On September 17, 1934, the big night—and a beautiful evening at that—finally arrived at the Hollywood Bowl. Mickey remembered, “The play went off without a hitch, not even a hitch in my jockstrap. In fact, it seemed over almost before we knew it had begun. All of a sudden, I was into my closing lines.”
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.13
Mickey recalled, “I raced up the long, flowered ramp to what I remember as thundering applause, a roar that I thought everyone in Los Angeles could hear. My gosh, I said to myself, they’re cheering for me.”14
The play was a complete triumph. Critics from coast to coast raved about it, making it a national sensation. Elizabeth Yeaman for the Hollywood Citizen-News wrote:
Long before the memory of man, Dame Nature fashioned the Hollywood Bowl, endowed with wooded beauty and astounding acoustic properties. Shakespeare, preceding the imaginative fantasy of Walt Disney by over 300 years wrote his immortal play of love, sprites and buffoonery and called it “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Max Reinhardt, German of colorful, dramatic spectacle, assumed the task of blending these two miracles—one man-made and one wrought by a higher-power. And last night the Weather Man conferred his blessing on the undertaking by providing a midsummer’s night of incredible perfection—a sky flecked with clouds that even a Reinhardt could not have produced and lighted by a moon suspended low against the Bowl horizon. And yet, even with the aid of Dame Nature, the Weather Man, Shakespeare and Max Reinhardt, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” would have lacked its wondrous fulfillment last night without the presence of Mickey Rooney, 13-year old Irish genius who was known, a year or so ago, as Mickey McGuire of short comedy fame. The achievement of Master Rooney in the role of Puck ranks second to none along with Shakespeare and Reinhardt.
Quite heady stuff, the kind of praise usually reserved for the crowning achievement of a career in the theater for the likes of an Olivier, Barrymore, or Gielgud. This was for a Rooney, who was only thirteen years old.
And the accolades kept on coming. On September 20, 1934, Louella Parsons, in the Los Angeles Examiner, wrote, “This suggestion comes from Edgar Allen Woolf and it sounds like a good idea. Edgar, who was one of the first to persuade MGM to put Mickey Rooney, the inspired Puck of the Reinhardt festival, under contract [everyone was now claiming credit for having discovered Rooney], sees the child as Peter Pan. Always a girl has played the part—Maud Adams and Betty Bronson—but Mickey could do it and be more like Barrie’s delightful character than anyone I know.”
Selznick must have appreciated this chorus of cheers for Rooney. Mayer was thrilled, too, not just because he had the hottest child star under contract, but because he had him under contract for only $150 per week.
After twenty-seven sold-out days at the Hollywood Bowl, a record at that time, Reinhardt took the show on the road, according to plan. There were two weeks at the University of California at Berkeley; then onto the nearby San Francisco opera house for four weeks, where the play was standing room only; and then to Chicago for four weeks at the Blackstone Theatre. Beyond the sudden acclaim and spotlight, Mickey and Nell were thrilled with the $300 a week for the play and their $150 stipend from MGM. This was a windfall for them.
Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, no studios were rushing to fulfill Reinhardt’s dream to direct. A Shakespeare film, hardly a commercial endeavor, was not alluring, especially in the midst of a depression. No doubt great prestige would be attached to such a film, but it would also create a large financial loss that most studios could not afford. The Laemmles at Universal were swimming in debt. Mayer and Thalberg rarely attempted “arty” projects. Zukor and Paramount considered the project, but were having an awful year financially. One studio was above water, though, and that was Jack and Harry Warner’s Warner Bros. It was doing quite well that year, with its gangster epics. And Jack Warner was interested in taking Midsummer on.
This was so for a few reasons, according to Kevin Hagopian, who, in recounting the history of the making of Midsummer, writes:
It was to be Warner Brothers’ entry into prestige film-making, a bid for the carriage trade by a studio whose trademarks were the staccato burp of the gangster tommy gun and the clatter of the newsman’s city room. But there was no denying the noisy hoi polloi that was Warner Brothers in 1935. What emerged from its sound stages was a Mulligan’s Stew of performance styles that showed off the vitality of American immigrant and ethnic culture at its most.
