I'm Going to Miss the Little GuyThere will be much written about Mickey Rooney over the next few days, and I won't have anything spectacular to add. I was never a huge fan of the madcap, singing, dancing Mickey Rooney, but preferred the quieter, brotherly, small town entrepreneurial Mickey Rooney. I liked the guy who was sweet to Virginia Weidler (Young Tom Edison), Freddie Bartholomew (Captains Courageous), and drunk Frank Morgan (The Human Comedy) and I *always* cried when he did. Mickey Rooney was probably the last of the working vaudevillians we'll ever see again. He did everything it was possible to do in show business and was a massive success at it for 90 years. To me, his greatest achievement was his marriage to Ava Gardner, because, really? And he'll always have a soft spot in my heart for being the winning answer to one of my sister's Daily Doubles on Jeopardy in 1987. I suppose we all knew this would happen one day, but I'm still very sad to see him go. May you rest in peace, Mr. Rooney. You did a marvelous job. |