The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  But I must say it’s a lonely business fucking someone you no longer love. Especially a husband.2

  As they pulled in different directions, and Mickey fell back into his old ways, Mickey and Ava’s marriage was beginning to unravel. Mickey and Ava went out clubbing almost every night to the Hollywood hotspots: the Palladium, Ciro’s, the Cocoanut Grove, the Mocambo. At the Cocoanut Grove, Mickey would often sit in with the Tommy Dorsey Band, on the drums, while Ava sat alone at their table as if she were an unescorted single girl. Now disconsolate at the life she had allowed herself to get into, Ava started drinking heavily, and not just zombies. She was still underage, but Mickey would arrange to have her served martinis in coffee cups.

  Ava said she started to feel like one of the hookers (whom she called B girls) who sat at the bar looking for a pick-up to buy her a drink. And despite Mickey’s protestations, she continued to catch him cheating on her. He was more incorrigible because he was simply wired differently. He couldn’t stop. But he knew how to feign. Ava remembered that he was such a great actor; he would give her his “Andy Hardy, innocent look” when she accused him of fooling around on her. He was also gambling heavily, especially at the track, throwing money away as fast as it came in, as if he believed it would never stop. He had absolutely no impulse control—perfect for an actor, but a disaster for domestic life. When Mickey won at the track, he would bring her jewelry to placate her. However, he often took the gifts back when the bookies began chasing him to pay his debts. Even then, Mickey was skirting at the edge of trouble. But through it all, their sex life was the one saving grace for the couple.

  “I was insatiable at that age,” Ava recalled.3

  Even in the most stable of marriages, spouses often evolve, and not always in the same direction. So it was with Ava: shy Ava was quickly being replaced by an Ava who was coming out of her shell, an Ava relying upon alcohol to ease the discomfort of her marriage. When she spent a night dancing with actor Tom Drake, while Mickey was off with friends at another part of the club, Mickey went into a rage, which resulted in a very public argument. Heads turned. Gossip columnists pricked up their ears. Rumors abounded. Strickling worked hard to suppress all the possible stories, with the help of Les Peterson, but the rumors reached Uncle L.B., who was quietly watching, and waiting.

  Ava went on the attack, trying to hurt Mickey by telling him she was tired of “living with a midget.” She knew that attacks on his height cut deep. She once slashed all their furniture with a knife. When Peter Lawford told her about Mickey’s black book, which contained the names of Gloria DeHaven, Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford, Donna Reed, and others, she went berserk. Lawford, who’d been shooting the film A Yank at Eton with Mickey, would carry tales between them, setting them up for battles.

  Ava said that Lawford was ambitious. “He often sat with me at the Grove, keeping me amused, when Mick was sitting in with the Dorsey band. I liked him but he was a terrible gossip. It was a mistake to tell Peter Lawford anything. There was a lot of Iago in Peter.”4 This was indeed a prophetic statement, as Marilyn Monroe would experience, the hard way, twenty years later.

  Four months into Mickey and Ava’s marriage, it was Lawford who told her about Mickey’s affair with a fifteen-year-old girl who was meeting him while he was at the Lakeside Country Club. That was the final straw. Ava confronted Mickey, who denied it. Later, while Mickey was at the studio, she tossed his clothes outside their Bel Air house and had the locks on the doors changed. She had reached her breaking point. Ava, in a fury, had grown tired of Mickey’s dalliances, gambling, and absolute neglect, and wanted out of the marriage. Mickey moved back to Encino with Nell and Fred. However, he was upset. Ava would not take his calls. He was nearly arrested while trying to break down the front door late one evening. His unhappiness was the talk of the studio, and his name on a police blotter would have been anathema to his bosses at Metro.

