“Mickey’s Circus” (1927)
The 1927 short featured 6-year-old Mickey Rooney in his first starring role as comicbook character Mickey McGuire.
The 1927 short featured 6-year-old Mickey Rooney in his first starring role as comicbook character Mickey McGuire.
Mickey Rooney as a child actor with Betty Jaynes at the MGM school between takes circa 1937.
Mickey Rooney’s “Andy Hardy” series of films made him a box office star.
Mickey Rooney was nominated for best actor in the film musical version of “Babes in Arms” with Judy Garland. “Mickey Rooney can act the legs off a centipede,” wrote the critic for the Sunday Times in London. It was the first of several memorable pairings with Garland including “Strike Up the Band,” “Babes on Broadway” and “Girl Crazy.”
Mickey Rooney with his first wife Ava Gardner shortly before their wedding in 1942.
Mickey Rooney with his father, vaudeville actor Joe Yule, in 1948.
Mickey Rooney starred in “Summer Holiday,” the musical version of “Ah Wilderness,” with Gloria DeHaven in 1948.
Mickey Rooney in 1948 after serving in the U.S. Army from 1944-46 in the Jeep Theater, traveling 150,000 miles entertaining the troops and acting as a radio personality on the American Forces Network.
Mickey Rooney’s role as Mr. Yunioshi, a buck-toothed broadly comic caricature of a Japanese man, did not draw much ire when the film was first released but has since been condemned as racist.
Mickey Rooney in 1971, photographed in London
Mickey Rooney voiced Santa Claus in many TV specials including 1970’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.”
Mickey Rooney with Dick Van Dyke and Bill Cobbs as old-timer museum guards in Ben Stiller’s “Night at the Museum”
In March 2011 Mickey Rooney testified before a special Senate committee considering legislation to curb abuses of senior citizens.
Mickey Rooney was active on the social scene, shooting the breeze with Bruce Willis at Vanity Fair’s post-Oscar party in March 2014.