I was lucky he didn’t fire me on the spot. When he stopped laughing, he said: “Now listen to me, young lady. I’m going to give you some good advice. Mr. Mayer isn’t going to mind you telling it to the judge. He doesn’t want you telling him more than you have to.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I truly didn’t. I was barely twenty years old. I could look smart and sophisticated as hell in those gallery pictures they took of me all the time. The truth was, I didn’t know beans when the bag was open.
He obviously saw my confusion.
“Mr. Mayer doesn’t want you to sue for adultery, kid,” Eddie spelled it out for me. He handled me like a baby. “Mr. Mayer doesn’t want Mickey’s name dragged through the courts along with a bunch of dames you reckon he might have shafted. He doesn’t want some shyster lawyer claiming Mickey beat you up, or did this, that, and the other,” he said.
The penny dropped. “I’m not going to name anybody,” I said. “I’ll sue the little sod for incompatibility. . . .”
“Incompatibility, you’d settle for that? Mr. Mayer would really appreciate that,” Eddie said. “I think the least said the soonest mended, don’t you?”
It was such a childish thing to say, the kind of rubbish you say to kids. I wanted to laugh. But the way it was said was so chilling, I thought better of it.
“Incompatibility then? That’s what you’ll go for? Can I give Mr. Mayer your word on that?” he said.
“Sure,” I said casually, but I really meant it. I knew that if I had sued Mick for adultery, and named some of the girls he’d been fucking, it would have blown his wholesome Andy Hardy image right out of the water. It could have destroyed his career stone dead. . . . I knew that citing “incompatibility” was the cleanest and fastest route out of the marriage.
Eddie said, “You’re not as dumb as you look, kid.”
He asked me what I was going to do after the divorce. The question surprised me. I knew the final decree would take at least six months or maybe even longer to come through and I hadn’t planned that far ahead.
I said, “If the studio renews my contract, I’d like to try to make a go of acting.”
“I think you should,” he said.
A couple of weeks later, the studio renewed my contract and increased my salary.
It put my mind at rest.15
California is a community property state, which means that any income accruing to a married couple during the marriage, excluding gifts or bequests to one of the parties, is divided equally between the parties upon dissolution of the marriage. Therefore, when Ava filed for divorce, she made a claim, under California law, for half Mickey’s property and earnings. The grounds for dissolution were grievous mental suffering and extreme mental cruelty, which was standard for most California divorces in those days before “no-fault” divorces. Mickey didn’t contest her charges, and the case was heard in Los Angeles before superior court judge Thurmond Clarke on May 21. Ava wore the same blue suit in which she’d been married. Her demands, as a result of her meeting with Eddie Mannix, were dropped to twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, a car, her furs, and the jewelry Mickey had given her that had not been pawned. An interlocutory decree—literally a decree between the words of the pleadings and the words of the final judgment, establishing the status of the marriage prior to a final decree—was granted that day, and the couple would not be free to remarry until the divorce became final a year later. Mickey told Les Peterson that he would spend that year trying to win her back.16 But in 1944 the war would intervene, Mickey still had many more movies to make, and like the Sirens’ call, his premarital lifestyle was beckoning him toward the rocks, and the starter’s trumpet was blaring at Santa Anita.
13
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Mickey and the Pit Bull
Mickey in motion.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EASTON.
Even before Mickey divorced Ava, he had gone back full speed to his vices of booze, women, and gambling. But the divorce put him into high gear. Gambling, especially, had become a serious addiction by this point. Mickey’s quip that he lost his first two dollars at Santa Anita and spent millions trying to get it back is not far off the mark. He was clearly chasing something, even if he didn’t know what it was. The thrill of gambling truly consumed his life right up until his death.