  “When Louis Mayer heard about that, all hell broke loose,” Ava recalled. “Eddie Mannix was ordered to patch things up between us.”5

  The situation quickly became a crisis at Metro, a crisis that L.B. had tried to avoid by preventing the marriage; he already knew about Mickey’s proclivities. For Mayer, there was a lot a stake if the story of Mickey and Ava’s breakup, and Mickey’s antics, became public. They had survived Mickey’s wedding, and it had not affected the box office for the Hardy films or his other work. In fact, his box office take had grown since the wedding. Strickling and his boys had worked overtime to create the image of a happy couple. They had planted countless stories with Mickey as the respectable husband and Ava as his southern belle wife, cooking him wonderful down-home meals when he returned from his hard work at the studio. They had created the perfect scenario to complement the Mickey/Judy musicals and the Andy Hardy films. Rooney’s grosses were through the roof. Even the relationship between Mayer and Schenck had calmed quite a bit as the box office revenue continued to flood in. Mayer had proven to Schenck and the board at Loews that with his family-oriented films, he could surpass what Thalberg had done as production chief.

  Ava was quite aware that a lot of the studio’s success rested on Mickey’s twenty-one-year-old shoulders. He was, for all intents and purposes, the face of MGM in 1942. Many of the studio’s megastars, such as Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, and Jimmy Stewart, had enlisted or were preparing to. The clouds of war were gathering over the studio.

  Mayer and Mannix had brought in Les Peterson to patch things up between the couple as relations between them deteriorated, and Peterson remained busy trying to help unruffle feathers. When Mickey said he wanted to get Ava a house, Peterson rented 1120 Stone Canyon Drive in Bel Air for them. He had helped Mickey pick out jewelry for Ava. Ava trusted Les, who often went over there to smooth out arguments. However, now that the couple had officially separated, the discord was clearly escalating.

  When Mickey showed up for work on The Courtship of Andy Hardy, the fourteenth movie in the series, he was without his typical energy and spunk. Producer Carey Wilson alerted Mannix to Rooney’s condition. Mannix ran to the screening room and watched the dailies. He quickly saw a more subdued Rooney, and noticed the dark rings under his eyes, which gave him a dissipated look.

  “He’s beginning to look as old as his father,” remarked Mannix. “If we don’t pull him out of this, we can change the title of the picture to ‘Andy Hardy Goes to the Poor House!’ ”6

  While very few outsiders were aware of the separation, Mannix, had started hearing whispers of it around the studio. He called in Peterson to make a game plan. Peterson suggested they both talk to Ava’s sister, Bappie, whom Ava was now living with, having moved out of the Bel Air house. Bappie agreed to talk with them without her sister’s knowledge, and she told them that Ava was unhappy sitting home all day and wanted a career. The studio machine swung into action.

  A meeting was called at the studio between Ava and Mickey. Les Peterson was there, with Eddie Mannix doing all the talking. Mannix told the couple that marriage was sacred, that a lover’s spat was expected in every marriage. (He never mentioned that he had recently divorced his first wife, Bernice. And unbeknownst to him at the time, his second wife, Toni, would have an affair with George “Superman” Reeves, which would end with Reeves’s murder at the hands of his other mistress, Leonore Lemmon.)7

  Ava feared Mannix. “Everybody was scared of Mannix. I wouldn’t have liked to cross him. . . . He promised to try to get me some decent parts if I promised to behave,” she recalled.8

  Mannix kept his word, and secured a role for Ava in a loan-out to Monogram. In February 1943, Ava showed up for her first billed role, with the East Side Kids (some of whom were originally in a troupe called the Dead End Kids), in Ghosts on the Loose, which costarred Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, and Huntz Hall. Huntz Hall once told the authors, “She was quite the looker. Leo [Gorcey] was just breaking up with his wife, Kay [who would later marry Groucho Marx] and tried to come on to her. She kinda laughed him off, and he was pissed.”9


  “It was . . . an awful little Poverty Row studio—I think the whole thing took about ten days to shoot, and no retakes, ever!” said Ava. “But I got my first billing on that picture, so it’s still kind of special to me.”10

  The movie role was meant to placate Ava, and the couple reconciled. But it was short-lived. In fact, there were several breakups and reunions. At one point, Ava returned to their Wilshire Palms apartment and asked her close friend Leatrice Gilbert (the daughter of John Gilbert and silent film star Leatrice Joy), just two years younger than Ava, to move in with her. They lived together for almost five months.

