The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Laemmle took advantage of Mickey’s critical acclaim and loaned him out to every studio that asked. He appeared in late December at Allied Studios with character actor Monte Blue in Officer Thirteen; in January 1932 with animal expert Clyde Beatty in The Big Cage at RKO; then to Warner Bros. for the James Cagney film Reform School. Columnist Harrison Carroll wrote in the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, on January 13, 1933, that “while we know that Archie Mayo will direct the film, production head Darryl Zanuck selected little Mickey Rooney before he decided to cast Cagney.”

  Mickey had gained enough popularity by this point to become attractive to radio producers as entertainment radio was flexing its muscles at the outset of the Great Depression. He made his first radio performance on January 2, 1933, for the program Hollywood on the Air. Zumma Palmer in the Hollywood Citizen-News wrote on January 2, 1932, “[O]ne of the performers was Mickey Rooney, child actor. Before going on the air he took off his overcoat and hat, but left on his new pigskin gloves. One of the visitors pleased the youngster by noticing the gloves. Mickey held up his hands and said, ‘Ain’t them honeys?’ ”

  Mickey still toured during his free time. In March of 1933 he was at the New Orleans Orpheum Theater in a vaudeville show along with the film The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble,” a cross-religion marital triangle story loosely following a tradition established by the 1928 comedy Abie’s Irish Rose. About Mickey’s stage appearance, the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote on March 24, 1932, “Three headliners will occupy the stage: Mickey Rooney, the screen counterpart of Mickey (Himself) McGuire of Toonerville comic strip fame; Tom Patricola, New Orleans dancer who is back home after a season in the movies at Hollywood and vaudeville on Broadway; and Lester Cole and his Singing Soldiers of fame. Imitations of movie stars including Maurice Chevalier and Roscoe Ates, will be specialized in by Mickey, who also sings and dances. He is an exciting young talent.”

  In 1933, but also in later years, Mickey spent his idle hours swimming, boxing, bowling, and playing tennis and table tennis Despite his height, he was good at all these sports and exceptional at tennis and Ping-Pong. When Mickey was just beginning his interest in tennis, he appeared in the annual Motion Picture Tennis Tournament, playing doubles with movie star Gilbert Roland, movie mogul Carl Laemmle Jr. (his boss at Universal), and producer Albert J. Cohen.2

  There was hardly a free moment for Mickey, and his mother worried that he wasn’t getting a proper education. Because of the large presence of the entertainment industry within its borders, California has some of the most explicit laws protecting child actors, laws that go back as far as 1928. A child actor, because he or she is a minor, must secure a state-authorized entertainment work permit before accepting any paid performing work. Compulsory education laws mandate that the education of the child actor not be disrupted while the child is working, whether the child actor is enrolled in public, private, or even a home school. While on set, the child does assigned schoolwork under the supervision of a studio teacher.

  Thus, during and after Mickey’s McGuire years, Mickey’s education was divided between a public school and a studio classroom, which he attended whenever he was making a film. Mickey was not a scholar in either place. He was too restless to sit with his nose in a book for very long. He didn’t mind geography or history, but arithmetic wasn’t for him, which became glaringly obvious in his later years from the way he handled his finances.

  It is likely, given his lifestyle and his family’s nomadic existence during his early years, that Mickey was too distracted to be happy within the confines of the average public schoolroom. In addition, he might have had attention deficit disorder and even a language problem, even though he was able to master dialogue. He constantly spewed obscenities, not only in the company of other children, but also in front of the teachers. During his short career in public schools, he was warned repeatedly to curb his language or face expulsion.3 This tendency was exacerbated by the attitude of Larry Darmour and Al Herman, who encouraged Mickey to speak in a rough, colloquial way. They felt that the tougher Mickey talked, the more it would enhance the McGuire character. Thus, when it came to acceptable social skills, the demands of Mickey’s career at a very early age impacted him negatively. Regardless of his classroom performance and deportment, though, California law still required him to attend school.

