The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Even though outside the studio gates, Mickey was alluded to by Hollywood columnists, who spotted him cavorting at nightclubs and with different starlets, he remained totally professional on the set, his discipline impeccable. After all, he was a seasoned veteran with years in the business. It was only after closing time when the hormone-loaded Mickey was unleashed.

  His behavior outside the studio was becoming legendary, in fact, news about him inevitably leaked. At eighteen, he was not yet of legal drinking age in California, but he certainly could skirt that issue when he wanted to. At a party at Chasen’s, where they would not serve him a drink because he had no ID to show he was of age, he told his buddy Sig Frohlich, “Hey, meet me in the can, Sig, and bring along a straight shot.”10 Bartenders who knew Mickey’s age would not serve him alcohol. And even if they did not know him, because of his small stature, they always asked for his driver’s license. Girls were not a problem, though. Mickey remembered, “I could fuck any girl, anytime. Most wanted me because I was Mickey Rooney. They could not give a shit what we did in bed. They wanted to brag to their friends that they had fucked me.”11

  Mickey liked to have a good time, but he was not a great conversationalist or a wit. “It wasn’t like going out with Groucho or Fred Allen,” Sid Miller recalled.

  He was an actual bore one on one. But take him to Ciro’s nightclub or the Mocambo and he’d be up on the bandstand playing the drums or dancing the rhumba with the singers. He always played to the crowds, and they loved it. He was the life of the party as long as he could perform. And he was a great dresser. Real loud clothes with checks and plaids. I mean he didn’t shop at the May Company. He had these obscure stores he would take me to where they would find him what he liked and had to special-fit his clothes because of his size. And he just loved all the looks. He wanted to be the center of attention. I could see him coming into the room saying to everyone, “How’s it going, toots?” He said it to everyone, even the real snooty ones like Claudette Colbert and her doctor husband, who tried to be very refined and pompous. He just slapped them on the back and did his “How ya, toots?” to them. It was such a hoot. When Mickey was invited to parties, he was the entertainment. He did his imitations. I played piano, and he sang songs and danced. The girls loved him. He always had a girl leave with him from the party. I was not always so lucky.12

  Mickey was having the time of his life. However, back at the studio, Mayer was seething. While there was no damage at the box office yet, Mickey’s girl-chasing image was nevertheless seeping into the columns and threatening Mayer’s plans to keep his star’s All-American brand squeaky clean. The stories of Mickey the party animal were spilling out to Hedda Hopper at the Los Angeles Times, Louella Parsons for the Hearst syndicate, and the other columnists. As much as Mayer and Strickling tried to suppress the stories and protect the Rooney/Hardy image, the truth was becoming almost impossible to conceal. In 1938, there was an almost nonstop onslaught of stories about Mickey: Sidney Skolsky, on May 23, in the Hollywood Citizen-News: “Mickey has now his own apartment and a valet. He now can be seen out almost every night . . .”; Harrison Carroll, on June 9, in the Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express: “Who is that pretty girl on Mickey’s arm late last night at the Hula Hut . . .”; and on June 14: “Mickey in his loud sportcoat has traded in his blue Ford convertible for a 12-cyllinder custom built car that is racing green much like Gable’s . . .”; Ella Wickersham’s column in the Los Angeles Examiner of June 28 noted: “Mickey Rooney was entertaining one and all with his antics . . . Mickey was seen dancing with many of the girls.”

  Mickey, who was playing youths on the screen in the backyard musicals and the Hardy films, was in danger of betraying that image. Mayer at first tried the fatherly soft sell on Mickey. He knew how to be smooth on the surface. But his breaking point may have come with the reported pregnancy, in 1940, of a teenage starlet under contract to MGM named Julia Turner—soon to become known as Lana. Mickey claimed to have met her when she was fifteen and he was sixteen, at Currie’s Ice Cream (near Hollywood High), and started dating her soon after their meeting. He recalled, “I soon found out that she was as oversexed as I was, warm passionate, soft and moist in interesting places when she arrived at MGM in 1937. She had been discovered by my old friend Mervyn LeRoy [whom Mickey had known since he was six in the silent film Orchids and Ermine] and clearly he could help Lana’s career more than I could. I had no more dates with Lana. I thought that Lana had just outgrown me, but I later learned from Lana that the real reason we stopped dating was this: Lana had become pregnant.”13 Mickey claimed that Lana told him many years later, at a fund-raiser, that she was in a “family way” from Mickey. “I was stunned and grateful at that moment that I hadn’t known back then. I might have wanted her to have the baby.”14

