Mickey Rooney 1920-2014

  If you read this blog you must realize I like movies. We are a movie watching family. I have always loved the movies of the 30's and 40's. My kids were raised on classic movies. We were all saddened to hear of the death of Mickey Rooney, who died on Sunday at the age of 93.
  My kids grew up watching Mickey, not only in classic old movies, but in contemporary movies of their own era, like the Disney Channel's "Phantom of the Megaplex" and "Babe,Pig in the City". We were all pleasantly surprised to see Mickey pop up in a cameo in "The Muppets" in 2011.

  My girls both love musicals and went through their Mickey and Judy Garland stage, and also loved the Andy Hardy movies.In 1998,when Emma and Fuzz were little, we took them to see the stage version of The Wizard of Oz, starring Mickey Rooney as the Wizard.

Program from The Wizard of Oz with Mickey and Eartha Kitt.

After the play all the principal actors came out and signed autographs for fans and posed for pictures---except Mickey. Emma was disappointed, as she really wanted to see him and get his autograph.I suppose the play must have been tiring for a guy who was nearly 71 and he needed his rest after all that running around. And he did run around. He was all over the stage and moving pretty fast at times. Maybe that's what kept him going to nearly 94 years old. He kept active and never stopped performing.
  Mickey and his last wife toured the country in a two person show. In 2001 they came to our town and appeared at the theatre here. I wasn't sure if the show would be kid friendly, so, to Emma's disappointment, I didn't take her. We did go to the box office and leave a book for Mickey to sign though. He signed it for Emma,on the picture she had asked that he sign,from her favourite Mickey movie, "Strike Up the Band".

Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr., in 1920. His parents were actors and Mickey first appeared on stage as part of their act at the age of 17 months old. From there he never stopped.He appeared in his first movie in 1926, and the next year he was signed to star in the Mickey McGuire  series of shorts. He took the name Mickey McGuire for a while, later changing it to Mickey Rooney.

As Mickey McGuire. His hair was dyed black for the role, and apparently his eyebrows were drawn on as well!

  In 1937 Mickey appeared in the first Andy Hardy movie "A Family Affair". The movie was so popular it inspired a sequel, and another sequel...Eventually there were 15 Andy Hardy movies, and the character of Andy was beefed up into the central character due to his popularity.

The more experienced members of the cast must have felt like pushing Mickey overboard, as his character took over the series.

In 1938 Mickey was given a Juvenile Oscar, and soon after became the first teenager to be nominated for Best Actor for 1939's Babes in Arms.He was awarded an honorary Oscar for life achievement in 1983. Over the years he won many more awards, including a Golden Globe and an Emmy.

Looks like Mickey never lost his Juvenile Oscar! (See my Oscar Week post on Judy Garland.) It's the short guy.front left.

  Mickey was the top box office draw for 1939, 1940, and 1941. He was, as Dana Carvey would say in his impersonation of Mickey, "the biggest star in the world!".

  Mickey was really one of those people for whom I could use my Dad's phrase "He could do anything". He was equally adept at comedy or drama.He could do wild physical comedy, or make the tears pour. He was a talented musician.When you saw Mickey in a movie playing the banjo, the drums, the piano,or even the xylophone, he was really playing them. Apparently he even wrote a symphony, which he performed on the piano at Roosevelt's 1941 inauguration Gala.He was a talented singer and dancer.He wrote a novel and a couple of autobiographies.(When you live as long as he did, you have lots to write about!) He had three TV series, and appeared in over 300 movies. He was a working actor for over 90 years.Somebody beat that.
  We will miss you Mickey.

Doll-A-Day 61: Oscar Week: Effanbee Legend series Judy Garland

  Tonight is the 86th Academy Awards,(The Oscars), so we are celebrating with a week of Oscar winners.Today's doll is Judy Garland by Effanbee.

The doll is a Limited Edition made in 1984 as part of Effanbee's Legend series.

She's approximately 14" tall. She's one of the best likenesses of Judy Garland I've ever seen in doll form. All of the Effanbee Legends dolls are really good likenesses.

Her head is a little bit big for her body though.

They did pretty well with the detail in her dress, and they did get the twist in her hair at the sides. A lot of dolls just have the hair pulled back.They did make a really common mistake though: Dorothy did NOT have braids. She just had ringlet-ish ponytails.

