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

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.