  AS EARLY AS 1928, while Mickey had established his career, and even while he was at Universal, Nell arranged for him to have the education she had not enjoyed when she was a child. She was encouraged by McGuire director Al Herman to take Mickey out of public school and enroll him at the Lawlor School for Professional Children. The school was nicknamed “Ma Lawlor’s” after the headmistress, Mrs. Viola Lawlor. Mrs. Lawlor, however, was far from the motherly type. She was tall, wore her hair in a severe bun, and was very much a no-nonsense, strictly conservative educator. Still, she was aware of the needs of working children and kept the curriculum light and manageable.4 After all, her students were working professionals whose careers were important to their employers. Accordingly, the school ran its classes on a looser schedule than public schools. Classes were held only in the morning, leaving students free in the afternoon for auditions and rehearsals. Ma Lawlor never made a fuss when her students missed school to take an out-of-town job. Some of her students attended school in name only, because they were either on set or on location. Mickey was not far off as he explained to us, “Ma Lawlor’s school was just a dodge, a way of pacifying the Los Angeles Board of Education.” Mickey started at Ma Lawlor’s in late 1928. The August 28, 1927, issue of the Los Angeles Times published the first glimpse into the Lawlor School for Professional Children: “Two years ago, Mrs. Viola Lawlor, considering the need for a school for professional children, started the Hollywood Professional Children’s School. This year, additional space and more teachers have been added to accommodate the enrollment. The reasons for this success are said to be individual instruction, assuring rapid advancement, tuition fees within the reach of every one and half-day sessions. The school is being recommended by acting, music and dancing teachers because their pupils have the entire afternoon in which to do their practicing. Mrs. Lawlor is assisted by May Ely, who has full charge of the instruction. Enrollment will take place between September 6 and 10 . . . and personalized courses of instruction were promised for each student. All grades were taught, kindergarten through high school.”

  The Lawlor school had impressed the newspaper with the professional credentials of the faculty, which included violinist Lizette Kalova, actor Arthur Kachel, and pianists Philip Tronitz, Alexander Kosloff, and Frances Mae Martin.

  While Mickey was never the great student, he fit in far better at Ma Lawlor’s than at public school. The Lawlor faculty was more accepting of his personality as a performer than teachers in public schools had been, he was in his niche, his own element, at the school. He loved being around other child performers. They accepted his idiosyncrasies as he did theirs. He met many of his lifelong friends at the school. Deanna Durbin, film director Dick Quine, Jackie Cooper, his costar Judy Garland, and one of his closest friends, Sidney Miller.

  Mickey had already known Miller, who had appeared in some Mickey McGuire films. Mickey looked up to Sid, who was about four years older. Tall and thin, with a distinctive hawk nose, Sid was under contract to Warner Bros. He and Mickey became close friends over the years, and Sid often served as Mickey’s personal assistant and became his confidant. “When I did the McGuire films, Mickey was of course the star. I had some ferkakta part,” Miller told us in a 1996 interview. “My first impression of Mickey was that he was a ‘tough,’ like the character he was playing. You could see how talented he was. He knew his craft. He is one of the only actors I know who could cry, on cue, without any inducement. His focus in front of the camera was absolutely amazing. I knew right there that Mickey was going to be a big star someday.”5

  Of Nell, Miller told us, “I remember that his mother was always there on the set with him. Her
presence was always felt. I mean, my mother was there as well, but I don’t think she paid attention to what I was doing. Not Nell. She made sure that Mickey was up there, in front of the older actors. Her boy was the best. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing, stealing the scenes from the older actors. He really got that drive and ambition from Nell, not that he needed to be pushed. It was built in. It certainly wasn’t from Joe.”6

  Another person Mickey met at Ma Lawlor’s ultimately became very important to him, in both his life and his career. In fact, Mickey told interviewers many times, including the Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, that she became his first love. This young girl was Frances Ethel Gumm. Born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 1922, she was nicknamed Babe, since she was the youngest of three sisters. Her parents ran a movie theater that featured vaudeville acts, and much like Mickey, she began singing onstage early, at two and a half. Along with her two siblings, she appeared as one of the Gumm Sisters at their parents’ theater. Following rumors that her father, Frank Gumm, had made sexual advances toward male ushers, the family relocated to California in June 1926. Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and mother Ethel, acting as their manager, began working to get her daughters into motion pictures. By 1934, they had changed their name to the Garland Sisters, after being called the Glum Sisters by a Chicago critic. Frances changed her name to Judy after a famous Hoagy Carmichael song, “Judy,” which he wrote with Sammy Lerner.