Jack Warner’s decision to take a flyer in high art would prove financially disastrous; the film lost heavily at the box office. But that’s not what “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was all about. The Warner family had fled Krasnashiltz, then in Czarist Russia, in 1883, to escape the murderous anti-Semitism of the Cossack pogroms. Jack and three of his brothers had clawed their way to the top of the fledgling motion picture industry by the late 1920s, and now, Jack was eager to cement his new status as an American aristocrat. Warner had seen Max Reinhardt’s “epic theater” production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Hollywood Bowl, and though he’d understood little of it and enjoyed even less, the appeal of Shakespeare to a boy from a shtetl family was irresistible. The colonnaded Greek-revival house in Beverly Hills, the exclusive private schools for his kids, the polo matches, the charity soirees, even the Ronald Colman mustache—“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was to be the capstone in a campaign to signal high society that Jack Warner had arrived. This 1.5 million dollar production would seal Jack Warner’s miraculous transformation from the 12th son of a Russian Jewish refugee to English gentility, a make over possible only in Hollywood. Warner determined to make “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” tonier than anything his lot had ever produced.15
Indeed, Jack Warner heeded Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler’s call and unzipped his wallet to produce something of culture, the sound of flutes and the choreography of dancing sprites, to replace, at least for an hour and a half, the sound of submachine-gun fire and the ballet of bullets.
On October 7, 1934, about two weeks after the debut of the play, it was announced that Warner Bros. would produce the film version.
The casting of the film was of great speculation throughout Hollywood. Jack Warner wanted to include many of Warner’s contract players, to bring them prestige. He was insisting on their hottest star, James Cagney, and on dancing star Dick Powell. He also wanted to use an English actor with a Shakespearean background, Ian Hunter. Reinhardt had no problem with the fact that many of the actors Warner wanted to cast had no experience with Shakespeare; the director had faced this in past productions. However, he wanted to be the auteur of the film and make his imprint on it.
Throughout the process of preproduction and into filming, Reinhardt, whose huge artistic ego was on the line since this was his first major Hollywood film directorial venture, butted heads with Jack Warner, whose financial ego was on the line. They disagreed in several areas. Reinhardt kept escalating the cost of the film, which infuriated Warner, and Reinhardt was aggravated over Warner’s using William Dieterle as the lead director, because Reinhardt spoke very poor English. Another major argument took place when Mickey broke his leg. Warner wanted to replace Mickey with George Breakston, Mickey’s understudy, but Reinhardt loved Mickey and refused, saying he would shoot around him while the actor’s leg healed.
Reinhardt’s son, film director Gottfried Reinhardt, claimed that Jack Warner “derived pleasure” from humiliating subordinates. “Harry Cohn was a sonofabitch,” he said, referring to the head of Columbia, “but he did it for business; he was not a sadist. [Louis B.] Mayer could be a monster, but he was not mean for the sake of meanness. Jack was.”16
Reinhardt thought Warner an illiterate, uncouth bully, but he needed to do this project to prove he could direct American films, and he was determined to do it his way. Elizabeth Yeaman of the Hollywood Citizen-News reported on October 30, 1934, about Reinhardt’s assembling a staff of his own choosing:
Speaking of technical experts, Warner appears to be making an effort to corner the market for their production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Max Reinhardt is supervising every aspect of the picture as they now have Erich Wolfgang Korngold, famous German composer to orchestrate the Mendelssohn music for the score; Bronislava Nijinskaia, sister of the famous dancer, Nijinsky, has been engaged to direct the dances; Anton Grot will design the sets; Max Rée will design the costumes; William Dieterle will direct; and Charles Kenyon and Mary McCall, Jr. are working on the screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s play! So far only Mickey Rooney is engaged for the role of Puck and is the only member of the cast definitely set.”
While the Rooneys assumed that MGM would easily loan Mickey out to Warner for Midsummer, Louis B. Mayer wanted to play some hardball. MGM producer/writer Sam Marx recalled, “Mayer knew he had Warner over a barrel . . . that little Mickey was the cornerstone to any success of that picture and that they needed him. Mick was getting next to nothing in salary, to boot. In the end, [Mayer] got ten times his salary and some great return cheap loan-outs [to MGM] for some Warner players.”17 This was one of the profit streams Mayer enjoyed by lending Mickey out for films he never would have made at MGM.
