Tag: Mickey Rooney

On Mickey Rooney

472px-Mickey_Rooney_stillMickey Rooney died this weekend. He was a big deal from my parents generation, one of the last few surviving Hollywood movie stars.

Rooney was a member of a very small club. He could do nearly anything in show business. He sang, he danced, he acted. He played the drums. He did Broadway. He toured. He was a frequent talk show guest in the 60s and 70s.

The more people got to know him, the less starstruck they were. Make no mistake, he was exceptionally talented. He was just more talented than popular. It happens.

Mickey Rooney was best known for the Andy Hardy movies. They made 16.

Andy lived in small town America where everything was tidy and everyone was white. His father was a wise, yet warm, judge.

The Andy Hardy movies were often on daytime TV when I was a kid. These were lighthearted morality plays where the good guy triumphs in the end–always. I watched, but it was no childhood I recognized.

Rooney also did a bunch of successful musicals with Judy Garland. Later in his career he transitioned to character roles.

People were surprised to see he was only 5′ 2″.

He was married eight times. After three or four shouldn’t you understand marriage isn’t for you?

I’m trying to think if anyone’s ever been in the public consciousness longer than Mickey Rooney? Maybe not. He was a star nearly 80 years. That’s an incredible accomplishment.

Even 93 years isn’t enough, is it?

Rod Serling Documentary

I have two DVRs. One is from Comcast. Its strength is being able to record digital cable channels. As DVRs go, it’s not very good.

The second DVR is self built. It runs MythTV software – a totally free Linux based application. I claim to have installed it on old throwaway hardware, but there were enhancements as I went along. It’s not totally reclaimed from scrap.

MythTV’s strength is its software. It is elegantly programmed and takes full advantage of a MySQL database. That means I can search for TV shows by title, genre, actors. You get the idea. It even knows how to record a show once, no matter how many times it airs or how many channels carry it.

I can also program what Tivo calls a ‘season pass.’ Every episode of a single show gets scarfed up on my hard drive.

That’s what I did with PBS’ American Masters series. OK, I’ve only watched a few, but they’re on my drive, just in case.

Tonight, after Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, I decided to delve into the episode on Rod Serling. Good move.

As a kid I watched Serling’s Twilight Zone. I remember having the crap scared out of me by some episodes. They were genuinely scary without being violent and with no special effects – none!

I knew they were good, because I heard they were good. I was too young to make that kind of value judgment on my own.

Now I understand more of what Serling was about. His work seen today, some of it fifty years old or more, is very impressive.

Rod Serling worked in the Golden Age of Television. You could make the case he was an integral reason it was the Golden Age.

Black and white clips of The Twilight Zone, Studio One, Kraft Television Theater and other dramatic anthologies present TV as a different animal. Writing and acting were critical. Production values were an afterthought.

Nearly every clip has featured actors I recognized from appearances long after the 50s. Many, like Robert Redford, Mickey Rooney, Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith and Jack Klugman had distinguished careers beyond television. There were also quirky scenes with actors out of place, like Ed Wynn, normally a slapstick comedian, playing a fight trainer in Requiem for a Heavyweight, or 14 year old Mickey Dolenz in The Velvet Alley, part of the Playhouse 90 series. Mike Wallace is even there, lit cigarette in hand, interviewing Rod Serling one-on-one.

Today’s episodic television looks for quick payoffs. TV shows have multiple plots going simultaneously. We no longer have the attention span to absorb ethereal writing. Serling would be quite unhappy. Serling’s type of television isn’t done today.

There’s no way to go back in time. That’s a shame. I’m just glad there are moments like this when I can take another look at why television became such an influential medium and why, even today, so many clearly remember these shows.

I Don’t Want This to be the Death Blog… But

It’s often possible to turn on the TV, and even with the sound down, know someone has died. Today, it was CNN, “voice of Mickey Rooney” fonted on the screen, and video of Tony Randall showing.

It wasn’t as obvious as the time Helaine and I were in the Carribean and stations that normally played ‘island music’ were all of a sudden wall-to-wall Karen Carpenter, but it was pretty obvious. Tony Randall had died at 82.

I was a big Tony Randall fan. He was one of those guys who seemed to make a career of playing himself – prissy, exacting, erudite, fastidious.

I’m not quite old enough to remember him from Mr. Peepers, with Wally Cox. I do remember him from some light comedies – especially Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson and Doris Day.

OK, I’ll admit it. I thought Rock Hudson was the macho one and Tony Randall gay. Oops.

Back in Buffalo, twenty some odd years ago, I got the chance to meet Tony at a charity event. I think it was for the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, which would have been appropriate. He was a great champion of opera and other live performance arts. He seemed older than I had expected. His blue blazer and button down shirt looked worn. He was charming.

Tony Randall never dumbed down his performance. In fact, he played up his intellectual accumen. When he was on with Johnny Carson, or later with David Letterman, there was no doubting that he was the master of all he surveyed.

He didn’t have children until a second marriage when he was already in his 70s, much later in life than most people would think of raising kids. Stories I’ve heard today portray Randall as very happy.

His humor will be missed. His presence, mugging in some inappropriate sketch with Letterman, will be missed. He will be missed.