  Mickey reminisced to us about seeing Babe, as Judy was referred to by her friends, for the first time at Ma Lawlor’s: “She was very plain. You never would have noticed her. Then Mrs. Lawlor asked her to introduce herself to everyone with a song. I can remember it like it was yesterday. She sang ‘Blue Moon,’ and her voice just hit you. Boom. I mean when she hit that last note time stopped and everyone was cheering and clapping. It was amazing. I was in awe. We became such good friends. She had more bounce to the ounce than anyone.”7

  According to Gerald Clarke’s biography of Judy, Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, it was a mutual admiration society between Judy and Mickey. She thought Mickey bounced high himself. “Well, I met Mickey Rooney,” Babe said the day she first came home from Ma Lawlor’s. “He’s just the funniest . . . he clowns around every second!”8 Later, Mickey, along with another Lawlor student, Frankie Darro, would drive out to Frank Gumm’s Valley Theater to watch the Gumm Sisters perform. Sometimes, Darro and Mickey would jump on the stage and join in with the sisters. It was a good life for Mickey: a series of movies for Larry Darmour and classes at Ma Lawlor’s with his new friends. But just as he’d settled into being comfortable at Ma Lawlor’s, Fortune’s Wheel took another spin in his favor when the films he’d made for Universal in loan-outs to other studios were released and accolades and recognition started pouring in.

  Mickey promoted his films nonstop and appeared in countless benefit performances throughout Los Angeles with other celebrities. His youth and energy drew much attention, which he always enjoyed. The spotlight shone on Mickey, and he performed, as expected. Arthur Marx told us, “He was a young trained seal. An organ grinder’s monkey. I can never remember him being off. He was always on.” This work ethic, this countless round of appearances, never off camera and never offstage, would inform Mickey’s life to the end of his days.

  MEANWHILE, MICKEY CONTINUED HIS prolific output of films through loan-outs to almost every studio, large and small. In March 1933 he appeared in Warner Bros.’ The Life of Jimmy Dolan, a film that costarred a youthful Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In May 1933 he went to Eagle Pictures, located on Poverty Row, to appear in the cheapie B movie The Big Chance, with J. Carrol Naish and others. It reunited him with Al Herman, who directed the film. Then, in June, he went to MGM to make his first film there with his pal and fellow child star Jackie Cooper, Broadway to Hollywood. Cooper later said, “Mick and I had so much in common. We were quick friends.”9 That film was also the screen debut of singing star Nelson Eddy.

  The nonstop work continued in 1933. Among Rooney’s films were The World Changes, which featured Paul Muni and was directed by the legendary Mervyn LeRoy. Then it was The Chief, with radio comic and vaudevillian Ed Wynn. Mickey was being exposed to almost every type of film, from comedy, musical, melodrama, and mystery. His roles varied but were mostly minor. While he was still a background player, Mickey made the most of his screen time. “His performances always brought a burst of energy to each film,” remarked film historian Lou Sabini.10 Rooney appeared in six films through his Universal contract in 1933. He also performed in vaudeville, signed autographs, appeared on radio, did benefit performances, and attended school. It would be an exhausting schedule for an adult performer; however, he was only twelve and thirteen years old.

  For Mickey, 1934 was a watershed year. He started the year back at his home studio of Universal in Beloved, a tearjerker with John Boles and Gloria Stuart (who sixty years later would star in the James Cameron–directed Titanic). He followed with another drama, I Like It That Way, also with Gloria Stuart. He quickly filmed the comedy Love Birds, which featured comic actors Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville. In May he moved on to the romantic comedy Half a Sinner, which starred Joel McCrea and was based on a successful Broadway play.

