The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Mayer quickly softened, “Mickey, it would break my heart to see you unhappy.”

  Mickey was later pleased by his “standing up” to Mayer and realized, for the first time, the power he exuded as the world’s number one box office attraction.24

  According to Arthur Marx, Mayer was far blunter at the meeting. “Ava was cowered in a corner, looking demure and awfully frightened. This was her first encounter with the tyrannical boss of the Culver City lot.” Marx sums up L.B.’s charge as “How dare a nobody try to sabotage his hottest star! When his threatening failed, he tried to embarrass Mickey, saying. ‘Why do you want to marry this girl? You know all you want to do is get into her pants.’ ”25

  Benny Thau, no stranger to gruff talk as a former vaudeville booking agent, was nonetheless shocked to hear Mayer speak this way. While researching a book on Elizabeth Taylor, author C. David Heymann interviewed Thau at the Motion Picture Home in early 1983, months before his death. Thau recalled to Heymann the meeting with Rooney and Gardner, saying, “Listen, I was no choirboy, but Louie went berserk in trying to intimidate the kid [Rooney]. He told him that ‘You get all the free pussy you want; what do you need this broad?’ I mean she was sitting right there as well. The kid stood up to him, he had some balls, and Louie backed down. I mean, here was our strongest asset and he wasn’t going to risk antagonizing him. It just didn’t work.”26

  According to Arthur Marx, Mayer switched to a paternalistic tack, saying, “He [Mayer] was the father figure again. Tears welled up in Mayer’s ratlike pale eyes . . .’It would break my heart to see you unhappy. Please believe me, Mickey,’ he pleaded, ‘I’ve always been like a father to you. Believe me, this is not the girl for you.’ Moreover, he continued, there was a war on. How could Mickey contemplate marriage knowing that he could be drafted any minute, leaving his wife pregnant and alone?”27

  Mickey started feeling his own power, put his arms around Ava, and stood his ground. He told Mayer, “Mr. Mayer, I love this girl and she loves me. And if you don’t want to give me your blessings, I’ll be glad to go to another studio. I know a couple places that would love to have me.”28 Mickey had indeed reached Mayer’s soft spot, his pocketbook, according to Arthur Marx, and Mayer knew he had lost this game of cat and mouse. He told Mickey, “Okay, congratulations, Mickey. Go get married. Just don’t expect me to support her if you go off to war.”29

  It would be hard to imagine this meeting happening in today’s studio environment. Any meeting between talent and management would be attended by the performer’s management team. Can you imagine a Mike Ovitz, Sue Mengers, or Ari Emanuel sitting on the sidelines while their most important client was confronted by a studio head? Yet neither “Uncle” Abe Lastfogel nor any of Mickey’s William Morris agents was anywhere to be seen. They were not about to cross swords with Mayer on this ticklish situation.

  Ava Gardner had a totally different recollection of the meeting, saying that Mayer was less threatening, more fatherly, and sought to embrace rather than alienate them. According to Ava, she missed the first twenty minutes of the 8:00 a.m. meeting. She remembered that Mickey was called in first, while she sat in the outer office with Mayer’s longtime secretary, Ida Koverman. For more than fifteen minutes, Koverman just looked at Ava, giving her the silent treatment. Her first words to her were “You know, young lady, a leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

  Ava said to Peter Evans, “Between that and [Mickey’s] Ma saying ‘so he hasn’t been in your pants yet,’ I should have been warned. I should have walked out of there right then.”30 Ava was nervous. “I didn’t want to go. Mick said Uncle L.B. wanted to give us his blessing. I doubted that. He wouldn’t touch Mickey, of course, not right away, but men like that have long memories. I felt much more vulnerable. Old Uncle L.B. could make me disappear in the middle of the next scene if he wanted to!”31

  She continued, saying that Mickey introduced her as:

  “My future wife, Uncle L.B.”

  “I’m delighted to meet you, young lady,” Mayer said.

  He was perfectly polite. I could see why some people said he had plenty of charm when he wanted to use it, although he did remain seated behind his enormous desk. I don’t think that was very polite. He was not an attractive-looking man, which wasn’t his fault. But he made me uncomfortable the way he looked at me through his small, round, gold-glasses. I’m sure he wouldn’t have objected if I’d genuflected to him. . . .

