January, 2007
AN OLD FACE IN A NEW MOVIE
How many actors can say that they have a costarring role in a hit movie playing right now, in January of 2007... and also had a memorable role in a movie of 1927? The answer is, just one: Mickey Rooney, who’s still going strong at the age of 86.
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If you’ve seen Night at the Museum (an enjoyable film to share with your kids) you know that the Mick has a good part as a grouchy museum watchman, along with Bill Cobbs and ringleader Dick Van Dyke.
And if you’re a silent-film buff, you’ll remember Mickey’s scene-stealing (and uncredited) appearance as a pint-sized roué who flirts with Colleen Moore in the 1927 comedy Orchids and Ermine.
I ran into Mickey and his wife Jan last month at the inaugural evening for the Billy Wilder Theater at the Armand Hammer Museum, which will be the new weekend home of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It was quite a glittery evening, hosted by Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and in the crowd during the cocktail hour I spotted Dustin Hoffman, Gena Rowlands, Robert Duvall, Sidney Poitier, and other luminaries... but Mickey is something else again.
Duvall and Hoffman walked over to say hello, and I asked them if they knew just how long he’d been making movies. When I said 1927, Mickey said, “What do you mean, 1927? — 1923!”
Well, OK, he’s never been strong on details. He’s also convinced that the star of Orchids and Ermine was Bebe Daniels. And we won’t go into that story he tells about Walt Disney hoisting him on his knee and asking his advice about naming his new cartoon character back in 1928. (At the time, he was starring in the Mickey McGuire two-reel comedies and eventually adopted the name of Mickey instead of Joe Yule, Jr.) He subsequently costarred with such legends as Will Rogers and Tom Mix in the early 1930s, and eventually wound up at MGM where he became a star in his own right.
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Whatever else you can say about Rooney, there has never been any question about his prodigious talent. My friend Scott Eyman interviewed veteran MGM director Clarence Brown years ago—a man who directed everyone from Greta Garbo to Spencer Tracy—and asked him who was the greatest actor he’d ever worked with. Brown’s answer was immediate and definitive: Mickey Rooney, who starred in his National Velvet. Why? Because on the set he’d be phoning his bookie while noodling at the piano, composing a new song, when the assistant director would tell him it was time to take a scene. Mickey would walk to his mark, the cameras would turn, and he would throw himself into an emotional scene so completely that tears would come to people’s eyes. And when Brown said “Cut!” Rooney would race back to the piano and the bookie without missing a beat.
The first time I got to sit down with Mickey for an interview, years ago, was backstage in Las Vegas where he was starring in a production of Sugar Babies with Juliet Prowse. He was sharp and friendly, but to my disappointment, he wasn’t an anecdotal kind of guy. I asked him about Lionel Barrymore, actor Rex Ingram, Republic Pictures’ boss Herbert J. Yates, and everyone was “just great.”
So he isn’t an eloquent interviewee, and he isn’t great on facts. But he’s still Mickey Rooney, and he’s still a show-business legend.
As I bid him good night at the UCLA event, I asked if Colleen Moore was in his newest film alongside him. He smiled and said, “No, and neither is Tom Mix!”
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At that same event I spotted an unusually tall man across the courtyard and after thinking a moment realized it was Cliff Osmond, who had featured roles in four Billy Wilder movies: Irma La Douce, The Fortune Cookie, The Front Page, and most memorably, Kiss Me, Stupid. I asked if he was going to grace us with a rendition of “I’m a Poached Egg (Without a Piece of Toast),” the song he and Ray Walston persisted in singing in Kiss Me, Stupid and he told me that he had been the bane of musical director Andre Previn’s existence during that movie because he could barely carry a tune. A longtime drama teacher and writer, he is eternally grateful to Wilder for giving him the opportunities he did on screen, and Wilder even let him sit in on his editing sessions (although, he says, Wilder shot his films in a way that left his editor very few options).
I later introduced Osmond to Curtis Hanson, the filmmaker and film buff extraordinaire who is Chairman of the UCLA Film and Television Archives. While chatting, Cliff mentioned that he worked for a solid month with Peter Sellers on Kiss Me, Stupid before his now-famous heart attack caused Wilder to recast the film with Ray Walston. He told us how great Sellers had been, and that sparked the same thought in my mind and Curtis’: where was that footage, and how can we get to see it? Mr. Chairman promised that night that he would get on the case, and I certainly hope he does.
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As a sidebar to its recent obituary of Robert Altman, the Los Angeles Times published a guide to “The Essential Altman on DVD.” There was just one problem: many of his most interesting films still aren’t available in that medium, including Thieves Like Us, Brewster McCloud, and California Split.
I’ve also noticed that the American Cinematheque has begun noting in its monthly program which films they’re showing are—as it says in boldface type—NOT ON DVD. This underscores the importance of an institution like the Cinematheque, of course, but it also draws attention to the sad fact that there are still hundreds—no, thousands—of interesting, worthwhile, even significant films not available for home viewing. Among the movies on the Cinematheque’s recent and forthcoming programs that one can’t find on video: Freud, Sinful Davey, A Walk with Love and Death, He Who Must Die, Drive He Said, The Bowery, and My Cousin Rachel.
Some of these films are tied up in legal knots, and I’ve written extensively about that subject in my Movie Crazy newsletter, but most of the “missing in action” aren’t available for two reasons: the studios haven’t gotten around to them yet, and worse, the studios or owners don’t think there is sufficient interest in them to warrant a DVD release.
Why else would the Disney company be sitting on wonderful movies like The Story of Robin Hood and The Sword and the Rose? Or Sony (Columbia) neglecting to release the Randolph Scott films directed by Budd Boetticher like Ride Lonesome and The Tall T? (The rumor mill says that a Boetticher-Scott set is in the works; I hope so.)
One of the great films of the 1990s, Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill, barely came out on VHS and has yet to appear on DVD. The same is true for one of the outstanding American films of the 1970s, Milos Forman’s Taking Off.
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If we go further back in time to the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the numbers swell considerably. The Bowery (1933), directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, and George Raft, is just one terrific film of that rich decade that’s difficult to see nowadays. New York City’s Film Forum has been presenting 35mm prints of pre-Code films from the Fox studio that one couldn’t hope to see anywhere else on earth right now.
And so it goes. The studio’s video divisions are not manned by film buffs (with a few notable exceptions) and their decision-making is not ruled by passion, enthusiasm, or an altruistic attitude that certain movies ought to be in release for the greater good. Is it any wonder that eBay is alive with illegal home-recorded copies of so many movies? The companies that own them show no interest in sharing them with the public.
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Finally, in remembering the late Joe Barbera, I realize I was present at an historic occasion. More than twenty years ago a former colleague of mine from Entertainment Tonight went to work on a revival of Ralph Edwards’ This is Your Life, hosted by Joe Campanella. One week the subject to be surprised was Mel Blanc, and he invited me to NBC for the taping. Among the friends and colleagues who showed up to pay tribute to Mel were two animation legends, Chuck Jones and Joseph Barbera.
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The two men knew each other, of course, although they didn’t see eye-to-eye professionally. Chuck had gone on the record many times criticizing the limited-animation techniques Hanna-Barbera brought to television, dismissing them as “illustrated radio.” But he also knew that Joe had kept the business end of the animation business alive.
I have mixed feelings when I look at this photo: I feel so lucky that I was there that day, and got to know all three men... and I’m sad that they’re all gone now. But what an impact they made on me and millions of others during their lifetimes!
