres annoying mostly, Judy sings like a dream, and they share a lengthy minstrel number in blackface. Also the title song climaxes with an uncomfortable bonfire. WTF.

(oh the stars sing "Good Mornin'", which was written for this movie, but which you know from Singin' in the Rain)

haha I've never watched one of these all the way through either

just clips/musical numbers (altho not the blackface one ugh lol)

oh Rooney also does impressions of FDR, Gable, and Lionel Barrymore, and

The original release of the film included a segment during the finale in which Rooney and Garland lampoon Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; this was edited from the film after FDR's death. It was thought to be lost, but was discovered on a 16 millimeter reel and restored in the 1990s.

Busby Berkeley directed that film; grownup casts and innuendo suited his talents better.

babes in arms has some pretty good stuff IIRC, predictably good camerawork in the musical numbers.

Always makes me a little sad to think about Judy and Johnny Mercer.

RIP, Luise Rainer.

Mickey is indeed just about the best thing in Mike Hodges' Pulp, as an Italian-American (!) Mob-connected former movie star who hires Michael caine to write his memoirs, or does he? Only 15 minutes, maybe, of screentime but he makes em count.

Pretty crap winking would-be pastiche of a movie overall.

Mick really underplays a meek auto mechanic/daydreaming racer in Richard Quine's semi-noir Drive a Crooked Road -- it's a character role as the lead. Mid '50s Hollywood and Palm Springs shown in workaday fashion. Written by Blake Edwards! (who worked on a Rooney TV show w/ Quine soon after)

Born too early to explore the stars and too late for Mickey Rooneys Potato Fantasy pic.twitter.com/dr31OHmRWx

— Taylor (@MurkaDurkah) September 4, 2022

Judging by the cars this was late '58 at the earliest.

It's a gag, by this guy.

https://www.facebook.com/cris.shapan

Dr. Morbius mentions that Mick "really underplays a meek" etc. in Run A Crooked Mile, but that's mostly in contrast to his expected hyper qualities, and is still very intense, very effective: going over the top would break the tension of this noir-ish low-grade fever soap opera of sicky grifters, playing on the useful mechanic Rooney despite disagreements and even some conscience and nausea (on the part of moll-stooge making nice to him, ick).
If ye be wanting old LOUD wrinklepuppy Roon, you got him as defiantly doom-rattling convict lifer in THE LAST MILE, fro '59, I think.
Also, mention of a Serling-scripted venture (one I hadn't hoid of) upthread, made me think of this one:

Requiem for a Heavyweight is a 1962 American film directed by Ralph Nelson based on the television play of the same name with Anthony Quinn in the role originated by Jack Palance, Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney in the parts portrayed on television by Keenan Wynn and his father Ed Wynn, and social worker Grace Miller was portrayed by Julie Harris.

Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, appears as Quinn's opponent in a boxing match at the beginning of the movie, a memorable sequence filmed with the camera providing Quinn's point of view as the unstoppable Clay rapidly punches directly at the movie audience with breath-taking speed. Afterward, Maish (Gleason) is confronted by bookies who threaten his life. If he fails to repay them for their losses, based upon the sure thing bet (he urged them to wager upon) that his fighter, Mountain, would go down in a certain round of the match. Maish's deal with them had been that they should deduct from their winnings (due to their betting against Mountain, as Maish had advised them to). The vast sums of losses that Maish's betting (and losing) had run up with them.

The film version is somewhat darker in its plotline than the original teleplay

XP So Potato Fantasies do end...

fucking love Chris Shapan

https://i.redd.it/bvu8ttil12f91.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/86oxvqjgAIM/sddefault.jpg

That's Rooney on the right, with a lit cigar.

Amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5H73AZfG2U