The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney

by Richard A. Lertzman

  Stanley Kramer’s widow, Karen Kramer, told us in 2015 that Stanley’s rationale for making the film was his desire to show that he could make a comedy. Kramer is most recognized for socially provocative films such as Home of the Brave and High Noon—the latter film helped break the infamous Hollywood blacklist. As Karen Kramer explained, “Stanley was challenged by his friends [who thought] he was incapable of directing a first-rate comedy. Whenever someone remarked that he could not accomplish something, it fueled his inner fires to prove them wrong and he set out to create the ultimate comedy film.”9 Thus, he sought some of the most legendary comedians of his time, built them into a caper story, finding a treasure, and let them at it. The result, she said, was a classic, with Mickey Rooney at the top of his comedic game.

  “Mickey was lots of fun. Although much of my footage was shot separately, we spent a lot of time together. Buddy was wonderful, as well,” recalled Jonathan Winters to us shortly before his death in April 2013.

  “My father loved working with Mickey,” Sandy Hackett told us. “They had such an amazing time together. I’m surprised they didn’t make any other films together. However, my father made so much more money in Vegas, it was hard to get away for eight months on location. He would just lose so much money.”

  “You’d think that with all these comics, it would be this wild, funny set,” Mickey later said. “It was really boring. All these guys had their own shticks. I mean, I like Milton, but he always had to top you. Johnny Winters was funny; he was always doing bits that were crazy. [But] he was having some mental health issues on the set.”10

  Winters’s psychological condition during filming was confirmed in the 1991 documentary Something a Little Less Serious: A Tribute to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which states that Winters was mentally unstable throughout the shoot, channeling weird personalities (such as the Tuesday Bear, who came out only on Tuesdays). At the climax of the film, Winters and Dick Shawn are in a money pit together, wielding, respectively, a pickax and a shovel. The documentary shows Shawn unwilling to stand in the pit alongside Winters while Winters is brandishing the pickax, due to Winters’s erratic behavior.

  At a tribute to the film in 2013, Karen Kramer recalled to actor-producer Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he plays Larry David’s agent, and The Goldbergs), “When Stanley called Jonathan Winters to be in the film, he told Kramer, ‘. . . I have to be honest with you Mr. Kramer, I just came out of a mental institution and they declared me certifiably insane,’ where Stanley said, ‘Mr. Winters, I have to be honest with you and tell you that almost every actor I’ve worked with is certifiably insane. I think you’ll do just fine.’ ”11

  As for Mickey, Sid Caesar recalled, “Stanley had us stick closely to the dialogue. Both Milton and I had toned down lots of extra business. However, Mickey added bits of business that upset Stanley. He threw Buddy off, too, when he did that.”12

  Actor Marvin Kaplan confirmed what Sid recalled, telling Jeff Garlin, “Nobody in the film was allowed to ad-lib in the picture. The only one Mr. Kramer allowe to ad-lib was Phil Silvers. He was the only one he trusted.”13

  Mickey, who said he was “proud of this film,” had a different memory regarding his ad-libbing. In the famous airplane scene with Buddy Hackett and Jim Backus (best known as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island), Mickey recalled, “I was told by Mr. Kramer that the script was just a map; he said put your own words and bits . . . have fun. I ad-libbed every scene in the picture. It was the fifth film I [had] made with Spencer Tracy, and even he ad-libbed.”14

  RED DOFF HOPED THAT these two highly acclaimed films would help revitalize Mickey’s career and bring offers for more big-budget features. However, Mickey spent the rest of the 1960s in mostly low-budget, “drive-in” program fillers. His next four films after It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World were cheap “foreign” films shot around the world.