Did Mickey inherit an addiction gene from his mother, Nell? Ava Gardner’s characterization of Nell Pankey at their first meeting was more than revealing. She described “Ma” with the Racing Form spread across her lap as she was handicapping horses while holding a big glass of bourbon in the other hand. Similarly, Mickey’s father, according to Sidney Miller, was “a hard drinking, whore chasing, compulsive gambler.” Mickey Rooney, therefore, was a textbook example of someone with a genetic predisposition to addictive self-destructive behaviors. Given the stimuli he had from an early age, he was just like one of Francis Pottenger’s epigenetically predetermined cats, manifesting the addictions of its parents, only worse.1
Typical of most addicts, Mickey loved both the highs and lows of gambling. The flow of the neurochemical dopamine, stimulating the brain’s reward center, triggered for Mickey (as it likely did for his parents and hundreds of thousands of other biologically addicted people) an exhilarating thrill. In Mickey’s case, the thrill of winning on a long shot and the low of losing both led to overextending himself financially, as he tried, vainly, to square himself with his bookies. Author Roger Kahn told us, “When I was assigned to write his ‘autobiography,’ it was nearly impossible as he was consumed by the ponies. He even still owes me money I lent him to bet on some races.”
In a meeting with Mayer after the success of the second Andy Hardy film, You’re Only Young Once, released in 1937, Mayer wanted to reward him for his contribution. Mickey requested a direct telephone line installed on the set so he could call his bookies at his whim. “Poor baby, Mick was hooked on the horses,” recalled Ava. . . . “Installing that phone on the set for him was fatal. I’m surprised the studio would do it, but I guess they’d do anything for him as long as he was making money for them. . . . Those Andy Hardy pictures paid for MGM’s great movies, Ninotchka, Camille, Two-Faced Woman, all those other Garbo movies that were a bust at the box office. Mickey’s movies kept the studio running.”2
Rooney admitted to us, “No matter what I did, Mayer would see me and pat me on the head and tell me I was a good little fella. He made about ten million dollars a pat at the box office.”3
Meanwhile, Rooney and his gang of hangers-on, a dissolute entourage, were drinking insatiably, chasing every starlet on the Metro lot and elsewhere, and frequenting the racetrack on an almost daily basis. This was all under the watchful eye of Mickey’s minder, Les Peterson. Mickey’s buddies, including the ever-faithful Sig Frohlich, Sidney Miller, Dick Paxton, Dick Crockett, Andy McIntyre, and Dick Quine, were his constant companions as he immersed himself in whatever vices he could. Dick Paxton, a stand-in for Rooney on films such as Huckleberry Finn and Babes in Arms, even lived at his Encino house.
Of Paxton, Rooney recalled, “I was shooting Huck Finn and I was supposed to go in this stream. I mean it was fucking cold, so I said, ‘Oh, Dick . . .’ and Paxton did the shot. The director was not happy.”4
Wherever Rooney went, his band of merry men followed his every step. Why wouldn’t they have been merry? Mickey paid for everything, from the drinks to the girls, and made sure they were set up even when they made their visits to the MGM-funded brothel Mickey called the T&M Studios.
“[Milton] Berle first took me there. It was amazing. Every girl looked like a film star. Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer. They were dead ringers,” Mickey recalled of Billie Bennett’s establishment, which had become notorious in Hollywood, a must-visit for not only Metro talent but also some of the politicians and city officials in Los Angeles.5
While Mickey played hard, he also worked hard. MGM suspected that Mickey might not be able to
duck the war indefinitely. Thus, claiming that Mickey was a vital asset they couldn’t afford to lose, they plunged him into one film after another. They didn’t fear overexposure, because of his intense popularity and the revenue stream his films generated.
The years 1942 to 1944, war years in Europe and the South Pacific, saw Mickey starring in The Courtship of Andy Hardy, Andy Hardy’s Double Life, A Yank at Eton, The Human Comedy, Thousands Cheer, Girl Crazy, Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble, and National Velvet. He appeared in ten films, released in approximately eighteen months. And in these films Mickey stretched his talents from musicals, where he excelled at song and dance, to comedy, and even drama. It was an enormous achievement for a twenty-four-year-old.
