Mickey and his longtime manager, “Hurry-up” Harry Weber, signing his contract at MGM. It was Weber who secured Mickey the Mickey McGuire series, a contract with Universal, and his agreement with MGM.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EASTON.
Mickey and his longtime manager, “Hurry-up” Harry Weber, signing his contract at MGM. It was Weber who secured Mickey the Mickey McGuire series, a contract with Universal, and his agreement with MGM.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EASTON.
Although Mickey was gaining some momentum in feature films, he still was featured in mostly minor roles at Universal and in the loan-outs. His career seemed to be leading nowhere. His salary had not risen in the year and a half since he had started working in the studio. Nell, who wanted stardom for her son, complained to manager Harry Weber that Mickey’s career was “stagnant.” Weber attempted to renegotiate the agreement with Laemmle Jr., but the studio boss refused. So the manager asked to release Mickey from his agreement. Junior acquiesced on the condition that Mickey work on one more film, a loan-out to Warner Bros. titled Upper World.1 Weber agreed, convinced that Rooney had enough recognition to move on to more significant parts.
Weber turned out to be quite prescient: MGM came calling. While there is no definitive tale of how Mickey was hired by MGM—Mickey’s accounts (he had several) seem mostly apocryphal—we have cobbled together the most logical version of how it occurred. We heard the same story retold by Jackie Cooper, Sidney Miller, Billy Barty, Carla Laemmle (niece of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle), and several others whom we interviewed, and the following version contains the most common threads reinforced by our research.
The dreamed-of “big break” was to come from the unlikeliest of sources, a game of table tennis one Sunday afternoon in March 1934 when Mickey was appearing in an exhibition match at the Ambassador Hotel. Seeing that he had an appreciative audience, the ham in Rooney kicked in and he began to show off. “I entertained them,” he later wrote in Life Is Too Short, “with a line of picturesque speech and patter and some pantomime that had them in hysterics.”2 One of those most delighted by Rooney’s antics was the game’s referee, who turned out to be none other than David O. Selznick, an avid table tennis fan. The now-legendary moviemaker was then a bright, young producer at MGM, where he worked under his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer. Following the match, Selznick reportedly tried to convince Mayer to sign his new discovery, but Mayer, already familiar with Mickey Rooney’s work, told Selznick that Rooney, at fourteen, was a has-been.
Selznick, undaunted by his father-in-law’s dismissal, wrote a sixteen-page memo to Mayer on why MGM should reconsider making an investment in the teen. He also cast Rooney in a small showcase one-off performance in his latest production, Manhattan Melodrama (1934), a Depression-era pre-noir film set to star Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. That there was no part for a boy in the gangster film did not faze Selznick, who called in writers Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Oliver H. P. Garrett to write one. This resulted in new scenes showing Clark Gable’s character, Blackie, as a boy, played by Mickey Rooney of course.
Mickey received strong reviews for his small part. Harrison Carroll of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express wrote on June 21, 1934, “. . . and little Mickey Rooney is rather impressive as a young Blackie.” Mickey became an immediate sensation, and the Mickey Maguire typecast disappeared. The now-blond actor was now just Mickey Rooney.
Manhattan Melodrama, about two boys growing up in a tough Manhattan neighborhood who wind up on opposite sides of the law (Gable a hoodlum kingpin and Powell the district attorney who would send him to the electric chair) was what bank robber John Dillinger was watching in the “air-cooled” Biograph Theater to escape the summer heat in Chicago on July 22, 1934, when he was shot and killed. Audiences nationwide flocked to see the last film Dillinger watched.
Rooney’s standout performance in Manhattan Melodrama forced Louis B. Mayer to reconsider his earlier dismissal, and on July 30, 1934, the studio head offered Mickey a much-coveted contract with MGM.3
While Mayer acquiesced to Selznick, he refused to offer anything more than $150 per week. Nell and Mickey had been hopeful that being at the Tiffany of the studios would lead to a more lucrative agreement, but this was less than Mickey had received as a Universal contract player and far less than he had received to play McGuire. The MGM agreement was also far more restrictive than the Universal contract. It curtailed any outside vaudeville work, which Nell had relied on for the bulk of their income. Still, Nell saw a bright future for Mickey at MGM, and was willing to settle even though it was a detrimental compromise. “Why be famous and not be able to cash in on it?” Mickey once remarked.4
Mickey found himself out on loan during those first couple of years as an L. B. Mayer contractee. “MGM didn’t lend me, it rented me out at two or three times my MGM salary,” Mickey recalled. “Of course I had no way of knowing this at the time.”5
In fact, in 1934 it loaned him out three times more than the studio itself used him. Mickey remembered, “They not only got my services free, but they made money on me to boot . . . [I]t was something like slavery, except that slaves, at least can feel the whip.”6
For instance, Mickey was loaned to Warner Bros. to play a jockey (a role he frequently played over the years) in the low-budget Down the Stretch. The film, which was shot in August 1934, was not released until 1936. MGM received $600 a week for four weeks of work, for a total $2,400 from Warners. Mickey received $600 in total, which made for a profit of $1,800 for MGM. Selznick had been right in his memo: Mickey was a great investment.
When looking back at this seventy years later, Mickey grew angry. “I appreciate everything Mr. Mayer did for me, but that wouldn’t work today. But I was far better off than my father, who was scraping by in a cheap burlesque joint,” he recalled in 2007.7
When Mickey left Universal in 1934, let out of his contract by Carl Laemmle Jr., his deal was that he still owed the studio two films. Therefore, he had two separate contractual obligations at the same time to different studios. By then, Mickey had appeared in a total of eleven films. It was an amazing output for one so young.
PRIOR TO SIGNING THE MGM agreement that restricted Mickey’s vaudeville appearances, Nell cashed in one last time. Mickey made appearances on the West Coast as Mickey Rooney but dressed as Mickey McGuire. This benefited old cast mate Billy Barty, too, who recalled, “I was basically out of work after the McGuire shorts ended in 1932. I did some bit parts in a Gold Diggers film [Gold Diggers of 1933] and an Alice in Wonderland one, but it was a very dry period. Nell contacted my mother to appear with Mick in some live shows. This was right before Mickey signed with MGM. We were so happy to see each other again. It was like a reunion of sorts.”8 Barty also recalled receiving about a hundred dollars per week on the tour, although he was unaware of what Mickey was earning.
Mickey then appeared at MGM in August 1934’s Hide-Out, by director W. S. “Woody” Van Dyke, who also directed the Thin Man films. The comedy starred Robert Montgomery as a racketeer hiding from the law and Mickey’s former costar Maureen O’Sullivan as the unsuspecting farm girl whom he falls for. O’Sullivan remembered, “Woody loved that Mickey could improvise. They padded his part beyond the script. He was in a couple films before that with me and later played my kid brother in ‘Hold That Kiss.’ He is an amazing talent.”9
Variety on October 31, 1935, raved about him: “Rooney well-nigh steals the picture.” Right out of the gate, under his fresh new agreement with MGM, he hit a home run. Mayer was pleased, and Selznick pointedly reminded him of his “Mickey” memo. Mayer’s son-in-law had been prophetic. Mickey was a bankable star as well as an amazing talent.