  The first was the Roger Corman film The Secret Invasion (1964), shot in Yugoslavia; followed by 24 Hours to Kill (1965), an action film with with Lex Barker that was shot in the Middle East; L’Arcidiavolo (1966), shot in Italy with Vitorio Gassman; and finally Ambush Bay (1966), with Hugh O’Brian, shot in the Philippines. These films made almost no impact when released, and were quickly forgotten. Back in the States, Rooney did a quickie appearance in an American-international beach party movie, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), with former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, Dobie Gillis’s Dwayne Hickman, and (in a brief appearance) director Bill Asher’s wife, Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched). While it’s easy to dismiss Wild Bikini as an exploitive and tired attempt to gather up as many names as possible in a weak and completely implausible plot, with lots of young bikini-clad women and buff, all-American surfer dudes cavorting on a beach, there’s actually a bit of social commentary in the film. With older actors Brian Donlevy and Mickey Rooney (as ad agency shills for their corporate clients), surfer movie veterans Annette and Frankie, and even vaudevillian and silent film star Buster Keaton all inhabiting parts well beneath their talents, the film illustrates how a 1940s generation sought to capitalize on its vision of 1960s American youth, especially in Southern California. The movie failed, but to watch it is to look through a prism of misunderstanding and misinterpretation (all to cash in on what the American establishment believed its youth were up to).

  When Sam Arkoff offered Mickey an easy five thousand dollars for a week’s work on the movie, Mickey did not tell his personal manager, Bullets Durgom, about the part, thus circumventing his management. Durgom was blindsided, learning about the offer only while reading the notice in Variety—by which time Mickey had already begun shooting on the film.

  Durgom recalled, “I said, ‘Mick, I’d rather loan you the money. I can’t keep your price up if you keep doing these cheap beach pictures.’ Mick said, ‘I need the money.’ So I told him it was over and I quit.”15 Thus, for the third time, Mickey returned to use the services of Red Doff, a pattern that would repeat itself for the next thirty years.

  When Doff first heard about the Bikini gig, he told Mickey to turn it down. He was trying to get Mickey back into more serious roles, and he said that this role, and the salary, would damage the actor, and Doff, in future negotiations. But Rooney had already taken the low-paying bit.

  On the set, there was friction. Dwayne Hickman told us that, “Mickey was constantly trying to give me acting lessons. I had been in films for over twenty years, had been the star of a television series, and had worked with some of the greatest actors. It was insulting in his trying to teach me how to act.”16 Rooney’s unsolicited acting lessons caused tension between the two, culminating in Hickman’s complaining to director Bill Asher, and an insulted Rooney giving Hickman the silent treatment for the duration of the shoot. “Mickey, at times, could be a real pain in the ass,” Asher told us in 2007.

  The remainder of the decade was filled with some more unforgettable films, including The Extraordinary Seaman (1969), for MGM and director John Frankenheimer, with David Niven and Faye Dunaway, a movie widely panned by the critics and which achieved barely any commercial release because it was exhibited in so few theaters. Director John Frankenheimer said in an interview that of all the films he directed, this was his least favorite. It was, he said, the only movie he ever made that he considered “an absolute disaster from beginning to end.”17

  Another disaster was Skidoo (1968), a weird take on the 1960s drug culture through the eyes of director Otto Preminger. What made it even weirder was that it starred Mickey, Jackie Gleason, and Groucho Marx. Given the cast and its director, the film should have performed much better—and might have, had it not been so overburdened with personalities locked in their own respective shticks. Another forgotten Rooney film was 80 Steps to Jonah (1969), with Wayne Newton.

  An exception to these films was an ambitious motion picture written and directed by Carl Reiner, and starring Dick Van Dyke, called The Comic (1969). The film was Reiner’s look at the sad downfall of a silent film clown
whom both he and Van Dyke had idolized, a character modeled on the lives of screen legends Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, and Harry Landon. In it, Mickey plays a character similar to silent film actor Ben Turpin, called Cockeye. Roger Greenspun in the New York Times praised Mickey: “It isn’t a good movie but it is often an interesting one and it is full of lovely people. The loveliest is Mickey Rooney, as a cockeyed comedian, who plays old age as a quality as well as a time of life.”