“Today you’re lucky if you see the top actor do a film every year or two. He was churning them out like McDonald’s hamburgers,” remarked film historian Lou Sabini. “There is no doubt that this type of saturation would erode his box office. He was truly a shooting star, but eventually the audiences tired of the repetitiveness of the films and his character.”6
In most cases, Mickey was the Andy Hardy character whether the film was a Hardy movie, Young Tom Edison, or Thousands Cheer. There were a couple of exceptions, as he gave more restrained performances in William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy and in National Velvet, which were both directed by Mayer and Rooney favorite Clarence Brown. The Human Comedy, Mayer later said, was his favorite film of all time. Meanwhile, even though Rooney was the titled star of National Velvet, it was the teenage and devastatingly beautiful starlet Elizabeth Taylor who shot to fame from that film. Mickey was not the teenage heartthrob he had been even five years earlier, and it was apparent both to MGM and to audiences that there had definitely been an erosion in his popularity, something that was becoming clear by the time he appeared in National Velvet. But that didn’t stop the assembly line of films.
The studio was returning millions on his every film, but Mickey was still being paid his weekly salary of $2,500 and scheduled bonuses. Back then, an actor receiving a percentage of the box office grosses, nets, or “points” on a picture was unheard of. Today, under the auspices of the major agencies, first or second gross or even net has become a standard deal point in most artists’ agreements. But Mickey was a contract player, and whether the film returned five hundred thousand or five million, his salary remained the same. Whether he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, as he was for The Human Comedy (though he lost to Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine) or won the Motion Picture Herald’s Top Money Making Film Actor award, there was absolutely no added bonus. Thus, given Mickey’s exorbitant life style, his staggering expenses for gambling, and all his other forms of entertainment, he simply couldn’t keep up.
To add to his growing financial woes, Mickey was also indebted to the studio for the expenses he incurred. With the per-film bonuses included, Mickey was being paid $125,000 per year as the number one box office attraction. After he paid his income taxes and his agents at William Morris, and after two-thirds of his income went into trust, he and Nell were left with $40,000 to spend. Yet every haircut, his clothing allowance, every visit to the T&M Studio, every dinner at the studio commissary, and any other studio ancillary expense he incurred was also charged to Mickey. When Les Peterson picked up the tab at nightclubs for Mickey or loaned him money for bookies, this was also deducted.
When his stepfather, Fred Pankey, sat Mickey down to discuss his future, he told Mickey that he had to take better care of his money, which wouldn’t be rolling in forever. Mickey resented Fred, who both lived in the home Mickey had purchased and worked at a job Mickey had helped him acquire. Arthur Marx told us, “It put a real chink in their relationship. Mickey was furious at Fred and called him a spoilsport. He later realized that Fred was dead on the money.”7 The bottom line, as stepfather Fred explained, was that Mickey was quickly owing his soul to the company store, as Tennessee Ernie Ford would sing fifteen years later in “Sixteen Tons.”
Whereas Mickey tended to reject Fred Pankey’s advice (mainly regarding his financial concerns), he did seek advice on his problems and concerns from actor Lewis Stone, Judge Hardy in the Andy films. It was as if, because of Mickey’s ability to immerse himself completely in the Andy role, the Hardy family had become his real-life family, at least during the life of the series. On the set, Lewis Stone would listen to Rooney’s concerns and offer advice on matters ranging from financial problems to the young actor’s self-image. Mickey had a deep respect for Stone, as did Louis Mayer, who was a close friend. When Rooney once told Stone that it depressed him when he was teased about his size, Stone told Mickey that some of the great men in the world stood less than five foot three, including Napoleon Bonaparte and New York City’s mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Mickey later placed a portrait of Napoleon in his Encino home, to remind himself of that. When he became engaged to Ava, he immediately took her to the set and introduced her to Lewis Stone, as if Stone were his real father. Mickey would spend most of his life looking for a father figure.
SO DESPITE HIS LOFTY position as king of the box office, Mickey was sinking deep into the red. The loans he took from MGM to cover the shortfall were accruing interest, though he was probably unaware of the tab he was running up. He didn’t have a team of business advisers or accountants, as many of today’s performers do. As a show business financial manager once said, you put a third away for taxes, a third away for investment purposes, and a third for life’s necessities. Mickey, though—who had very little education and came from a background of itinerant performers who lived from paycheck to paycheck—lived in the moment, for the moment. He saw no end in sight to his prosperity, even though that prosperity was only an illusion. If one compares Mickey’s earning power to that of young stars today (who will never come close to the impact that Rooney had on his generation), the scales are tipped wildly in their favor.
