SamuelKhan
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An entertainment giant is gone. Mickey Rooney (right) in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World 1963.
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Mickey Rooney...DEAD
- Thread starter SamuelKhan
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An entertainment giant is gone. Mickey Rooney (right) in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World 1963.
Whoviantrekkie
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He lived a long good life and had a distinguished career. Whether or not you believe he lived to live out his potential or not, he certainly will never be forgotten in cinema history. Rest in Peace Mr. Rooney 
The Constant Resurrection of Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney's death is a tragedy in ways that matter little in the schemes cosmic, but are paralyzing in the field entertaining.
The man had the distinction of being an actor for so long that he eclipsed not one, but at least THREE movements of filmmaking that virtually every other contemporary of his failed to survive. In many ways he was The Last of His Kind.
Mickey McGuire & Andy Hardy & National Velvet
Rooney's first invention came the way most people did in the period of early talkies and serials: as a cherubic child star doing recurring roles that appealed to the provincial attitudes of the Hays Code-era moviegoing public. In probably the first demonstration of cheating creative death, his managed to escape the medium along with contemporaries such as John Wayne and Clark gable to national stardom by teaming up with Spencer Tracy in Boys Town (1938). It was a good time to be a moppet of sorts in Hollywood as the prominence of such a persona could guarantee a lucrative series of contracts with studios like MGM, where he had been successfully paired with a young Judy Garland (yes, THAT Judy Garland) and then immortalized in Looney Tunes parodies, the Simpsons of its' day:
He teamed up again with a very young Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet before serving 21 months in the Army during the last days of WWII, where he served as an entertainer for the troops overseas. For years I managed to confuse National Velvet with the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, a potentially disastrous mistake in many another circumstance, but fortunately for me, I find the latter more enjoyable, sick, sick man that I am.
Character Actor, TV, and That Movie You Know, Know, Know, Know
Like all child actors, his looks left him by his late 20s and after the war, his career stalled out somewhat, but being the consummate professional he managed to adapt to a new fangled invention called "television" where he reinvented himself as a character actor. While his silent film-era peers had lost out to talkies and some of his serial film co-workers failed to transition beyond, Rooney had survived to become a staple on shows with other vaudeville-to-TV success stories like Red Skelton. He even appeared on The Twilight Zone fer Chrissake!
His career had a few glaring problems, such as his role as a walking Asian stereotype in Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)
One of many problematic elements of the film.
But in a way, perhaps all that was forgiven with his role in the monument to eccentric casting that was known as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Yes, the movie is EXACTLY like this.
What Ray Harryhausen did for special effects and Marlon Brando did for acting, IAMMMMW did for comedies. Collecting the greatest (and perhaps the most insane) assortment of comedic talent alive in the English-speaking world at the time for a madcap epic of unfathomable awesomeness, it set the platinum standard for the comedy blockbuster and its reputation has rightly grown ever since. Unfortunately, it was also the beginning of a clock for Rooney as well as the cast. The movie reunited Rooney with Spencer Tracey almost portentiously: Tracy was the first of the cast to die. BY 2014, Rooney was the last of the main cast to survive, with the passing of both Sid Caesar and Jonathan Winters.
One of the saner moments in the film
Carl Reiner and Stan Freberg are now the last surviving members of the original cast.
The Black Stallion & A Little Franchise That Stiller Built
Rooney's third reinvention came from the bleakest period of Hollywood employment: the 1970s. The decade was a triumph for purveyors of the auteur theory and the young mavericks of the American New Wave, but while directors were tearing the medium a new dimension, some of the business' best players experienced their carer nadirs before their ignominious deaths. Decades of drinking and smoking began catching up to the roster of Hollywood Royalty, and with youth culture and the post-Hays Code era, the classic styles of entertainment seemed quaint and old-fashioned. Most of them were relegated to bit parts and cameos in exploitation and internationally-produced horror movies (Vincent Price was one of the most famous victims of this trend) and the second Wave of American Auteurs such as Burton and Tarantino, were too young to revive their careers before their passing.
Luckily for Rooney, the decade served as a meal ticket of negligible work of no distinct stain to his career, but all that changed in 1979 with his third emergence in The Black Stallion. At a time when a children's film could look like a lost artifact of Terrence Malick instead of a day-glo commercial for Toys R Us, Rooney emerged from the ashes of the 1970s to his third and final incarnation: as the magical elderly actor that steals every scene he's in. It was the role of Henry Dailey that introduced him to a new generation of moviegoers, including yours truly. It turned out to be a lucrative choice, as he returned to the role 11 years later for the television version of the film.
The 1980s saw him in a slew of successful guest spots on some of the most successful TV shows of the period and a return to the voiceover career he left behind with the 1930s serials in animated films. The 1990s saw him enjoy a furtherance of said success in both an eclectic string of films and TV shows, including "ER". He also inexplicably starred in the worst of the Silent Night, Deadly Night movies: Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, which is undeniably the weirdest entry of perhaps any kind in any actor's filmography.