  Nell asked for a break for Mickey in early 1934, so he could appear in some summer vaudeville shows, as the $175 weekly salary at Universal was barely keeping them afloat. With the cost of Ma Lawlor’s school and outside interests, they were not getting rich. Carl Laemmle Jr., who was now head of production at his father’s company, refused, and instead sent Mickey to the Poverty Row studio Mascot to do a serial with famed animal trainer Clyde Beatty. Mickey was thrilled to work with the lion tamer, whom many kids had idolized through his pulp books. Nell, though, was less than thrilled with the frantic pace of putting Mickey in a Saturday afternoon serial, which was being released through March of 1934. She was “fed up,” according to Mickey, that his career seemed to be stuck in one gear.11 Mickey was working, receiving his weekly stipend, but the roles remained marginal, and Nell feared that although he was getting good work, he was not getting any real traction as a headline performer. She was ambitious for her son and saw in him a future as a major star.

  It was at this time in January 1934 that Nell separated from Wynn Brown and sought a divorce. She and Brown had drifted apart, and she wanted him out of their way. Mickey was earning far more than Brown, who was still an auto salesman in the San Fernando Valley. Mickey was heartbroken. He and Wynn had established a good relationship.

  “Mickey had grown very close to Wynn,” recalled Sidney Miller. “He cared about Mickey, who looked up to Wynn. He took us to ball games and was a pretty straight guy. It was kinda surprising when Nell dumped him. I mean she was a rather plain, sorta heavier woman. She was very tough and matter-of-fact.”12

  Mickey remembered, “I thought we had a good thing going in the family, but then, all of a sudden Wynn was leaving. He came to see me one day and said that he and mother were getting a divorce. ‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that we’re not going fishing anymore?’ He smiled bravely and said he guessed not. “No more baseball and football games? No more fights or wrestling matches?’ He turned away so I couldn’t see him cry. But I cried. I cried like a baby. I had lost another dad.”13

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  Selznick Rescues Mickey: The Start at MGM

  Mickey and his longtime manager, “Hurry-up” Harry Weber, signing his contract at MGM. It was Weber who secured Mickey the Mickey McGuire series, a contract with Universal, and his agreement with MGM.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EASTON.

  Although Mickey was gaining some momentum in feature films, he still was featured in mostly minor roles at Universal and in the loan-outs. His career seemed to be leading nowhere. His salary had not risen in the year and a half since he had started working in the studio. Nell, who wanted stardom for her son, complained to manager Harry Weber that Mickey�
��s career was “stagnant.” Weber attempted to renegotiate the agreement with Laemmle Jr., but the studio boss refused. So the manager asked to release Mickey from his agreement. Junior acquiesced on the condition that Mickey work on one more film, a loan-out to Warner Bros. titled Upper World.1 Weber agreed, convinced that Rooney had enough recognition to move on to more significant parts.

  Weber turned out to be quite prescient: MGM came calling. While there is no definitive tale of how Mickey was hired by MGM—Mickey’s accounts (he had several) seem mostly apocryphal—we have cobbled together the most logical version of how it occurred. We heard the same story retold by Jackie Cooper, Sidney Miller, Billy Barty, Carla Laemmle (niece of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle), and several others whom we interviewed, and the following version contains the most common threads reinforced by our research.

  The dreamed-of “big break” was to come from the unlikeliest of sources, a game of table tennis one Sunday afternoon in March 1934 when Mickey was appearing in an exhibition match at the Ambassador Hotel. Seeing that he had an appreciative audience, the ham in Rooney kicked in and he began to show off. “I entertained them,” he later wrote in Life Is Too Short, “with a line of picturesque speech and patter and some pantomime that had them in hysterics.”2 One of those most delighted by Rooney’s antics was the game’s referee, who turned out to be none other than David O. Selznick, an avid table tennis fan. The now-legendary moviemaker was then a bright, young producer at MGM, where he worked under his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer. Following the match, Selznick reportedly tried to convince Mayer to sign his new discovery, but Mayer, already familiar with Mickey Rooney’s work, told Selznick that Rooney, at fourteen, was a has-been.