  Mickey was summoned to studio chief’s plush, white offices. It was like being called into the throne room before an angry monarch. “Mickey, you know you’re like the son I never had,” Mayer pleaded. “I care about you and worry. When I see your name always in the papers . . . Louella’s talking about you at all the nightspots . . . you’re with all the girls . . . they talk about you at the Cocoanut Grove, drinking and dancing that rhumba . . . You have got to remember the public expects different . . . you are Andy Hardy. You have to stop living like that, son.”

  Mickey replied, “But Mr. Mayer, I work like a dog when I work . . . real hard . . . I put everything into it . . . If I were just another kid and I was going on dates, nobody would say a word . . . Now I’m not supposed to do that because I’m Andy Hardy! What am I working for?”

  Mayer remained calm and reminded Mickey, “Son, that is what I am paying you well for. You are supposed to work hard. Now, I know you’re a normal young boy, full of piss and vinegar. And I don’t care what you do behind closed doors. But you need to behave in public and don’t get some jailbait [Lana Turner] knocked up. It could destroy everything. Farshtey?”15

  Whether Mickey was the father or not, Lana Turner had become pregnant, and the studio had to make sure that the young starlet’s inconvenient condition didn’t make it into the news. For that, Eddie Mannix relied on studio doctor Edward Jones. Jones was, according to E. J. Fleming in his book The Fixers, “Strickling’s ever-present Dr. Edward Jones, who prescribed Benzedrine, Phenobarbital and Seconal, among others, to keep [Judy] Garland working.”16 Fleming told us that Jones, under Strickling and Mannix’s direction, was used to assist in such sensitive matters around the studio, including Jean Harlow’s illness and her husband Paul Bern’s earlier “suicide.” It was Dr. Jones who, Mickey claimed, performed the abortion on Turner.

  With Turner’s possible pregnancy hanging in the air during Louis Mayer’s lecture, Mickey said he understood and promised to be more cautious. Yet Mayer was still concerned. Mannix had told L.B. that Mickey was a “loaded gun ready to go off.” Mayer needed, at all costs, to protect the Rooney image.

  Enter Lester Peterson. Peterson was one of the rising young stars of Strickling’s PR unit. Mayer liked the personable Les Peterson, who had helped him in various matters with his daughters. Les had the appearance of the all-American male. About thirty-five, he was particularly good-looking and tall, with a head full of blond hair. He was often seen at many of the nightclubs around Los Angeles, watching out for MGM’s “family of stars.” He dated, and married in 1944, the beautiful actress Eleanor Stewart. But now his job was watching over Mickey. When Arthur Marx once asked Peterson what he did at MGM, he replied, “I’m Mickey Rooney’s keeper.”17

  Peterson was the perfect choice to become Mickey’s keeper. An MGM company man through and through, “he ate, drank and slept Metro Goldwyn Mayer,” recalled Arthur Marx. “If Mayer asked him to meet a visiting fireman at four-thirty in the morning, he would do it. If Mayer [had] asked him to jump into a lake with all his clothes on, he would probably have done that, too.” Peterson accepted Mayer’s command and took charge of the eighteen-year-old Rooney. His orders were to tag along with Mickey
anywhere outside the gates of Culver City. Peterson told Arthur Marx, “I followed him everywhere, except to the john and his bedroom.”18

  Mickey was keenly aware of his importance to MGM. He recalled, “The studio, of course, was interested in counseling me. In fact, they had a man named Les Peterson, who was vice-president in charge of Mickey Rooney. But, in truth, Peterson was not in charge of me; he was in charge of my image. . . . For a time, Peterson was a confidant and friend. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’ preserving the image and robbing me of fun, or sneak a drink, or a ticket on a winner or loser. It didn’t strike me for a while that Les Peterson was not my friend at all. He was a friend of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Incorporated. Personally I believe his constant surveillance had much to do with my youthful emotional rebellion.19