I shit thee not.
But even age, modernity, and incrementally declining health (proving that the Grim reaper can be a last-leg rebounder), Rooney continued to lend his folksy philanthropic presence to a number of direct-to-video family films, many also Christmas related (minus the rapey androids: http://cdn.fearnet.com/sites/default/files/images/toyboy.jpg). But you can't keep a good career resurrectionsit down and he hit yet another stride in 2006 with the first installment of the successful Night at the Museum franchise.
Rooney with Van Dyke and Bill Cobbs. Walken wanted to join, but pulled out so the universe didn't explode.
Oh yeah, and Ben Stiller's in the movie too, I guess.
Not to be outdone (because NOBODY outdoes Mickey Fucking Rooney), he capped off his life-long career of acting by appearing in a cameo in The Muppets Movie of 2011.
Mickey and Muppets. What the fuck ELSE do you need?
Having worked in show business literally from the cradle to the grave, Rooney acted till damn near his dying day. He had shot scenes for the new Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde production, and is rumored to have shot some scenes for the 3rd Night at the Museum installment. Like Gandolfini and Ledger before him, the legend's won't live to see his last work cast its final glow on the last captive audience he had.
He outlived almost all of his many generations of co-workers and his career fared even better than he had. Like many other rare examples of his kind, Rooney's impending passing was long foretold, but always hoped to be postponed just one more day. Had he not passed today, the man might have had another 10 years in him.
It was a good run Mr. Rooney. Thanks for all you've done.
On a final note, Rooney did live to see another milestone reach completion. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World originally existed as a 192-minute roadshow epic popular in the 1960s that made filmgoing a colossal evening-on-the-town experience to compete with television. Movies such as Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey were other examples of this. The film was cut down to a more matinee-friendly 152 minutes and remained as such for years. So long, in fact, that the excised footage was thought to be lost, although Stanley Kramer lived long enough to start restoration work on it prior to his death in the 1990s. The work continued on without him, and in the early 2010's, the previously lost footage was miraculously recovered and in 2013, the film was restored and remastered to its original 192-minute state for the first time since it's original premiere.
This edition has since been released by The Criterion Collection and is available now.
Mickey Rooney's death is a tragedy in ways that matter little in the schemes cosmic, but are paralyzing in the field entertaining.
The man had the distinction of being an actor for so long that he eclipsed not one, but at least THREE movements of filmmaking that virtually every other contemporary of his failed to survive. In many ways he was The Last of His Kind.
Mickey McGuire & Andy Hardy & National Velvet
Rooney's first invention came the way most people did in the period of early talkies and serials: as a cherubic child star doing recurring roles that appealed to the provincial attitudes of the Hays Code-era moviegoing public. In probably the first demonstration of cheating creative death, his managed to escape the medium along with contemporaries such as John Wayne and Clark gable to national stardom by teaming up with Spencer Tracy in Boys Town (1938). It was a good time to be a moppet of sorts in Hollywood as the prominence of such a persona could guarantee a lucrative series of contracts with studios like MGM, where he had been successfully paired with a young Judy Garland (yes, THAT Judy Garland) and then immortalized in Looney Tunes parodies, the Simpsons of its' day:
He teamed up again with a very young Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet before serving 21 months in the Army during the last days of WWII, where he served as an entertainer for the troops overseas. For years I managed to confuse National Velvet with the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, a potentially disastrous mistake in many another circumstance, but fortunately for me, I find the latter more enjoyable, sick, sick man that I am.
Character Actor, TV, and That Movie You Know, Know, Know, Know
Like all child actors, his looks left him by his late 20s and after the war, his career stalled out somewhat, but being the consummate professional he managed to adapt to a new fangled invention called "television" where he reinvented himself as a character actor. While his silent film-era peers had lost out to talkies and some of his serial film co-workers failed to transition beyond, Rooney had survived to become a staple on shows with other vaudeville-to-TV success stories like Red Skelton. He even appeared on The Twilight Zone fer Chrissake!
His career had a few glaring problems, such as his role as a walking Asian stereotype in Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)
One of many problematic elements of the film.
But in a way, perhaps all that was forgiven with his role in the monument to eccentric casting that was known as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Yes, the movie is EXACTLY like this.
What Ray Harryhausen did for special effects and Marlon Brando did for acting, IAMMMMW did for comedies. Collecting the greatest (and perhaps the most insane) assortment of comedic talent alive in the English-speaking world at the time for a madcap epic of unfathomable awesomeness, it set the platinum standard for the comedy blockbuster and its reputation has rightly grown ever since. Unfortunately, it was also the beginning of a clock for Rooney as well as the cast. The movie reunited Rooney with Spencer Tracey almost portentiously: Tracy was the first of the cast to die. BY 2014, Rooney was the last of the main cast to survive, with the passing of both Sid Caesar and Jonathan Winters.