  Carl Reiner told film and television historian Stuart Shostak in 2014, “ ‘The problem I had with Mickey was that he couldn’t cross his eyes for the Cockeye part, so we had to put a fake eyeball in, and that caused a major rash and infection. That forced us to only put it on him for the close-up shots, which we filmed as quickly as we could. All of the other shots composed were sans the fake eye, and they were far enough back away from him that it wasn’t noticeable. It was the only way we could get through the picture on time. I was very pleased with his performance.’ ”18 Shostak told us, “Dick Van Dyke and Carl [Reiner] . . . both thought that Mickey gave a great depth to his role. It was a period he knew well, and he[’d] actually worked with many of the great silent comics.”19

  He may have known the silent film stars, but Mickey had little recall for his films from the 1960s: “I have to consult a film index to remember the films I did in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” he wrote in his autobiography. . . . “I wasn’t happy with my film work. No actor, now matter how good he is, transcends crap, and that’s what I was reduced to accepting.”20

  During the lull in picture offers, Mickey performed live in Las Vegas and other cities, and appeared in tours of Broadway plays. Throughout the 1960s, Doff secured him a particularly lucrative salary of about seventeen thousand dollars per week in Vegas and other nightclub venues, such as the Latin Quarter. His act for much of the decade included dancer-singer Bobby Van, who had his early break as Dobie Gillis in the movie The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, opposite Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse, and later hosted TV’s Make Me Laugh.

  Sidney Miller recalled, “They had a real crowd-pleasing act. Van was the opening act; then he did bits with Mickey during his act. They did this ‘Look in the moose’ piece that was a take-off on Candid Camera that the audiences loved.”21

  Some of the performances were at regional theaters such as with the Kenley Players in Warren, Ohio, produced by the colorful John Kenley, who lured stage and screen stars to small towns by giving them top billing in the company’s productions. In 1963 Mickey appeared with his nightclub partner Bobby Van in The Tunnel of Love at Kenley, theaters such as the Weschester County Playhouse in New York, and assorted Midwest venues.

  In the summer of 1965 Mickey starred as wily slave Pseudolus in the road show of Larry Gelbart’s modern interpretation of a Plautine comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a role created by Zero Mostel. Also in the show were Cliff Norton and Willard Waterman. One of the stops for the show was in Los Angeles, where Mickey received rave notices. The iconic theater critic Charles Champlin wrote in the Los Angeles Times, on June 20, 1979, “Rooney leers, chortles, giggles, struts, runs, dances, sings like a laryngical foghorn, and ad-libs all manner of regional and topical asides. The evening remains a largely personal triumph for Rooney.”

  In 1967, Mickey appeared at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, with Tony Randall in his first attempt at the role of Felix Unger. In a famous “what could have been” moment, Randall felt so comfortable playing against Mickey that, two years later, when he was selected to play Unger in a proposed television version of the play and motion picture, he recommended Rooney for the part of Oscar. Paramount Pictures thought highly of the casting, but producer Garry Marshall wanted Jack Klugman in the part, as it was Klugman who had replaced Walter Matthau in the Broadway production.

  In a National Public Radio interview on February 26, 2006, Jack Klugman told Susan Stamberg, “Tony Randall wanted Mickey Rooney to play Oscar. When Garry Marshall brought me in for the first rehearsal, it was no love fest. Something I did in one scene bothered Randall. ‘You mustn’t yell,’ he said. I said to the guy, ‘Marshall, look, it hasn’t cost anybody any money except the plane fare, which I’ll give you back. But I can’t work with this guy.’ And Tony said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have the chutzpah to tell you how to act. How are you telling me how to act?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m only trying to help.’ ”

  In 1969 and 1970, Mickey performed in summer tours of the Broadway play George M!, as George M. Cohan, reenacting Jimmy Cagney’s portrayal of Cohan in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy. Once again, Mickey received strong reviews during the tour. He had previously played Cohan in a television production in 1957 called Mr. Broadway, and recorded an album for RCA/Victor in 1957 in conjunction with that production.

  Flash-forward to 1963, when Mickey made a big splash reuniting with Judy Garland on her weekly television series at CBS. Mickey was the first show’s guest, although the broadcast was held back for a December air date. Although decades had separated their motion picture performances, Mickey and Judy still had their movie magic and slipped easily back into the on-screen relationship they had had. It was obvious to the star-studded audience that the two show biz pros, now shining together in a new medium, were in a love fest, displaying the respect they felt for each other as the best of friends. Even during rehearsals, Judy knew “the Mick” would keep her relaxed and happy for the June 24, 1963, videotaping of show number one. The packed studio audience, which included Lucille Ball, Clint Eastwood, Jack Benny, and Natalie Wood, cheered the team’s reunion, and by the time Judy closed the show with the “Born in a Trunk” sequence’s “Old Man River”—one of the defining moments of both her career and of television history—everyone felt the series could be Garland’s greatest triumph yet. The Los Angeles Times so agreed with this assessment that it didn’t wait for the series premiere and reviewed the videotaping: “Judy seemed so assured, so self-possessed, so happy in her work, that it sounds good for the shows.” The episode with Rooney finally aired months later, on December 8, 1963, and was a success.