  [H]e was very sure of himself, and could be very funny, too. . . . [He told us,] “My whole life is making movie stars . . . [A]ll the billboards in the world don’t make a movie star. Only Louis B. Mayer can make a somebody outta a nobody. . . .”

  Mick was so brave to stand up to him the way he did over me. I’m sitting here talking to you now because Mickey Rooney had the nerve to tell Louis B. Mayer he was going to marry me and if he didn’t like it to go fuck himself . . .

  [Mayer] gave us the whole business about marriage being sacred but Mickey stood up to him.32

  The meeting that Ava found more intimidating took place the following day, when she was called to the office of Howard Strickling, who was waiting for her with Eddie Mannix. She recalled, “[Mannix] was about to piss on me, and that was only because Louis Mayer had ordered him to. It was nothing personal. That was his job, to carry out Mayer’s orders.”33

  Mannix and Strickling had brought her in to discuss the wedding plans, which would be arranged around Mickey’s shooting schedule. Mickey was shooting the latest Andy Hardy film, and they told her the best date would be January 10, 1942. According to Peter Evans, she told Mannix that she’d dreamed of a big wedding at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a star-studded guest list. She wanted MGM to create her bridal gown and all the accoutrements. “I was carried away. After all, Mick was MGM’s biggest star. . . . Of course his own studio would want to put on a show for his fans! . . . I let my imagination run away with me. . . . [Mannix] was there to piss on my parade, honey.”34

  Mannix informed Ava that there would be no white wedding, no star-studded guest list, no hoopla, no Beverly Hills Hotel. The wedding would take place far from Hollywood, out of the spotlight. He said there would be no media circus. Mannix looked her square in the eye and said he would not let it turn “into a ‘fucking donnybrook,’ were his exact words. I’ve never forgotten them,” recalled Ava.35 She was aware of the reason behind this. MGM was not prepared to break the hearts of millions of adolescent girls and risk destroying the fan base of its most valuable franchise.

  Mickey was so overjoyed that he could now marry Ava that he paid no attention to the fact that every aspect of the wedding was being planned by the studio without any of his or Ava’s input. Every detail, from picking the wedding bands to the site of the ceremony to even finding the perfect home for the couple after the wedding, was being decided by Strickling and his “boys.”

  Strickling found the perfect person in Les Peterson to coordinate all the details. Peterson’s stock had risen in the past four years by keeping Mickey’s monkey business away from the press. Moreover, Peterson loved exploring California in his spare time, and knew many small towns or hamlets that would fit the bill for a wedding site.

  Ava complained to Mickey that they were having no say in the details of their own wedding, but Mickey had always relied on the studio to arrange every aspect of his life. When he bought the house in Encino for his mother, the studio helped him select it. His clothes were selected by the Metro, his barber was on the lot, and he even picked up his laundry from the studio. To him this was no different.

  First came the wedding rings. Peterson selected platinum wedding bands for them both, for which he got Mickey’s approval. Then Peterson selected a small apartment in Westwood in a complex called the Wilshire Palms for the young couple to move into following the wedding. Ava still lived with her sister in their apartment, and Mickey was in the family home in Encino, nicknamed El Ranchita. Mayer, himself, had decided that Mickey and Ava could not live at El Ranchita bec
ause it was a regular stop for tourists and tour busses. Publicity had to be avoided at every turn. However, Mickey wanted to continue living with Nell and Fred. He had purchased the house for his mother, so he was not going to ask her and Fred to relocate. Accordingly, Mickey and Ava agreed to live in the apartment in Westwood. It was small, but more like a fancy hotel suite (with a living room and kitchen) rather than a retreat for the world’s number one film star. It had white walls, white carpet, lots of mirrors, and beige leatherette furniture. It was indeed a step down from the Encino house, but the good news was that the studio was paying for it.

  Meanwhile, Peterson was exploring California for the perfect wedding location. The last thing the studio wanted was a caravan of press following the wedding party to the chapel. He selected the small town of Ballard, about thirty miles north of Santa Barbara, in the Santa Ynez Valley. Peterson was diligent about every detail. First, to ensure that there would be no press, he swore the local media to secrecy—in return for which, he promised to supply them with exclusive official studio publicity pictures from the MGM photographer who would be at the ceremony. He arranged for the nuptials to take place at a little white Presbyterian church that was presided over by Rev. Glen Lutz, disregarding the fact that Ava was raised a Southern Baptist while Mickey was a Christian Scientist. Then he made sure the couple could secure a wedding license on the day of the wedding.

