Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

M C HE McCOY 'ough and tough and hard to bluff is Aickey Rooney, the one kid in Holly rood who has all the answers ready Y KIRTLEY BASK ETTE Wl HEN the scene was over, Gladys George turned to the little, impudent, yellow-headed guy who had stolen With a quizzical frown she said, "You're starting that a little early in life, ren't you?" Mickey Rooney grinned as politely as he lould. If he had followed his natural inclinalions and stuck strictly to facts he might have nswered like this: ''Shake yourself loose there, 'oots. Whaddaya mean, starting early? This s old stuff for me. After five hundred pictures, linchin' scenes comes natural. Now less gab m the set and let's get this in the can. I'm a >usy man." From a brief spot as a midget with Colleen ivloore in "Orchids and Ermine" to star billing in "Love Finds Andy Hardy" spans Mickey [-tooney's amazing Hollywood career. He was lour then; he's seventeen now. He's never topped making pictures; he's never stopped making money; he's never stopped making Everybody with him step lively to keep in the bicture. He's never stopped being Mickey i-looney, either, which means he's never stopped peing boy, and plenty of it. I HE first time I saw the spunky little mug was it a big benefit performance one night in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Nobody snew much about him then, although he'd already starred in almost three hundred kid comedy movies. On the other hand, everybody was bowing to the talent of a popular boy star. Both were on the bill. The kid star came out first, in his best precious child manner, prancing and smirking. He was delicious — and he was a flop. Then Mickey, about as big as a cigarette butt and every bit as unpretentious, shot out of the wings. He didn't fool around; he was as direct as a kick in the pants. With the same little croaking, husky voice he has today — it's never changed — he launched into his patter; he sang, he danced, he jawed with the audience — he wowed 'em. He made the kid star look like a cream puff somebody had stepped on. Mickey Rooney has been doing the same devastating thing to the precocity parade, on the set and off, ever since. Because, in the first place, he's one of the most genuine little artists in Hollywood, because he's a veteran, because he knows the answers, all of them, and because he's no mama's boy trailing apron strings daintily behind him. He's Mickey (Himself) McGuire, rough and tough and hard to bluff, which isn't so strange Even back in 1932 he dared to pull the famous Rooney trick on Tom Mix Seven or seventeen, Mickey can still give such stars as Gladys George (top) a bad headache in the movie-making job when you realize seven years of his childhood were spent bringing Fontaine Fox's tough little neighborhood terror cartoon character to the screen. When most current kiddie screen wonders were building blocks or playing paper dolls, Mickey was swaggering around in oversize button shoes under a massive derby hat, a cigar tilted in his tiny trap, slapping the stuffings out of the rest of the kids in Larry Darmour's kid comedies. In fact, Mickey's name was once officially Mickey McGuire, until the cartoonist Fox objected legally to having his thunder stolen. Then they changed it to Rooney. His name is really Yule, Joe Yule, Jr. — "Sonny" Yule, as the vaudeville and burlesque folks used to know it. Mickey's folks were vaudeville people. His mother, Nell Brown, danced; his dad, Joe Yule, was a funny man. He still is, often performing in Los Angeles burlesque shows on Main Street, (Continued on page 76) 71