  It was an interesting time for the gossip columns. Today we watch the antics of rebellious teen stars play out on social media and in the press. They are following a long line of young personalities acting out, but Mickey was the original. Before Mickey, gossip was focused almost exclusively on the adult stars. The stories were about Gable marrying Lombard, the death of Jean Harlow, or the Fatty Arbuckle rape and manslaughter scandal. But Mickey set a whole new trend, tapping into a rich new vein of fans interested in young stars and starlets: teenagers. Photoplay and Hollywood magazines noticed the trend and started creating stories about Rooney, Judy Garland, Deana Durbin, and others in their age group.

  Howard Strickling and his PR machine noticed this uptick in the gossip skewing to the young. They carefully monitored the columnists and tried to drive a positive slant to the stories, chalking the teen stars’ antics up to youthful exuberance. For example, the column from May Hobart in the Hollywood Citizen-News on November 3, 1937, “Wild party at the It Café—Buster Crabbe held a free for all at the ‘It’ Café with guests Mickey Rooney, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi . . .” was followed by a Strickling entry (by Robin Coons) the next day in the same newspaper, titled, “Love Life of Mickey Rooney Bared.” Despite the scandalous headline, the story detailed Rooney’s “$10 allowance,” the height of his dates (never over five feet tall), and that “Business Comes First.” It was a clean-up job, to show that Rooney was a busy young man, and, frankly, that it was a wonder that he had any time for girls at all.

  All his carousing and partying changed, however, if only for a little while, when Mickey crossed paths with Ava Gardner.

  11

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  Ava

  Mickey and Ava Gardner at their wedding on January 10, 1942.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MONTE KLAUS COLLECTION.

  If America was distracted by the distant drumbeat of war across Europe and Asia, Mickey was not. His own drumbeat was the constant march of the films he was shooting on the Metro lot and the young girls he was chasing around Hollywood. But all that would soon change with a single glance.

  It was a hot July day in 1941 on Metro’s Stage 7, where Mickey was filming Babes on Broadway, the sequel to the phenomenally successful Babes in Arms, with Judy Garland. The director called, “Cut!” and the scene ended. Mickey looked toward the camera—and his head snapped to a stop right there, jiggling the Carmen Miranda headpiece he was wearing. Who was that girl next to Milt Weiss, Howie Strickling’s assistant in publicity? Where had she come from? Dark, smokey-eyed, and lanky, she was stunning—and Mickey could barely catch his breath. She was just standing there watching the scene alongside Weiss, seemingly rapt by the chaos taking place in front of her as the crew worked the set. Mickey couldn’t take his eyes off her, and tried to catch her gaze with his—even though he was dressed in a Carmen Miranda costume: a long slit skirt, a bolero blouse with phony breasts, huge platform shoes, a fruit hat that was larger than he was, and full makeup. For Mickey, time suddenly stood still. Everything about the young woman by the camera was tantalizing, certainly more tantalizing than this tired sequel that didn’t measure up to the original. But this movie would be of great significance to Mickey, because it was in that moment on that day, on that set during that scene, when he first laid eyes on Ava Gardner.

  Ava would not forget the day, either. It was her first day at the studio, and Weiss was assigned to take her on a tour where she would lock eyes with the studio’s most popular performer. She recalled the moment to Peter Evans:

  I can remember that first meeting with Mick very clearly—probably because he was wearing a bowl of fruit on his head. . . . He was playing the Carmen Miranda character . . . complete with false eyelashes, false boobs, his mouth smothered with lipstick.

  It was my first day in Hollywood [and] I was being hauled around the sets to be photographed with the stars. He came over to me and said, “Hi, I’m Mickey Rooney.” He did a little soft-shoe shuffle kind of dance, and bowed to me. God, I was embarrassed. I don’t think I said a word. I might have said “Hello” or something, I was overwhelmed. His Andy Hardy films made the studio millions and cost peanuts. So did his Mickey and Judy pictures. I wanted to ask for his autograph but I could barely open my mouth.

