The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Mickey was obsessed with Ava. He took her out to dinner nightly at Romanoff’s, Ciro’s, or the Brown Derby. He took her dancing at the Grove, Ciro’s, the Mocambo, the Trocadero, or the Ambassador Hotel. He took her to the races at Santa Anita; to watch him play golf at the Lakeside Country Club; to auto races, baseball games, and more. Everywhere they went, there were fans, photographers, and welcoming headwaiters who announced his arrival. She observed the tremendous influence of his power and was aware that this would open doors for her. She may have been naïve, but she was not dumb. She enjoyed all this new attention, even if it was directed at Mickey.8

  Ava recalled, “He acted, he sang, he danced. He told jokes, did impersonations—Cary Grant, Jimmy Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, he did them all. He’d have even turned somersaults if I’d asked him to.”9

  After every date, Mickey proposed marriage to Ava. In Life Is Too Short, he wrote: “After the first date, every day I proposed marriage. She didn’t say yes, but her no began to sound less firm after a time. She went from ‘You’re crazy, Mickey, I hardly know you’ to ‘Marriage is a serious thing, Mick’ to ‘What’ll our life be like?’ It was clear to me that I was making some progress.” Mickey told her that their life together would be as big stars, they’d go everywhere together; he’d buy her mansions, jewelry, and fancy cars. Life would be one big party.10

  Ava told Peter Evans that marrying Mick was the dumbest thing she ever did. “[Y]ou have to remember,” she told him, “I was eighteen! August 1941. I was still a virgin . . . [A] lot of booze has flowed under the bridgework since then.”11

  Ava feared that living with Mickey would be like living on a soundstage 24/7, and that Mickey would always be on. And he was, because he didn’t know how to be off. He drove Ava around in his Lincoln, a personal gift from Henry Ford. Inside the car was a gold plaque that read, TO MY DEAR FRIEND, MICKEY ROONEY, WITH GRATITUDE, HENRY FORD. Mickey liked it when he drove Ava around in his Lincoln. He liked her company. He also disliked being alone. In fact, he absolutely hated the times when he was alone. Maybe it was all the social contact he’d experienced as a toddler, his exposure to a theater audience, but he thrived on being in the public eye, and quietly sulked when he was alone. Sidney Miller told us, “He just hated to drive alone in the car from Encino to Ava’s Franklin Avenue apartment. So he had me pick up Ava in his car to bring her back to his house, so he wouldn’t be alone.”12

  Wherever Mickey went, however, his shadow followed. Les Peterson was always within steps of Rooney. In press clippings, at studio events, the ever-present Peterson was there lurking in the background of a photograph. Ava Gardner remarked of Les, “I knew he was only doing what Mayer had told him to do.”13 But even beneath the watchful eyes of Les Peterson and his studio bosses, Mickey and Ava were becoming an item.

  The news that Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney were seeing each other soon spread around the studio. Starlets who had previously enjoyed Rooney’s attention—many of whom had grown to count on it—took his neglect to heart. Eventually, Peterson decided that it was time to warn L. B. Mayer of the seriousness of his star’s interest in Ava. Mayer, who had to have Ava pointed out to him, some five weeks after she joined MGM, asked how serious.

  “He wants to marry her, Mr. Mayer,” Peterson told him.

  “Tell him he can’t,” said Mayer. “He belongs to MGM. Tell him a married Andy Hardy would break the hearts of all those little girlies out there who want him for themselves. Who knows what that would cost—him, me, the studio?”

  “I’ve already told him, L.B. I’ve told him that at his age he should still be playing the field, and having fun. He won’t listen,” said Peterson.

  “Is he slipping her the business?”

  “He swears he’s not, L.B.”

  “Why doesn’t he fuck her? He fucks all the others.”

  “He says she’s holding out like no dame he’s ever known, L.B.”

  “She ain’t the fucking Virgin Mary,” Mayer said.

  “He says it’s giving him terrible headaches,” Peterson said.

  “He should just boff her and get her out of my fucking hair.”14

  Ava reminisced about Peterson to Peter Evans:

  I liked Les, and I think he liked me. He was devoted to Mickey, of course. But he knew which side his bread was buttered. And who can blame him? Mayer was the boss of bosses. He was the king. They all owed their careers to him. Afterward, after Mick and I were hitched, I asked Les whether there was anything Mayer liked about me?