  Mickey called Ava faithfully every night. Leatrice kept him at bay, telling him Ava was out. In an interview with the authors, Leatrice recalled, “She had a real fear of Mickey. She said he had violent outbursts and she would wake up screaming at night thinking of them. I didn’t doubt her one bit. He was messing around, and she wanted a stable life.”

  Ava was actually home most of the time. She had become close to actress Donna Reed and agent Minna Wallis, and they would take turns holding dinner parties and cooking for one another. Mickey, for his part, was in torment on the East Coast. He was both angry and jealous, imagining Ava partying at the Mocambo or the Cocoanut Grove with the likes of Tom Drake. As soon as he finished filming, he rushed back to Los Angeles and the Wilshire Palms. She was having a dinner party the night he returned, and when she refused to let him enter, he tried to break down the door. He started screaming outside the apartment, calling her a whore and other names. Ava threatened to call the police. Leatrice recalls the incident, “[H]e came to our door screaming. . . . He literally broke open the door and was shaking Ava. She truly wanted nothing to do with him. He really just wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. She was very shaken up. He had this real rage in his eyes. Luckily, his studio guy [Les Peterson] was there with him and got him out of there.”11

  When Peterson told the story to Strickland, who took it to Mayer and Mannix, MGM’s fears only got worse. Ava had told Peterson that she would call up the columnists and spill the beans on their separation if they didn’t keep Mickey away from her. Mayer’s solution was “Keep them away from each other—and keep them both busy.”12 They promptly moved up the date for the on-location shooting scheduled in Connecticut for A Yank at Eton, and Mayer kept Ava busy in California by casting her in back-to-back films.

  ALONG WITH HIS MARITAL woes, Mickey was facing another potential problem: military service. There was a war on. He believed that if he were drafted, there would be no chance for reconciliation with Ava, and that made him even more disconsolate.

  Even more concerned at Mickey’s impending induction was Louie Mayer. In the MGM archives at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a huge file of correspondence between MGM and Local Draft Board 245, Mickey’s draft board. Mayer had turned the problem over to his fixer Eddie Mannix, who, in a sworn affidavit to the draft board on behalf Loews Inc., submitted a formal request for “occupational deferment.” The draft board was feeling the pressure from the world’s largest film studio in its effort to keep Mickey Rooney out of uniform. It was financial pressure as well. As author E. J. Fleming explained, according to his research, Mayer, Mannix, and Strickling used financial gifts to influence newspaper reporters, sheriffs and police, judges, and officials to handle things in the best interests of the studio and of those whom L.B. favored, particularly when it came to squelching negative publicity. Thus, it can be conjectured that the Mayer team used any device it could to keep its most profitable asset out of harm’s way.

  The affidavit Mannix presented to the local draft board pulled out all stops, even using a scene from an upcoming Andy Hardy film, Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble, to support the studio’s request. The affidavit stated, “The 25 million Americans who will see this picture must gain a greater and fuller understanding of, and sympathy with, the American fundamentals. We plan that each succeeding Hardy picture will further the idea, carry Andy, as he grows older, closer to the war, and reveal through Andy and his parents, the actual experiences of the young American boy who has taken such a step. The morale of the Hardy family should, and will be the highest type of morale of the American family.”13

  Then Mannix really got to the heart of the studio’s concern: “Moreover, Mickey is irreplaceable and it will cost the studio millions in other films planned and ready to go with him starring in them, if he is drafted.”14 Blunt and right to the point. Two more affidavits followed, with one stating, on August 28, 1942, that The Human Comedy was to begin shooting on August 31, and “it would be a real hardship on the studio to lose him.”

  The appeal was denied. However, Mickey was granted a three-month extension and temporarily reclassified as 2A. When the extension lapsed and he was reclassified 1A again, the studio brought in MGM’s top attorney, Irving Prinzmetal, to appear before Local Draft Board 245 on December 30, 1942, to appeal that decision. Once again the request was denied. On January 6, 1943, Eddie Mannix dispatched another affidavit to appeal Mickey’s status. In it, he wrote how important the motion picture business was to the nation’s morale. Mannix even quoted Lt. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s statement that “Motion picture entertainment is as important to the people on the home front as butter and meat.” The affidavit was eight pages long. However, on February 3, 1943, the appeal was turned down yet again, in a vote of 5–0.