Mickey, ultimately, was acutely aware of this inequity when he wrote:
For all of our work on “Girl Crazy” . . . a film that grossed [in 1943] $5,866,000, we just got our salaries. . . . [N]either of us [he or Garland] got a dime’s worth of royalties from all those great songs we recorded; MGM took all the profits through their records division. In reality, I think, “Girl Crazy” grossed more than $47 million worldwide. The thieves were still at work. You must remember that at this point in my life the peak of my earning pyramid, I had yet to earn my first million. This should lay to rest all the bullshit people write how Rooney has pissed away hundreds of millions. Oh, I’ve earned more than a billion bucks. But, I never saw very much of it.8
Rooney claimed to us that Jimmy Cagney told him he went on strike from Warner Bros. and Jack Warner for a payment of ten million dollars. Jack Warner had kept Cagney out of work for one year, refusing to pay him that fee and to teach him a lesson. Mickey said, “When Warner went to a board meeting in New York, he almost lost control of the company. The majority of the board was shocked to find out why Cagney hadn’t made a picture in a year. ‘You know how much money we’ve lost because of your fucking move? You’re costing us hundreds of millions. Pay the son of a bitch the ten million.’ ” Mickey followed with: “[I]t’s just too bad that I never made that kind of threat to Metro. Judy and I could have stood together against him. But we were no match for Mayer. We were vaudeville kids. How could we stand up to a man like L.B., who was the highest-paid executive in the land? Better for us to stick to what we knew best: singing and dancing.”9 Although we did not find any evidence to substantiate Mickey’s story about Cagney, Cagney did go on a work stoppage from Warners for a higher salary, which he received, and later formed his own production company.
Even when adjusting for 1943 dollars, there is just no comparison between today’s media and the impact Mickey Rooney had on audiences in 1940–44. Yet his impact, great as it was, still left him living on the edge, hemorrhaging money as his popularity with audiences slowly, but perceptibly, began to erode.
Mickey’s vulnerability was acute in September
1943. His divorce was pending, he was working nonstop at the MGM factory, and he was barely keeping his head above water due to his mounting debt. At just twenty-four years old he was shouldering the responsibility of being the key source of profits at MGM while becoming aware that he was accumulating debt. The $25,000 divorce payment and new car he’d bought for Ava came from a loan from Metro. He owed countless bookies thousands of dollars. Worse than that, future military service was looming.
In the late fall of 1943, he and Les Peterson prepared for a tour of the East Coast to promote the first Andy Hardy film in over a year, Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble. The series was seemingly running out of gas. After all, how many films could Mickey make with the same character, same arc, and only minor plot twists? Worse, how could Andy Hardy, a throwback to the 1920s and ’30s remain relevant in a world at war, especially when men of his age were being drafted into the service? This would become a quandary for MGM. Mickey was allowed to age slightly for this film—he was now going to college—but the critics, such as Harrison Carroll, writing in the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express on May 22, 1944, felt that “[H]is sex life remains at the gee-whiz-she-kissed-me stage.” With a world war raging and with millions of deaths worldwide, the Pollyanna/Louis Mayer naïve world of Andy Hardy and small-town Carvel were becoming passé.
Mickey was aware of this shift. He’d started receiving negative reviews he’d never experienced before. A Yank at Eton, for instance, was savaged in a general review carrying no byline in the New York Times on October 16, 1942: “Draw a deep breath, ladies and gentlemen, and check your sensibilities at the door . . . Andy Hardy at Eton is a fearful thing to see . . .” The next year, for the musical Thousands Cheer, the New York Times wrote, “Mickey’s stint is not exactly a show stopper.” The film was a huge moneymaker, however. So it was full steam ahead.
The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney Page 23