The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Mickey remarked to us, “It didn’t take a genius to realize that the studio wasn’t going to let Andy Hardy grow up. . . . If the people at Metro had their way, I’d have remained a teenager for forty years.”10

  Peterson recalled, “I thought it was a good time to get Mickey out of town. He was still agonizing over Ava and spending his waking hours trying to devise ways to win her back.”11

  In 1943, Mickey had slipped from first to ninth position in the Showmen’s Trade Review polling of the nation’s exhibitors, behind Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope. Both Mayer and Strickling thought it would help Rooney’s standing to do a media tour of the East Coast. The plan was to visit Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New York City, and Detroit. While the turnout was still strong, it wasn’t the major event he had experienced the prior year, when he toured with Ava. “There was certainly a slight diminishing of his drawing power. The luster was sort of wearing off,” noted Sid Miller.12

  At this point, Mickey was far more concerned about Ava than his career. She was doing films on her own, such as Three Men in White, which were bringing her some attention. She was now on the radar. Ava was rushed into the film Masie Goes to Reno, playing a rich divorcée, which many joked did not require much acting. Before Mickey left on tour, he was spotted with her by a Los Angeles Examiner reporter. Mickey talked with the reporter about a possible reconciliation, and Ava concurred.13 However, the fact was, with each acting role, Ava was feeling far more independent.

  Mickey was upset at being apart from her due to the tour, however Strickling said the tour was necessary to bolster his standing It was a seminal time in Mickey’s life, for it was during the tour that he met a man who would significantly alter his career (not necessarily in a good way). That man was theater impresario Sam Stiefel.

  Samuel H. Stiefel was an interesting character, described by Time magazine in his 1958 obituary as the “Father of Negro Show Business.” Born in 1897 to a hardworking Jewish immigrant family in New Jersey, Stiefel, along with his brothers, built a chain of theaters known as the Chitlin’ Circuit that catered to the black audiences. He owned three of the five theaters that showcased great African American performers such as legendary vocalist Billie Holiday, jazz great Duke Ellington, iconic band leader and cutting-edge performer Cab Calloway—who recorded the role of Sportin’ Life in Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess, but is probably best known for his unbelievable rendition of “Minnie the Moocher”—singer Billy Eckstine, and Moms Mabley—these and other black performers who were blocked from appearing in all-white theaters at the time. Show business in the 1930s and ’40s, like baseball and even the armed services, was segregated. The Chitlin’ Circuit included the Apollo Theater in New York City; the Uptown in Philadelphia; the Howard in Washington, DC; and the Royal Theatre in Baltimore. Stiefel owned the Roxy in Philadelphia and other theaters that featured both burlesque and movies. He also ran a talent management company with agent Eddie Sherman that managed Abbott and Costello, actor Peter Lorre, singer Andy Russell, and several others.

  The last stop of the Metro-sponsored East Coast tour was in Pittsburgh. “I don’t think Mickey will ever forget that stop,” Les Peterson told Arthur Marx, “because that is where he met Sam Stiefel. If it hadn’t been for his influence, Mickey might never have left MGM, which was one of the worst tactical errors of his life.”

  Peterson recalled to Arthur Marx, “We were at the theater one Saturday afternoon, when a man came to the stage door and asked the manager if he could meet Mickey Rooney. His name was Sam Stiefel, a name we were not familiar with, but it turned out he had money, owned a number of movie theaters in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and also had a string of racehorses on the West Coast. Anyway, we agreed to see him, so the stage manager sent him back to our dressing room. Stiefel was a short, squarely built man who wore suits with wide lapels and flashy silk ties and looked about as trustworthy as a pit boss in Las Vegas [in the 1940s].”14

  Attorney Murray Lertzman recalled, “He certainly was part of the Jewish Mafia. He had this rough, gravely voice. He was right out of Central Casting. He had the mannerisms of a Eugene Pallette crossed with Sheldon Leonard. He carried a wad of bills that would have choked a horse. He was very flashy and quite persuasive. He knew every wise guy from Benny Siegel to Mickey Cohen. I think he even backed Cohen in a retail men’s store. He lived in a beautiful house in Bel Air that was once owned by Jack Warner. He tried to set up production deals at every studio. Mickey Cohen was originally his calling card.” He booked many of his clients at mob-related clubs.15

  Stiefel told Mickey that he was his biggest fan and that he even had bought a pair of the drumsticks in an auction that Mickey had used to play with the Tommy Dorsey Band. He told Mickey about the theaters he owned, how he managed talent like Abbott and Costello and his racehorses. He had a limo pick-up Mickey and Les on Sunday, their day off.