  Les had to think about that. “Well, he once told me you obviously had cunt power,” he said.

  I said, “Am I supposed to be flattered by that, Les?”

  He said, “Well, that’s just about the highest compliment L.B. can pay a girl, honey.”15

  Meanwhile, the Hollywood gossip columnists were abuzz with stories about Mickey with this unknown starlet Ava Gardner. Almost every column included a Rooney/Gardner tidbit of information. Sally Moore in the Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express, on August 30, 1941, wrote, “Richard Quinne is the dinner host to Mickey Rooney and his mysterious lady, Ava Gardner at his home.”

  Louella Parsons for the Hearst syndicate, on October 2, 1941, wrote, “Is Mickey Rooney getting serious about Ava Gardner? He gave her a friendship ring with a large topaz setting.”

  Harrison Carroll wrote on October 29, 1941, “Ava Gardner was at the It Café with Bobby Stack and she certainly didn’t look as if she was thinking of Mickey Rooney.”

  Hedda Hopper, on October 30, 1941, wrote, “Mickey was holding his sultry girl, Ava Gardner, close at the opening of ‘They Can’t Get You Down.’ ”

  Elizabeth Yeaman in the Hollywood Citizen-News, on December 10, 1941, wrote, “Is there wedding bells [sic] for Mickey and Ava Gardner? Gardner is a native of Smithfield, North Carolina, and is still blessed with a soft Dixie accent. The 21 year old Rooney said that he had fallen in love ‘at first sight.’ ”

  Ava was beginning to enjoy the new respect she was now being given at the studio as the chosen girlfriend of Mickey Rooney. In a manner of weeks, she had gone from obscure starlet from North Carolina to a princess living in the fire pit of Mickey’s world: nightclubs, openings, and parties at the homes of some of the biggest screen idols she had grown up admiring. If she broke up with Mickey, she knew she could go right back to being “just another” ingénue who had yet to appear in a film. She was enjoying life at the top of the heap and was starting to acquire a tremendous capacity for clubbing until early morning.

  “The Beachcomber had become a favorite spot of mine,” she recalled. “They served the best zombies in California. They tasted so good and seemed so innocuous. . . . Bacardi, dark rum, light rum, pineapple juice, lime juice, apricot brandy, orange juice, a sprig of mint, and a cherry. Only I always told them to hold the mint and cherry. . . . That’s the secret of a good zombie. I swear I still hadn’t tied one on in my life at that stage,” the later notorious drinker recalled.16

  It was in late November, five months after they met on the movie set, when, after a night of partying and drinking zombies at Don the Beachcomber, Mickey popped the question for the umpteenth time. Ava was prepared for an answer this time. Both Gardner’s mother and her sister, Bappie, with whom she lived, were advising her to marry Mickey. So Ava said yes. She remembered,

  “Okay, Mick,” I said.

  “I asked you to marry me,” he said. He sounded stunned.

  “I know you did, and I said okay—but not until I’m nineteen,” I said.

  I think I was a bit stunned myself. Maybe I’d heard what a rough time L.B. was giving him over me. Maybe I felt guilty about that. I really can’t remember. I just remember thinking: why the hell not? . . .

  So I said okay. But I sill had this thing about being a virgin on the day I was married—and nineteen years old.17

  Two years younger than Mickey, Ava would turn nineteen on December 24, 1941.

  Mickey and Ava spent hours discussing their future plans. It was
all fun and games until they hit upon two possible roadblocks: “Uncle” L.B. and Mickey’s mother. Ava had no familial worries; her mother and sisters were in favor of the marriage, and Bappie loved Mickey. The couple decided to flip a coin to determine whom they would tell first, and Nell was the winner. Ava and Mickey drove out to Encino break the news to “Ma” Rooney, who was now living in grand style in the twelve-room manor house Mickey had bought for her and Fred. Mickey’s stepfather had closed his restaurant and was working in the bookkeeping department at Metro, a job Mickey had secured for him. Nell was going to the track during the days, and out drinking at night with Fred. It was a far cry from her days in burlesque, when she and Mickey weren’t even sure where their next meal was coming from.