One of the saner moments in the film
Carl Reiner and Stan Freberg are now the last surviving members of the original cast.
The Black Stallion & A Little Franchise That Stiller Built
Rooney's third reinvention came from the bleakest period of Hollywood employment: the 1970s. The decade was a triumph for purveyors of the auteur theory and the young mavericks of the American New Wave, but while directors were tearing the medium a new dimension, some of the business' best players experienced their carer nadirs before their ignominious deaths. Decades of drinking and smoking began catching up to the roster of Hollywood Royalty, and with youth culture and the post-Hays Code era, the classic styles of entertainment seemed quaint and old-fashioned. Most of them were relegated to bit parts and cameos in exploitation and internationally-produced horror movies (Vincent Price was one of the most famous victims of this trend) and the second Wave of American Auteurs such as Burton and Tarantino, were too young to revive their careers before their passing.
Luckily for Rooney, the decade served as a meal ticket of negligible work of no distinct stain to his career, but all that changed in 1979 with his third emergence in The Black Stallion. At a time when a children's film could look like a lost artifact of Terrence Malick instead of a day-glo commercial for Toys R Us, Rooney emerged from the ashes of the 1970s to his third and final incarnation: as the magical elderly actor that steals every scene he's in. It was the role of Henry Dailey that introduced him to a new generation of moviegoers, including yours truly. It turned out to be a lucrative choice, as he returned to the role 11 years later for the television version of the film.
The 1980s saw him in a slew of successful guest spots on some of the most successful TV shows of the period and a return to the voiceover career he left behind with the 1930s serials in animated films. The 1990s saw him enjoy a furtherance of said success in both an eclectic string of films and TV shows, including "ER". He also inexplicably starred in the worst of the Silent Night, Deadly Night movies: Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, which is undeniably the weirdest entry of perhaps any kind in any actor's filmography.
I shit thee not.
But even age, modernity, and incrementally declining health (proving that the Grim reaper can be a last-leg rebounder), Rooney continued to lend his folksy philanthropic presence to a number of direct-to-video family films, many also Christmas related (minus the rapey androids: http://cdn.fearnet.com/sites/default/files/images/toyboy.jpg). But you can't keep a good career resurrectionsit down and he hit yet another stride in 2006 with the first installment of the successful Night at the Museum franchise.
Rooney with Van Dyke and Bill Cobbs. Walken wanted to join, but pulled out so the universe didn't explode.
Oh yeah, and Ben Stiller's in the movie too, I guess.
Not to be outdone (because NOBODY outdoes Mickey Fucking Rooney), he capped off his life-long career of acting by appearing in a cameo in The Muppets Movie of 2011.
Mickey and Muppets. What the fuck ELSE do you need?
Having worked in show business literally from the cradle to the grave, Rooney acted till damn near his dying day. He had shot scenes for the new Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde production, and is rumored to have shot some scenes for the 3rd Night at the Museum installment. Like Gandolfini and Ledger before him, the legend's won't live to see his last work cast its final glow on the last captive audience he had.
He outlived almost all of his many generations of co-workers and his career fared even better than he had. Like many other rare examples of his kind, Rooney's impending passing was long foretold, but always hoped to be postponed just one more day. Had he not passed today, the man might have had another 10 years in him.
It was a good run Mr. Rooney. Thanks for all you've done.
On a final note, Rooney did live to see another milestone reach completion. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World originally existed as a 192-minute roadshow epic popular in the 1960s that made filmgoing a colossal evening-on-the-town experience to compete with television. Movies such as Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey were other examples of this. The film was cut down to a more matinee-friendly 152 minutes and remained as such for years. So long, in fact, that the excised footage was thought to be lost, although Stanley Kramer lived long enough to start restoration work on it prior to his death in the 1990s. The work continued on without him, and in the early 2010's, the previously lost footage was miraculously recovered and in 2013, the film was restored and remastered to its original 192-minute state for the first time since it's original premiere.
This edition has since been released by The Criterion Collection and is available now.
Last edited:
milagros317
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He played some classic roles. Rest In Peace, Mr. Rooney.
texastickler
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Just watched Pete's Dragon last week. He will be missed as a true Hollywood Legend.
paracarl44
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He was in war films too.
I saw him in The Bridges of Toki-Ri. He had one long career.
RIP Mr. Rooney.
I saw him in The Bridges of Toki-Ri. He had one long career.
RIP Mr. Rooney.
GirlWhoLikes2Laugh
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That's a shame that he passed on. He was such a great actor that had a great career. I really liked him when he was the movie Pete's Dragon. May he R.I.P.