  “We were in Pittsburgh, where everything was closed on Sunday. So he took us to the Oasis Club, which was a mob joint in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which was a long ways off [more than three hundred miles],” recalled Peterson.16 On the way down to the club, Stiefel expressed sympathy for all the trouble Mickey had had with Ava. Then he pumped Mickey about his contract with Metro. When he found out Rooney, at this point, was still making only $1,750 a week for forty weeks and bonuses, he told Mickey that he was being stiffed. Peterson remembered:

  He told Mickey, “You should have your own production company and make your own pictures.” When Mickey admitted that he was an actor and not much of a businessman, Stiefel offered to manage Mickey and run the company for him. What he didn’t tell Mickey was that he wanted to get into movie production in the worst way and was using Mickey as a stepping-stone to that goal. You see, his former partner was a fellow named Eddie Sherman, who had gone to the West Coast and was managing Abbott and Costello, and Stiefel was jealous of him. He wanted to be in the more glamorous end of show business, too. Anyways, he spent the evening painting a glowing picture of what Mickey’s career would be like if only he’d let Stiefel manage him. Mickey was intrigued, especially when Stiefel mentioned he owned racehorses. Before the evening was over he had Mickey thoroughly convinced they ought to go in business together and form their own production company.”17

  Basically, Stiefel was a nonentity in Hollywood, while his ex-partner Eddie Sherman had become an important manager. Lou Costello’s youngest daughter, Chris Costello, told us she could not remember Stiefel’s presence, “I clearly remember Eddie Sherman controlling the team, just not Stiefel.”18 Nephew Jay Robert Stiefel recalled,“He clearly had aspirations to be in the film business, and he bought a beautiful house in Bel Air to stake his claim. He told us about the parties he hosted and the stars who attended. He definitely wanted to make his mark there”19—but he could do that only through owning talent, and that talent was Mickey Rooney.

  Stiefel told Rooney about his proposal and his plans for him unabashedly, in the presence of Peterson, who was an MGM company man through and through. You could be sure that Mayer and Mannix were fully aware of every detail of this meeting. Stiefel certainly was keenly aware that forming a partnership with one of the world’s biggest film stars would be his entrée into the film business. Mickey, although he had grown up in the industry, was simply talent and not a savvy business guy. He’d never negotiated his own deals. He was twenty-four years old and no match for a streetwise, successful entrepreneur such as Stiefel. An astute businessman, Sam could sniff the desperation on Rooney.

  Stiefel followed Mickey’s trail, flying to the West Coast shortly after Mickey returned. He then began to work to win Rooney over, putting on a full-court press to gain his confidence in Stiefel’s ability to manage him and make him financially independent from MGM. He loaned Mickey money and became friendly with Nell and Fred Pankey, taking them out to the “swankiest bistros,” showering them with presents, and helping them out financially. Stiefel was a master manipulator, according to Les Peterson.20 He sa
w that Mickey was struggling to live on a straight salary, a situation that Stiefel said could be rectified by having his own production company, which would help him shelter his income. Along the way, he massaged Rooney’s ego, subsidized his losses at the racetrack, and even encouraged his gambling. He also helped out Mickey’s troupe of hangers-on with gifts and cash. In the end, Mickey was convinced, especially after Fred advised him to move forward with Stiefel’s proposal. Undue influence may have been attributed to Pankey’s recommendation, as Stiefel was also financing Fred in opening a new bar.