  If Ava thought she would be embraced into the family by Nell, she was in for a surprise. Ava’s story of her first meeting with her formidable future mother-in law was one of her favorite tales, which she recounted to her coauthor Peter Evans:

  I would replay it in my head whenever Mick did something so outrageous I wanted to kill him. I only had to think of that meeting to make me laugh, and all was forgiven. You had to forgive any boy who had a mother like Mick’s Ma. . . .

  I was very nervous and very shy. Ma was sitting cross-legged on the sofa with the Racing Form across her lap, a bottle of bourbon by her side, and a big glassful in her hand. Did you ever see the comic strip Maggie and Jiggs? . . .

  Well Ma was a dead ringer for Maggie, even the tight, little curls were the same—like carroty Ping-Pong balls. The scene was bizarre. It’s something I’ll never forget: Ma sitting in this big, beautiful house Mickey had bought her in the [San Fernando] Valley, sipping her whiskey, and studying the horses. She had divorced Joe Yule; she was married to Fred Pankey, a cashier at the studio.

  Mick said, “Ma, I want you to meet Ava. We’re going to get married.”

  She looked at me for a second or two, her expression didn’t change. She was as calm as custard. “Well,” she said, these were her first words to me: “I guess he hasn’t been in your pants yet, has he?”18

  It was a shocking first meeting, especially for a southern nineteen-year-old who was a newcomer to Hollywood and show business.

  Ava recalled, “God Almighty, what a meeting that was. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. Today I would think it was one of the funniest opening remarks I’d ever heard, but then I just wanted to curl up and die.19

  After they broke the news to Nell, Mickey was ready to shout the news to the world. He was floating on cloud nine. He told Sidney Miller, Dick Quine, Jackie Cooper, his sometime stand-in Dick Paxton, and his circle of friends.

  Mickey then told Carey Wilson, who was the producer of the Andy Hardy films. “Oh, I know you think she’s not the girl for me, but you’re wrong. We’re in love and she’s going to be a great wife.”20 Then, Mickey personally called Los Angeles Times columnist Hedda Hopper and told her about Ava, the engagement, and how they were going to start a family. Hopper knew about the couple, because she had been reporting about their clubbing and appearances for the previous few months. However, true to form in the world of Mayer and Metro, she would not run the story without consulting studio publicity head Howard Strickling, who upon hearing the news from Hedda, went into an immediate denial. “Sure he’s gaga for her,” Strickling said. “But as far as an engagement—well, that’s just wishful thinking. She’s Charlie Feldman’s girl.” Feldman was Gardner’s agent, and it was assumed he was having an affair with her. Strickling assured Hedda that if the couple became engaged, she would be the first to know. But Strickling was clearly concerned. This was not good news.21

  “It was a slap in the face for Mayer,” Ava said of Mickey’s telling Hopper first.22 Hedda was a powerful syndicated columnist, but according to author E. J. Fleming, she was also on the Metro payroll and would not dare cross the lion. She knew what she had to do and killed the story.

  Strickling was furious. Mickey knew not to cross the line and talk directly to the media. Every MGM player knew the rules on how to talk to the press, especially to columnists such as Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Sidney Skolsky. Strickling hunted down Rooney and found him in his dressing room. Mickey was in bliss and confirmed his engagement news to Strickling. This only made Strickling more furious. Not only had Mickey popped the question without an okay from L.B, but he had had the audacity to break one of the golden rules for stars at Metro: You don’t talk directly to the press unless publicity sets it up.

  “Mr. Mayer is not going to like you marrying Ava,” Strickling told Rooney.

  “You’re the biggest star in the business. You can’t just throw your career away on anybody. Don’t get me wrong. Ava’s a very sweet girl, and she is certainly built. But you have an obligation to the public and to Mr. Mayer who believed in you enough to hand you the Hardy series on a silver platter.” He continued: “L.B.’s protecting his investment in you, Mickey. Fans lose interest in stars who get married. They want them single and available. You see, in their fantasies, young girls see themselves married to you. Andy Hardy, in particular, ought to remain single and celibate. In the public’s eye he is still a kid, and innocent. How can they think you’re innocent when you’re banging the hottest broad in town?”23

  Mickey quickly responded that he wasn’t “banging” Ava, that his relationship was pure, much like that between Polly Benedict and Andy Hardy. Strickling couldn’t have cared less about the details. He feared the public perception of the marriage. Everyone in the business knew there was a vast divide between the real Mickey Rooney and the character Strickling and his boys painted to the press. Mickey was, for all intents and purposes, a feral child, the son of a mother who had turned tricks and a boozing father who took him to hookers as a youth. He was certainly not in any way Andrew Hardy, son of Judge Hardy. But this was Hollywood, and publicity was the stuff dreams were made of.