  Mickey’s appearance with Judy sparked interest by ABC producer Selig Seligman for a Rooney television show. It had been nearly ten years since the Hey, Mulligan disaster, and Mickey was still a tough sale on Madison Avenue, especially after his behavior with the sponsors on that show. Yet Seligman believed that Mickey, in the right vehicle could be sold. Through Mickey’s assistant/secretary Bill Gardner, who had worked for Mickey for more than six years—until Barbara’s death—Seligman set up a meeting with Mickey; his manager, Bullets Durgom; and writers Arthur Marx and Bob Fisher.

  Marx and Fisher’s concept was reminiscent of The Danny Thomas Show, with Mickey as an entertainer with a family. They thought that this format would allow Rooney to capitalize on his ability as an entertainer.

  Mickey didn’t love the concept initially: “I don’t like the ‘Danny Thomas Show.’ It was nothing,” he told the group.22 (The Danny Thomas Show, which debuted in 1953, became a hit and stayed on the air for ten seasons.)

  Instead, Mickey pitched the idea of a character who ran a talent school like Ma Lawlor’s, and that concept was explored first. However, ABC hated it and ordered a new script and format. The second concept had Mickey play a midwestern family man who inherits a motel in Marina Del Rey, California, a fish-out-of-water story. Durgom set up the contract for five thousand dollars per show for a guaranteed twenty-three shows. Mickey had two requests. He wanted a part for his nightclub partner, Bobby Van, and one for his second son, Timmy. They hired successful TV director Richard Whorf (Beverly Hillbillies) for the pilot. ABC loved the pilot and scheduled the show for Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. in September.

  Unfortunately, Mickey was still poison to the 1960s Madison Avenue crowd, due to his five marriages, the Jack Paar incident, the bankruptcy, his headline-making antics, and the way he’d treated his Pillsbury sponsors. There were also headlines at the time plac
ing his name in the “black book” of infamous call girl Pat Ward, which came up in the trial of a young playboy millionaire, Minot Jelke, who was being investigated for “procuring.” ABC could not secure a main sponsor, but the network would owe Rooney the contractual one-hundred-thousand-dollar guarantee if it didn’t produce the show. Thus, they ordered eighteen shows and put it in on Friday nights at 9:00 p.m. It was later moved to Wednesday nights at 9:00 against the popular Dick Van Dyke Show.

  The TV series came at a propitious time in Mickey’s life. His finances were even more precarious than they had been a decade earlier. He owed back taxes to the IRS, back alimony and child support, and had a load of debts, some to individuals you wouldn’t want knocking on your door. He was forced to declare bankruptcy in May 1962. With total assets of $500 and debts of $464,914, he had no choice. His attorney Dermot Long filed the bankruptcy, which resulted in more headlines. The AP story read, “Rooney Broke . . . Rooney is unable to explain where it all went. He blew twelve million dollars . . . the financial questions stump Rooney . . . Rooney claims that ‘the ladies have cost me 5 million dollars to date.”

  Mickey also owed over $100,000 to the IRS, which made a deal with Long. Mickey’s father-in law, Don Thomason (Barbara Ann’s father), who had a successful furniture store in Woodland Hills, was made co-signer of Mickey’s checks, along with Long. Mickey was denied his own checking account. He later paid the IRS using money from the trust fund set up by Martin Gang when he was a child star at MGM. There was $126,000 in the irrevocable trust, which Superior Court judge Ben Koenig allowed him to break. He paid the IRS $100,371. With the money left over, despite the bankruptcy, he bought a beautiful Mediterranean-style villa at 1100 Tower Road in Beverly Hills.