  Mickey recalled, “In the months that followed, Sam would become the kind of friend who would lend me money without question. At Santa Anita, if I was tapped out, he’d offer me money without my having to ask. ‘Okay,’ I’d say. ‘Give me five hundred.’ ‘Here,’ he’d say, flashing a big roll of hundred dollar bills, ‘take a thousand.’ I took his offerings, with thanks.”21

  When Stiefel relocated his family to Los Angeles, he bought a showcase home in Bel Air. “It was an amazing home that had the elegant screening room and this glassed-in room under the pool,” recalled Stiefel’s granddaughter Adrienne Callander.22 “Being a theater impresario and being involved in show business, it was a common practice to work in the business with the underworld types who ran the booking agencies, such as MCA, or owned the clubs, like Frank Costello. Once, Al Capone called my grandfather from prison. He wanted his help in building a stage at the prison. My grandfather was amused that he called him,” Callander recalled.23

  She continued: “He had been running vaudeville in his theaters and discovered the niche of black entertainment. My father was always fascinated that their home was open to the legendary African American stars like Billie Holiday, and he got to know them. . . . And he became rather wealthy in the process.”24

  Les Peterson recalled, “Stiefel’s pockets were always bulging with cash, which was available for a loan without collateral whenever Mickey ran into hard luck, but if there was one thing: Mickey was a schnook. It never occurred to him his new business partner might be keeping track of all the cash he laid out for Mickey.”25

  Stiefel set up a California corporation called Rooney Incorporated, and held lavish networking parties, to set up the kinds of deals that an independent production company could make without the involvement of a studio. The corporation’s stockholders were Mickey Rooney, who was the president; Samuel E. Stiefel who was secretary/treasurer; and attorney Mort Briskin who was vice president. Once the corporation was certified as able to do business, Briskin sent a memo to MGM’s accounting department, on March 21, 1944, demanding that all checks for Mickey Rooney be made payable to the order of Rooney Incorporated. Once Rooney Inc. had the capital to work with, Stiefel, through corporate counsel Briskin, began work on renegotiating Mickey’s contract so he would have the right to make additional films outside MGM.

  Briskin, who had been Johnny Carson’s attorney, was a producer in his own right, of Stiefel-financed Mickey Rooney movies The Big Wheel and Quicksand. He recalled to Arthur Marx “Mayer agreed to give it to us, without much argument.”

  Rooney Inc.’s initial function was to book personal appearances; merchandise Mickey’s likeness and name, particularly for a comic book line from Taffy comics; collect his salary; and invest his income. One of the investments was a stable of horses. Stiefel sweetened the pot by throwing in some of his own horses, which together with Mickey’s money became part of the company’s assets.

  Meanwhile, Uncle Sam was beckoning Mickey to military service once again, and this time he wasn’t in the mood to grant the actor any deferments. Mickey was reclassified 1A in March 1944. Eddie Mannix continued to write letters of appeal, but there was seemingly no other delay possible. On May 4 the draft board sent a very curt letter advising Mannix that Mickey Rooney “WILL be inducted sometime in May 1944.”

  Mannix sent in another plea, in response to which the draft board informed him that Mickey would be wearing army khaki in thirty days. Mannix instructed Pandro Berman, who was producing the film National Velvet, with the notoriously slow and deliberate director Clarence Brown, to “Shoot all remaining Rooney scenes first, no matter how it messes up the schedule.”

  Mickey, meanwhile, began to panic. He was informed by Mannix that his MGM salary would be suspended while he served in the army. His $2,500 weekly income would therefore be reduced to a fifty-dollar-a-month buck private’s pay. His outlandish lifestyle would be interrupted, he would have to discontinue his pursuit of Ava, and his mother was going ballistic about her needs. Nell was worried about how she could keep El Ranchita, the house in Encino, and pay her expenses if Mickey went off salary at MGM. Fred Pankey seemed not to be capable of providing for her in the manner to which she had become accustomed, and any savings that Mickey had were tied up in an irrevocable trust.

  It was Sam Stiefel to the rescue. Stiefel, after hearing from both Nell and Mickey about their plight, told them that there was nothing to worry about. If Nell ran short of cash, all she had to do was “holler,” and Stiefel would be there to bankroll her until Mickey’s return from the army.