  The studio also made nice. Mayer wanted Mickey to harbor no hard feelings after the rough treatment he’d received in L.B.’s office. He set out to make amends, gifting Mickey with a racehorse from his private stable as a wedding present. He then arranged a massive stag party for Mickey in his private dining room at Culver City the day before the wedding. The event was a star-studded affair attended by most of the MGM male stars. After the meal, each rose individually to offer ribald marital advice to the young groom, everything from how to prevent a bad back to how to explain lipstick marks on his fly when he came home from a busy day at the studio. (Mickey liked his oral sex.) They all laughed and kidded the future groom, who was serious when he told them that his life with Ava would be different. Most of the stars looked at the coupling with a jaundiced eye; they had ridden the marriage-go-round and knew better. Mickey’s parting comments were, according to Arthur Marx, “Thanks, you horny bastards. And the first guy I see looking hard at Mrs. Rooney gets a right hand to the teeth!”36

  The day of the wedding was more like a caper film with a cloak-and-dagger feel to the process. The wedding party surreptitiously left Hollywood early in the morning of Saturday, January 10, 1942, hoping to avoid attention. They headed up the Pacific Coast Highway toward Santa Barbara in two cars. Ava, Mickey, and Les Peterson led the procession in Rooney’s Lincoln. Bappie, Joe Yule Sr., Nell, Fred Pankey, and a studio photographer were crammed into the second car, a studio limousine. When they reached Carpenteria, just south of Santa Barbara, Mickey got out of the car to call the county clerk, J. E. Lewis, and asked him to prepare the wedding license for Ava and him. Then Peterson drove them to Lewis’s house in Montecito, where they picked up the license. Peterson had arranged for Lewis to waive the three-day waiting period with a special contribution.

  From Lewis’s house, the wedding caravan snaked its way around the mountains to its destination in Ballard where the church was located. Waiting at the church was the Rev. Glen H. Lutz, a tall, heavyset man with a buzz cut who resembled a U.S. Marine.37

  Mickey wore a charcoal-gray double-breasted suit with a green polka-dot tie. He had selected the outfit at a Beverly Hills shop the week before, with Peterson’s input. Ava had bought a navy-blue suit and had a corsage of orchids. She bought the suit with a special wedding bonus the studio had given her.

  The only other person who drove there separately was Larry Tarr, sister Bappie’s estranged husband. (They had been separated after he found out that Bappie had had an affair with the manager of the Plaza Hotel where Ava and her sister stayed when they first arrived in Hollywood.)

  Mickey was quite nervous throughout the ceremony and became relieved as they neared the conclusion of the vows. The matching platinum wedding bands Peterson had bought bore the inscription LOVE FOREVER on the inside. (Mickey later made a crack to Jack Parr on the Tonight show that the inscription should have read, NUMBER ONE.) When the Reverend Lutz pronounced them husband and wife, it was time for the official wedding photo—which proved a challenge, as Ava, tall and lanky, would have to stand next to a five-foot-two Mickey Rooney. Luckily, Peterson had brought along a stool for just the occasion. It was the one they used at the studio for shots of Mickey in the Andy Hardy films to help him look at least as tall as his leading ladies. So, Mickey was as tall as Ava in the pictures that appeared in the next morning’s newspapers.

  Ava was radiant and beaming. She hid her disappointment at the small wedding and acted the good soldier for the studio.

  “It was not a memorable occasion, honey,” she recalled to Peter Evans.