  THE CONCEPT OF A public persona radically different from the true nature of the performer is a concept Budd Schulberg documents graphically in his screenplay for the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, which stars a young Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, whose sudden fame as a media persona overwhelms him. Schulberg’s fictional character was reflected in a legion of real-life performers, a seemingly endless roster from Bob Hope to John Wayne to Rooney. Mickey, at this stage of his career, was a prime example of the strength of the MGM public relations team’s transmogrifying an actor into his on-screen character. Before the marriages and scandals, parents wanted their sons to grow up to be Mickey Rooney. He was respectful to his elders and morally unblemished. How dare Rooney affect the carefully designed creature they had built by his scandalous behavior and ill-advised marriage? From the studio’s perspective, this was not to be.

  Strickling, fearful of the studio’s reaction, but still eager to protect its star, swore Mickey to secrecy until he, Strickland, had met with L.B. to discuss the engagement. Mickey reluctantly agreed. Strickling had to quickly put a lid on the gossip and rumors until he had a plan for damage control.

  Louis Mayer had been monitoring every aspect of this romance and was hardly in the dark about Mickey’s love life. He was sent the daily clippings by Strickling and had heard the details from Les Peterson. He ordered Strickling and the marketing department to poll the effect that marriage would have on the Rooney image, and the results confirmed what Mayer already knew: it would damage that image, and possibly damage profits. In 1941, Rooney led the Motion Picture Herald’s list of top-ten moneymakers, followed by Clark Gable, Abbott and Costello, Gene Autry, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Bette Davis, and Ginger Rogers. Of that list, only Rooney, Gable, and Tracy were MGM players.

  Not only were the Andy Hardy films returning big revenue for Metro, but the Rooney-Garland backyard musicals such as Babes in Arms were also huge moneymakers. The formula L.B. devised for Babes in Arms had struck gold, and the film became one of the top box office draws in that amazing year for motion pictures, 1939. Far from th
e standard MGM musical, Babes in Arms may have been the first musical aimed directly at a far younger demographic than MGM’s other pictures. This was clear starting with the title number, staged by Busby Berkley, which featured the most bizarre teenage riot in the background. While the large cast of youngsters is trying to start a bonfire and then dance around it, Douglas McPhail is singing a number on the top of a playground slide while Mickey gestures wildly behind him. Babes in Arms was clearly a new breed of film musical featuring young, fresh, cinematically innocent talent, which L.B. did not want to see changed.

  Mayer called a meeting for the next day, with Rooney and Ava summoned to his throne room. The accounts of that meeting differ drastically depending on the source: Mickey, Ava, and even Benny Thau, who was part of the executive team under Mayer that included Hunt Stromberg, Lawrence Weingarten, and the ever-present Eddie Mannix. This team was nicknamed “the College of Cardinals,” because they closely counseled “Pope” Mayer. When Mickey walked into the meeting and saw both Thau and Strickling in attendance, he was aware of the importance of this meeting.

  Rooney recalled that Mayer did not acknowledge Ava as they entered his office. “He just launched into a tirade,” Mickey said, quoting L.B. as sputtering, “How dare you destroy the studio’s best investment.” Mickey claimed Mayer was near tears as he screamed, “That’s all. I forbid it.”

  Mickey fought back, telling Mayer, “You’ve got no right to do that. This is my life.”

  Mayer yelled back, “It’s not your life, not as long as you’re working for me. MGM has made your life.”

  Mickey quickly responded, “Then maybe, I shouldn’t be working for you. If you don’t want to give us your blessings, Mr. Mayer, I’ll be happy to go to another studio.” Mickey characterized Mayer’s proprietary ownership of his life as if he were Dr. Frankenstein.