  In the midst of all this, Mickey was hearing rumors on the lot about the demise of the Hardy pictures. The bright light of his star was dimming. He was falling in the box office polls, and although his movies were still profitable, they had returned lower-than-expected grosses. Tastes were beginning to change with the impact of World War II. By 1944, MGM had produced fourteen Hardy films. Even successful series such as Sherlock Holmes, which starred Basil Rathbone, ended after fourteen films, mostly due to a repetitive plot and stagnant cast. In fact, only rarely did a movie series last beyond five years. A rare exception was the Blondie series, which starred Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake and ran for twenty-eight entries over twelve years (1938–50). The Andy Hardy films had lost their steam.

  Bill Ludwig, an MGM screenwriter from 1938 to 1957 (the longest-serving), told us, “Those of us who wrote the Andy Hardy films were called the garbage man’s dream. The initial films turned a huge profit, and Louis Mayer loved those movies. While I started at Metro for thirty-five dollars a week, we had huge salary increases, as Mayer loved how we constructed the films. I once received a five-thousand-dollar bonus from Mayer to rush a Hardy script for production. Of course I had to fight Eddie Mannix later to collect it. By the end of the war, [the films] had run their course, and Mayer had reluctantly come to that conclusion, as well.”26

  In addition to his job as an MGM screenwriter, Ludwig was a former attorney, and Rooney often went to him for advice. Ludwig found Mickey to be quite self-aware with an especially keen knowledge of his limitations due to his size and to audience perceptions. During this period in 1944, Mickey voiced his concerns to him. “What’s going to become of me?” he asked Ludwig.

  “You’re a great talent. You’ll keep right on going,” Ludwig assured.27

  “No, no. I’ll end up playing bad jockeys like Frankie Darro. I’d love to direct, but they’re never going to let me direct. They will never give a million-dollar film to a little Irish song-and-dance man,” Mickey pouted.

  “Come on, Mick. You know how good you are? Cary Grant told me the other day that he thinks you’re the biggest talent in the business. You’ve got everything,” said Ludwig.

  “You know, Bill, I’d give ten years of my life if I were just six inches taller,” Mickey said.28

  As all this was unfolding, Mickey was still trying to reconcile with Ava. The newspapers carried countless stories of their attempts. The Los Angeles Examiner on June 16, 1944, wrote, “While the young couple were divorced in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 15, 1943, they recently have been ‘very friendly’ and have been seen in each other’s company at Hollywood night spots. ‘I love Ava a great deal,’ he said. ‘We’re young yet, and both of us are glad that we caught our domestic error in time to correct it for a long and happy life together.’ Ava, whose hand Mickey held as the two talked, and her former husband’s remarks were mutual. ‘I couldn’t
get along without Mickey,’ she said, ‘and I guess he couldn’t get along without me.’ ”

  Meanwhile, Eddie Mannix continued to file appeals to keep Mickey out of the army. However, the appeals and medical records fell on deaf ears. In August 1942, Mickey was classified 1A, his number was called up, he got his “Greetings” letter, and was ordered to report to the army induction center in downtown Los Angeles for a physical. Andy Hardy was in the army now.

  14

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  Greetings

  Mickey was PFC Rooney in Patton’s Third Army in 1944. Here he is part of the Jeep Shows at Tauberbischofsheim, entertaining the troops.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EASTON.

  I was so fucking drunk, I would have married my drill sergeant.

  MICKEY ROONEY ON HIS MARRIAGE TO BETTY JANE RASE

  There was no avoiding it. The war was chewing up an entire generation of men, putting them in uniform, and sending them off to Europe and the South Pacific, where Generals Bradley and MacArthur were now on the offensive. And Mickey was now part of that war effort.

  He was sent to Fort MacArthur, which overlooked the Los Angeles Harbor, where he discovered, in a stunning realization, that he was no longer at the dream factory. A tough drill sergeant reminded the troops that they had a movie star in their ranks who shouldn’t expect any favors. He received a fair amount of razzing from officers, noncoms, and fellow buck privates. But Mickey was an old pro at dealing with tough audiences. When he had to, he would give them a broad smile, fire back his own smart remark, dance away from trouble, and roll with the punches. What else could he do? He learned how to be accepted. After three days at Fort MacArthur, he was shipped off for basic training to the historic Fort Riley, Kansas, where General Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was once mustered. This, too, was a far cry from the spoiled and pampered life he had become accustomed to as the world’s top movie actor. There were no buddies to run his errands, no chauffeurs to drive him to locations, no young girls to enjoy.