  The people on the set were laughing like mad at him. He loved an audience, of course. He was always at his best when he was in the spotlight. I just wanted the ground to open and swallow me up.

  Ava said that she asked Mickey after they were married what he was thinking when he first saw her on that set that day. He said, as Ava told Peter Evans, “ ‘Okay, when Milt Weiss said you were a new contract player, I figured you were a new piece of pussy for one of the executives. The pretty ones were usually spoken for before they even stepped off the train. I didn’t give a damn, I wanted to fuck you the moment I saw you. . . .’ Mick was always the romantic. I guess he meant it as a compliment but I was shocked. I was still capable of being shocked in those days.”1

  In Life Is Too Short, Mickey echoed what he’d told Ava:

  She was a contract player. The studio was full of sexy young women who wanted to make it in Hollywood. Most often, Hollywood ended up making them because some of the women were there, first and foremost, as potential pussy for the executives at MGM. But when Ava said just “Hello” in the soft drawl of her native North Carolina, I was a goner. I had known many beautiful women in my lifetime, but this little lady topped them all. My technique in those days was a combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud. I’d approach a pretty girl with confidence and confess that, yes, I was the one, the only, the original Mickey Rooney. Then instead of waiting for her reaction, I’d launch into a comedy routine that gave the girl only one option. She’d have to laugh. When I found a girl who liked my impersonations and was willing to accept me, I was elated. But I was young and my elation quickly turned into instant boredom. However Ava turned me down five times for a date. That only made me want her more, not just so I could go to bed with her. I wanted to make her the mother of my children.2

  Ava recalled:

  Mick called me that night and asked me out to dinner. I said no. I wasn’t playing hard to get. I wasn’t into that Southern Belle shit. I was just too shy. I said I was busy. That was a stupid thing to say. Who the hell was I busy with, fahchrissake? . . . I didn’t know a goddamn soul in Hollywood, except my sister. And I’m busy? [He persisted in calling her.] Every conversation ended up with him asking me to have dinner with him. Finally, I just ran out of excuses.3

  According to Mickey’s buddy Sidney Miller, it was a conversation that he had with Ava that turned the tide. As Sid told us, “She was shooting some cheesecake stills, and I came in to relay Mickey’s invitation to dinner . . . I did it as a favor to Mickey. He was going crazy over her and asked me to try to talk her into going out with him. I had lunch with her and her sister in the commissary a few times. I told her that, ‘You don’t know how good for your career it would be if you were seen with Mick.’ She looked at me, and she was a knockout, and innocently asked me, ‘You think it would get me lot of exposure if I went out with Mickey?’ I assured her that it would. After that, she was more receptive to him.

&n
bsp; “Mickey sent a chauffeur-driven limo to pick up Ava and her sister Bappie who was also invited on that first date. He was sitting in the back, dressed in a tux. Ava was surprised at how charismatic and good-looking Mickey was without the Carmen Miranda makeup,” Sid told us.4 And Ava said, “The only other time I’d seen him he was wearing that Carmen Miranda shit on his face. I’d seen him on the screen a hundred times but that was in black-and-white. His looks in the flesh, without the Carmen Miranda makeup, came as a shock. He still wasn’t what I’d call a handsome may-an, and his shortness surprised me, but there was definitely something appealing about him. He had thick, red-blonde wavy hair, crinkly Irish-green eyes, and a grin that was . . . well it definitely wasn’t innocent, honey, I can tell you that!”5

  On that first date, they ate dinner at Chasen’s, where he introduced her to Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, James Stewart, and W. C. Fields. They saw Jimmy Durante sing “Inka Dinka Doo” at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel, where they also saw the Freddy Martin Band, and finished up at Ciro’s nightclub.6

  After that first night, Ava and Mickey were nearly inseparable. He picked her up every day and they drove together to the studio. Sidney Miller remembered, “He’d drive on the lot with his convertible and scream to everyone, ‘Hey, look at my girlfriend,’ or ‘This is my new girl. Isn’t she gorgeous?’ He embarrassed the hell out of Ava, but I think she enjoyed all the attention. She was his arm candy, but I think he was totally crushed on her.”7