  After the wedding, the guests drove back in the studio limo to Nell’s house in Encino for a reception. According to Ava, the reception was interrupted by “a tremendous drunken brawl at Ma’s place.” According to what Ava told Peter Evans, “Larry [Bappie’s estranged husband] must have been at the wedding . . . and my sister said Larry was in the thick of it, as usual.”38

  Meanwhile, just moments after the photographs were taken, Peterson called Howard Strickling to set the Metro publicity machine in motion. As soon as Peterson confirmed that the wedding had taken place, Strickling sent out a press release. MGM had been deluged with countless hourly calls from the press corps. It was the hottest story in America, even with war looming. MGM had rushed into release the newest Andy Hardy film, Life Begins for Andy Hardy, to coincide with the announcement and to capitalize on the publicity bound to spread around the nation. Hedda Hopper, because Strickling and Peterson had promised her the story, was already given the scoop in advance and had her piece prepared. All she needed were the photographs, which she received from Peterson. She released the story the next morning in the Los Angeles Times Sunday edition. “Mickey Rooney Weds Actress Ava Gardner . . . The Best Man Was Leslie Peterson, MGM Publicity Man and the Maid of Honor Was Beatrice Gardner, Sister of the Bride.” Hedda’s story took up almost half the Times’s front page, with the photographs accompanying the story. The article went into great detail about the wedding day, including the clandestine drive north to Ballard and the music played during the ceremony by the reverend’s wife. Hopper received a substantial pay boost by Times publisher Norman Chandler, which syndicated its stories, for getting the Rooney wedding exclusive.

  Louella Parsons followed right on her heels, with her column in the late edition of the Hearst newspapers on January 11, 1942: “[T]hey have become so accustomed to seeing him in juvenile roles that it will be difficult for a while for the fans of the nation’s No. 1 box office attraction, Mickey Rooney, to realize he is a married man.”

  Front-page stories of the wedding dominated newspapers nationwide. It soon became clear that the MGM College of Cardinals’ fear of damage to Rooney/Hardy had been unfounded. The interest in this young couple was unprecedented.

  Ava would soon be drawing boatloads of attention nationwide as MGM’s newest and sexiest star, now married to the king of the box office. Sidney Miller’s advice to her that dating Mickey would help her career had been prescient. The marriage was probably the strongest stimulant in pushing Ava toward becoming a film legend. Her obvious talent notwithstanding, had it not been for her marriage to Mickey Rooney, she may well have languished along with the countless other hopefuls MGM was nurturing.

  Along with the rings, Peterson had also selected the honeymoon venue: the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey. Peterson had picked the hotel because it would give Mickey an opportunity to play golf at nearby Pebble Beach, but he had an ulterior motive for selecting this location: he had arranged the promotional tour for the latest Andy Hardy film, The Courtship of Andy Hardy, to begin in nearby San Francis
co four days after the start of the honeymoon.

  As Mickey’s minder, Peterson was ever-present even throughout the honeymoon. Whenever he met Ava throughout the ensuing years, long after she and Mickey had gotten divorced and Rooney had gone on to wives two, three, and four, he would remind her, “Remember me, Ava, three on a honeymoon?” How could she forget? She has said, “When we came down for breakfast, he was there. When you had dinner, he was there. And when you went to bed, he was damn near there.”39

  But Ava was fond of the guy, and remembered:

  It wasn’t his fault he was tagging along on our honeymoon. But I was pleased he was there that first night. I invited him to our suite for a glass of Cristal. I still wasn’t much of a drinker at that time but I had a glass of champagne, and another glass of champagne. Les kept trying to excuse himself and I kept hanging on to him. Oh, one more glass. Talk about first night nerves. We were going through the Roederer’s Cristal like it was tap water. I was scared out of my fucking wits. I didn’t want Les to leave us. I would have felt a whole lot more relaxed if Mick and I had got it on weeks before. But I was so determined to be a virgin on my wedding night, I’d barely let him give me a belly rub . . . [Bappie] bought me a sexy negligee. She sent me off with that—and a douche bag. “That’s all a girl needs on her wedding night, honey,” she said, and as usual she was right. . . . I caught on quickly. Very quickly. I enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly. Mickey was tender, actually he was sweet. He couldn’t have been a better first lover for a lady. He’d been around quite a bit, of course—and marriage didn’t stop him for very long either.40

  Mickey believed that this was a perfect honeymoon. He shot a 79 one day and was enjoying connubial bliss with Ava like a rabbit in his spare time. In his book Life Is Too Short, he added, “All night long she had my undivided attention. We ended up performing our own sexual symphonies. . . . We had a four day music festival, in between my rounds of golf . . . it was an ideal honeymoon: sex and golf and sex and golf. Ideal, that is, for me. It never occurred to me to ask Ava what she wanted.”41