The drama of casting Mickey played out in the newspapers. On November 5, 1934, the Hollywood Citizen-News reported, “Despite rumors to the contrary, I have the assurance that Mickey Rooney will be definitely contracted for the role of Puck in the Warner production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ . . . although they suggested they could substitute young George Breakston in the role of Puck . . . however after seeing Rooney as Puck it would be a Herculean task for any other child to fill his shoes.” On November 7, the paper printed an update: “[T]here is some confusion over Mickey filling the role of Puck.” It was hard to keep up.
Mickey appeared sporadically in the traveling play (the first three performances in Chicago and for part of the run in San Francisco and Berkeley) because he was also being loaned out to the Fox Film Corporation to costar with Will Rogers in The County Chairman. His replacement in the play during this period was his understudy and threatened replacement in the film, George Breakston (who later played Breezy in the Andy Hardy films).
After much deliberation and bickering among the Warner brothers, the film version of Midsummer was budgeted at the then-astounding cost of $1.5 million. Oldest Warner brother, Harry unleashed his fury on his youngest brother, Jack, when he saw the budget, screaming, “Are you trying to destroy us for the name of prestige?”
Reinhardt was hired to direct, of course. However, director William Dieterle was brought in both to assist Reinhardt and to interpret for him in much the same way Weissberger had done in the stage production of the play. Under Reinhardt’s supervision, Dieterle would carefully oversee every detail. Mickey was the first actor to be cast, followed by Olivia de Havilland. They were the only two who made the transition from the stage version to the screen.
On November 27, 1934, the studio and Reinhardt announced the casting of the film. As Elizabeth Yeaman reported in the Hollywood Citizen-News:
Joe E. Brown will definitely play the role of “Flute” . . . [W]ith him will be Jimmy Cagney as “Bottom,” Dick Powell as “Lysander,” Jean Muir as “Helena” Donald Woods as “Oberon,” Ian Hunter as “Theseus,” Frank McHugh as “Snout,” Otis Harlan as “Starveling,” Grant Mitchell as “Egeus,” Anita Louise as “Titania,” Hobart Cavanaugh as “Philostrate,” Ross Alexander as “Demetrius,” Eugene Pallette as “Snug,” and Arthur Treacher as “Ninny Tomb.”18 Frank McHugh ended up playing Quince.
The cast was a mix of some Warner players who had Shakespearean backgrounds, such as English actors Ian Hunter and Hobart Cavanaugh, and great character actors such as Eugene Pallette and Frank McHugh. Included in the cast, but not mentioned in Yeaman’s column, were Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney. Also on hand, based on Mickey’s suggestion, was Mickey’s friend from the McGuire shorts, Billy Barty, who would play the elfin Mustard Seed. There was some other interested casting with vaudeville comic Hugh Herbert, actor Victor Jory (who, instead of Donald Woods, ended up playing Oberon, and would go to play the evil overseer in Gone with the Wind), and celebrated dancer Nini Theilade.
Comic Joe E. Brown later remembered, “Some of us were certainly not Shakespearean actors. Besides myself from the circus and burlesque, there was Jimmy Cagney from the chorus and Mickey Rooney and Hugh Herbert from burlesque. At the beginning we went into a huddle and decided to follow the classic traditions in which Herbert and I were brought up. I really believe Shakespeare would have liked the way we handled his low comedy and I’m sure the Minsky brothers did. The Bard’s words have been spoken better but never bigger or louder.”19
Jimmy Cagney recalled that the actors often stood around on the sidelines whispering to one another and that Reinhardt didn’t realize that some of them didn’t understand the lines they were speaking. “Somebody ought to tell him,” Cagney said in the November 1935 issue of Screenplay magazine. The confusion [over the meaning of Shakespeare’s verse] didn’t bother Dick Powell, who said he never really understood his lines, anyway.”
