The King of movie star gamblers, the one who towered over the rest? …
A five foot two actor named Mickey Rooney. (His professional name. He was born Joe Yule, Jr. and hailed from Brooklyn.)
Before visiting the seamier part of the Rooney biography, let’s examine the bright side of his long life:
- When the Mick died at age 93, he was the last of the silent film stars, having started his movie career in the mid 1920s in a series of comedy shorts which he top-lined as “Mickey MacGuire.” His movie career lasted 85+ years, the longest in history.
- Other actors were in awe of his thesping talents. Bobs Watson, who co-starred with Rooney in Boys Town, couldn’t believe the level of emotion that Rooney could dredge up when performing a tear-jerking scene. Laurence Olivier said that Rooney was one of the great movie actors, and would have had an unstoppable career if he’d owned another half-foot of height.
- From 1939 to 1941, Mickey Rooney was the #1 box office star in the United States.
And now a bit from the other side of the ledger.
- From an early age, Mr. Rooney had an insatiable appetite for sex. He chased and bedded many of the female contract player on M-G-M’s Culver City lot, which included a tempestuous affair with 36-year-old Norma Shearer when he was 18. (His reputation grew so hot that Louis B. Mayer grabbed him by the lapels one day and ordered him to knock off the public slavering … which a frightened Rooney promised to do.) He hit on pretty young women wherever he encountered them, and frequented various Hollywood brothels. When Mickey married first-wife Ava Gardner, he was cheating on her within a month. Seven more marriages followed. At the time of his death, he was separated from his eighth wife.
- Rooney made millions upon millions over a career spanning nine decades, and spent every penny that he earned. Mickey Rooney was insolvent at death, living on his Screen Actors Guild pension and Social Security.
- His gambling habit was large and non-stop, and his gambling debts were generally sky high. He frequented race tracks and was a regular in Las Vegas, once dropping $50k at the Riviera Hotel. In his eighties, he was trading his signature for $10 bills at the Santa Anita race track so he could lay down another bet. (Money for him was a vague abstraction.)
There were other Hollywood celebrities who had major league gambling problems, but Mr. Rooney’s were epic … like a lot of other aspects of his life.