  Mayer’s worst nightmare, the loss of his top money-earning star to the war, was quietly becoming a reality. The studio had already seen some of its other stars drafted into service, but Mickey was probably its most important asset, because of the revenue his movies generated. It had to keep him working. But it had to do it without any negative publicity as tens of thousands of other men Mickey’s age were being drafted. Still, despite Strickling’s best efforts, there were whispers of MGM’s efforts to keep Mickey out of the service. The Hollywood Citizen-News wrote on March 3, 1943, about the appeal and the request for a deferment. MGM responded with “We’re not unpatriotic. The government specially wants us to continue making pictures. But how can we make them without actors?”

  Metro knew the sensitivity of Mickey being deferred while ordinary boys were being rushed to war and possibly their deaths. That kind of imagery could destroy an actor’s career faster than a string of bad movies. Thus, Mickey, with Strickling’s assistance, released a statement that appeared in the Hollywood Citizen-News, which commented:

  How does Mickey feel about the appeal? The customarily cocksure, flippant youngster said solemnly last night: “Whatever the Army wants that’s good enough for me. I’ll do whatever Uncle Sam says.” Mickey’s mother, Nell Pankey will have you know that it was the studio’s idea for the appeal not Mickey’s. She remarked, “He’s just not that kind, he has never felt he was better than anyone else, or entitled to special consideration. It’s true that he is only five feet tall, and has been bothered with heart flutter and high blood pressure, but that’s nothing new, and Mickey wouldn’t try to dodge his classification.”

  On March 15, when he reported to the army induction center for his physical, he was armed with medical records. It seemed that, out of the clear blue, studio physician Dr. Edward Jones recalled that he had discovered that Mickey suffered from a “heart flutter” and “high blood pressure” during the routine yearly physical examination required by the Los Angeles Board of Education for minors under contract to the studio. This was the same Dr. Jones who had loaded Judy Garland with tranquilizers and amphetamines since she was fifteen years old and had given Lana Turner her abortion. On March 16, Lt. Col. Edgar H. Bailey, the commanding officer of the Los Angeles army induction center, announced, “Mickey Rooney, the film actor, has been rejected for army service.” Bailey added that the actor had been referred to the induction center by his draft board and had received a “thorough examination.” Mickey was reclassified 4F. Les Peterson wrote a memo to L.B. reflecting this on March 18, 1943.

  In a matter
of days, Mickey had gone from an athlete with robust health at the age of twenty-two to a 4F classification for having serious health issues. Perhaps, in light of the standard operating procedure at MGM, there might have been some serious dollars changing hands in this process. It would not have been unusual for the studio to have bought Mickey out of a combat uniform.

  The war would eventually sweep up Mickey, who in interviews throughout his life said he was proud of his later service to his country. After he was reclassified 1A, he was inducted into the service more than a year later, in June 1944, but never saw the invasion of Normandy or any combat, for that matter. Once in uniform, he proudly supported the troops, entertained the soldiers, and fondly recalled his time in the army. However, in 1942, raging against his marital breakup, he was able to avoid it.

  Ava filed for a separation on January 15, 1943. This was followed by a summit meeting with Mickey and Mannix. After countless more separations and reconciliations, Ava finally filed for divorce on May 2, 1943. Immediately, Mannix called her to his office for a meeting.

  Ava recalled in The Secret Conversations:

  Mickey wasn’t happy—and neither was Louis Mayer, who set his attack dog, Eddie Mannix onto me. Eddie liked me but I knew he had a job to do. He said, “You know, Ava, you’ll be finished at this studio if you try to take Mickey to the cleaners. Mr. Mayer owns this town. If you do anything to hurt Mickey’s career, you’ll never work in Hollywood again.”

  I said, “I know that.”

  Eddie was sympathetic. He said, “It was never going to work out with Mick, you know. He is never going to be a one-woman kid.”

  I felt my temperature rising. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before?” I said.

  “You didn’t ask,” he said mildly, but he was obviously startled by my language. So was I. Most people were afraid to say boo to him. “You got a mouth on you, kid. I give you that,” he said, and started to laugh.