Right before the start of principal photography, Mickey was reunited with his father, Joe Yule Sr.—a rare treat, as Mickey had had only intermittent contact with his dad over the previous ten years—and the two went to the Big Pines Resort in California, near Lake Tahoe. It was here where Mickey broke his femur while tobogganing. He later claimed, in Life Is Too Short, that he himself reset the break, or “yanked it back into position,” and that the medics later told him he would make a great doctor. They put his leg first in a splint and then later a hard cast.
There have been some discrepancies among reports over when Mickey had last seen his dad. In both his autobiographies, i.e., and Life Is Too Short, Mickey claims he did not see his father until after he had filmed Boys Town in 1938, a separation of about thirteen years. In both those books, Mickey claims to have gone to Big Bear with his mother even though newspapers said he had gone with his father to Tahoe.
Yet in an article by Elizabeth Yeaman in the Hollywood Citizen-News on January 15, 1935, she wrote, “It was a sad blow to Warner and the entire cast of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ when young Mickey suffered while on a tobogganing expedition Sunday near Big Pines. Mickey’s father, Joe Yule Sr., ruefully admitted that there were 10,000 people on vacation at Big Pines Sunday and Mickey was the only one to be injured.” No matter who was with him, the tobogganing accident became a national news event and a disaster for Warner.
The Hollywood Citizen-News reported on January 15, 1935:
[A]ll the [Warner] executives went into a huddle yesterday to seek a solution to the great problem, since Mickey has already appeared in several scenes and the production is too expensive to be held over and wait until his leg permits him to run again . . . George Breakston is a brilliant little actor and had some fine notices for his work on the road as “Puck” and he knows the part just as well as Mickey Rooney. For the present, at least, Georgie will do the running and elfin sprints for the long shots in the picture. Warner may be able to use Mickey Rooney for the remaining close-ups.
Jack Warner was reportedly apoplectic. As Mickey wrote, “Jack Warner didn’t get angry. He went insane. The first thing he wanted to do was kill me. ‘Then after I kill him,’ he said, ‘I’m going to break his other leg.”20
Arthur Marx wrote in his Mickey Rooney biography, and told us in an interview, “There was a special clause in Mickey’s contract specifically forbidding him to engage in any contact sports.”21 This story (told by others as well) was untrue because Rooney, although he did have an agreement with Warner Bros. for this particular film, was under contract with MGM, not Warner Brothers.
IN THE END, WARNERS could not cut out the scenes already shot with Mickey. The studio had spent almost a quarter of the budget. As reported in the Hollywood Citizen-News, the studio revised the shooting schedule, shot the long shots with Georg
e Breakston as Puck, and waited for Mickey to return.
In the end, Mickey spent the next months recuperating in a hospital bed at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in a heavy cast. Eleanor Barnes, in the Hollywood Illustrated Daily News, wrote on February 9, 1935:
Mickey, gifted boy actor, left Hollywood Hospital yesterday after spending several weeks there with a broken left leg, suffered while tobogganing at Big Pine Lake. Although his leg is in a cast, Mickey insisted upon being taken to Warner Brothers’ Studio, where he reported to Max Reinhardt and said he was ready to resume work on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Mickey was given a rousing reception by James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, Jean Muir, Veree Teasdale [sic], Anita Louise and other players in the cast, and all of them autographed his cast.
Despite all the hype, Reinhardt’s film adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream did rather poorly at the box office, as expected. The movie was a spectacle, to be sure, and it had a powerful cast, but the story itself didn’t resonate with theatergoers during the height of the Great Depression. Moreover, audiences seemed surprised, and perhaps disappointed, to see the likes of James Cagney running around in theatrical versions of Elizabethan costumes and mouthing sixteenth-century verse. The reviews were mixed. The film won only two Academy Awards, for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing (and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Assistant Director). While the cinematography, use of Mendelssohn’s music, and dance sequences were highly praised, the acting received much criticism, especially Dick Powell’s. Early on, Powell, then a “Hollywood crooner,” had realized he was completely wrong for the role of Lysander and asked to be taken off the film, only to have Warner demand that he play the part.
The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney Page 11