 The other inaccuracy is sort of necessary: The white in Dorothy's famous blue and white gingham dress was actually a very pale pink, since white was hard to film in early Technicolor.If you ever see a good close-up of the actual dress worn in the film,or are lucky enough to see it on display somewhere, (It still exists.),you can see that it's pink.
  Anyway, they did a good job with Dorothy. Toto, not so much...

Ahhh! Scary eyes!

  Judy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm,(No wonder she changed it!), on June 22nd, 1922, in Grand Rapids Michigan. Her parents were ex-vaudevillians who retired to Michigan and ran a theatre. Judy first performed on stage at the age of two and a half, when she sang in a Christmas show at her parents' theatre.
  MGM had originally wanted Shirley Temple to play Dorothy. Months of negotiation between MGM and Shirley's studio, Twentieth Century Fox,resulted in an agreement for MGM to loan Fox it's two biggest stars,Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, in exchange for Shirley for Oz. When Jean Harlow unexpectedly died in 1937 the exchange fell through and MGM eventually decided to go with one of their own contract actresses and Judy Garland got the role.
  At the Academy Awards in 1940 she was given a Juvenile Oscar for her 1939 work. After 9 year old Jackie Cooper, the first (and to this date,youngest), child nominated for the Best Actor award, (Best Actor for Skippy, 1931),lost to Lionel Barrymore it was decided by the Academy that it was unfair to have children compete against experienced adults, so the Juvenile award was invented. The statue was about 7" tall, half the size of the full size award.Since it was so small, many winners, including Judy Garland, lost theirs over the course of time. (How do you lose your Oscar?! I'd be sitting on that thing! It wouldn't be going anywhere!) The award wasn't given out every year, only when the Academy felt like it apparently. Between the first Juvenile Oscar in 1935, (Given to Shirley Temple for her 1934 work. The Academy eventually gave Shirley a full size Oscar because they felt they had short changed her.), and the last, (Given to Haley Mills for "Pollyanna", and by the way, she lost hers too.),there were only 12 Juvenile Oscars awarded. The idea was scrapped in 1961, and juveniles were nominated in the regular categories alongside adults. In 1963 16 year old Patty Duke became the first 'juvenile' to win an Oscar in a regular adult category, Best Supporting Actress. If you want to see what a Juvenile Oscar looks like, go to the official web page of Margaret O'Brien,awarded a Juvenile Oscar for her 1944 work, including her role as Tootie in Meet Me in St. Louis, with Judy Garland playing her older sister. She actually sells an autographed  photo of it. For the fascinating story of Margaret's Oscar being stolen,found 50 years later, and returned to her,check out her Wickipedia page.
  The Wizard of Oz itself won several Oscars, including Best Song, (Over the Rainbow, which ironically was originally deleted from the film because it was felt that the film was too long, the song slowed down the action too much, and it was degrading for Judy to sing in a barn yard!), and Best Original Music Score.  It was beaten out for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Picture to another giant success of 1939: Gone With the Wind.
  My favourite bit of Oz trivia is this: The costume department was looking for the perfect coat for Professor Marvel, sort of elegance gone to seed. They finally found such a coat in a second hand store. It fit actor Frank Morgan, playing Professor Marvel, perfectly. One day on the set, Morgan happened to turn out one of the coat pockets. Inside he found a label bearing the name 'L. Frank Baum'. L. Frank Baum was, of course, author of the 17 original Oz books. The ownership of the coat was later confirmed by Baum's tailor and his widow. (Baum died in 1919.) The coat was presented to his widow after the completion of filming.
  All my kids went through their Oz stage. They all were Oz characters for Halloween, all of them more than one. (Emma was Tin Man, Dorothy, and Glinda. Fuzz was Tin Man and Scarecrow. Ivy was Dorothy and Glinda. Luckily for Ivy my sewing was much better by the time I made her Glinda costume. It turned out to be one of the best I've made. She got really mad though, because adults at the houses she Trick or Treated at thought she was "The Good Fairy"! Emma and Fuzz actually won a costume contest at Walmart the year they were Dorothy and Scarecrow.) Emma and Fuzz once had a Wizard of Oz party, a general one because we just didn't want to have two Oz birthday parties. We'd done that with Star Wars. I spent ages making yards of Yellow Brick Road to lay around the yard,and various bits and pieces for Oz themed games.Fuzz still hasn't forgiven me for the fact that he didn't get one of the Courage medals I made!
  Tomorrow we continue Oscar Week with another doll.