RIP Mickey Rooney

Since nobody's made the reference yet..
There goes another one before Abe Vigoda.

 

Had never heard those . . . great stuff.

The lead role in "Marty" was such a great part, it was virtually foolproof. The guy married Ethel Merman . . . how smart could he be?

 

I generally don't make a habit of bumping year-old threads, but I came upon this extensive expose of Rooney being abused and pretty much swindled by his wife and stepson.

Tears and Terror: The Disturbing Final Years of Mickey Rooney

It's a long one, and when I was done it was really hard for me to have a good opinion of anyone in this saga.

 

Great link ... thanks.
I'd watched a PTL Club interview by Tammy Faye Bakker last nite and thought he refused to key-in on answers, plus he hogged the microphone, but being that it was a 1985 interview indicates it wasn't modern-day, per se. This more current stuff in the Tears and Terror interview are really tough to stomach. He seems to have been a rebel and a wanderer for most of his life and there's something good to be said, to a degree, for being that. The money "synopsis" from that interview comes near the end, and seems to sum up what most who knew him closest and through the industry thought of him.

... “The flamboyance which with he lived his life — his marriages, talking about his alcoholism, his crackpot business ventures — that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Today, celebs can’t live the way he lived. He would be playing Andy Hardy, the All-American Boy, on a film set, and in-between scenes, he’d be the exact opposite: Calling his bookie, dating Ava Gardner. Actors today, they can’t have that. He was a 20th-century talent, not a 21st-century one.”

 

Compute the probability someone runs to the desk breathlessly with the news that Mickey Rooney has passed away.