Mickey Rooney

A child of the stage

Joseph Yule Jr. was born on 23 September 1920 in Brooklyn to two vaudeville performers. He was on stage in his parents' act before he was two and shot his first short film in 1926. From 1927 to 1936 he starred in the Mickey McGuire shorts, 78 films that gave him his stage name. At 14 he played Puck in Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and joined MGM.

In 1937 A Family Affair launched the character of Andy Hardy, whom he played in about fifteen films through 1958. He made nine films with Judy Garland, among them Babes in Arms (1939), which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination at 19, Strike Up the Band (1940) and Girl Crazy (1943). He received the Juvenile Oscar in 1939, shared with Deanna Durbin, and a second nomination for The Human Comedy (1943). From 1939 to 1941 he was America's top box-office star. He was also the tough Whitey Marsh opposite Spencer Tracy in Boys Town (1938) and a former jockey in National Velvet (1944).

Drafted in June 1944, he spent 21 months in the Army entertaining troops and received the Bronze Star.

Killer McCoy: the boxer

Back home at 25 and 5 ft 3 in, he was too old for teenage parts and too short for most leading men. MGM chose to change his image with Killer McCoy (1947), directed by Roy Rowland. He is Tommy McCoy, a New York newsboy and pool hustler who moves from amateur to professional boxing, accidentally kills a champion in the ring, hence the nickname "Killer", and falls under the control of a bookmaker (Brian Donlevy) who tells him to hold back his right hand to rig the odds. The film reworks the story of The Crowd Roars (1938) with Robert Taylor. On set, former boxer John Indrisano was technical adviser and Pat Quinn doubled Rooney in the fights. Shot in June and July 1947, it took 3.2 million dollars on a 1.4 million budget.

Rooney had already been near the ring as a child: at 12, uncredited, he played Freckles in The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933), a boxing drama with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in which John Wayne has a small part as a boxer. In 1953 he put the gloves on again in George Marshall's comedy Off Limits: he is Herbert Tuttle, a draftee trained by Bob Hope's fight manager, with Jack Dempsey and Art Aragon as themselves. The final bout is won by a fourth-round knockout, with Hope coaching by walkie-talkie from a saloon.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

The 1950s were low-budget years: Quicksand (1950), The Fireball (1950), Drive a Crooked Road (1954), then Dooley in The Bold and the Brave (1956), a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and Don Siegel's Baby Face Nelson (1957). In 1961 he was Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a part that would later be held against him.

His most important boxing film came in 1962: Requiem for a Heavyweight, directed by Ralph Nelson and written by Rod Serling from his own television play. Anthony Quinn is Mountain Rivera, a washed-up heavyweight; Jackie Gleason is Maish, the manager who has bet against him; Rooney is Army, the loyal cut man who tries to get the fighter out of the business. The opening bout, shot from the boxer's point of view, pits Rivera against a 20-year-old Cassius Clay, two years before his world title; Jack Dempsey also appears as himself. Rooney plays it quiet here, a long way from his juvenile roles.

Sixty more years

He carried on in supporting parts: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), The Secret Invasion (1964), Pulp (1972), the French comedy Bons Baisers de Hong Kong (1975) with Les Charlots, Pete's Dragon (1977). Henry Dailey, the horse trainer of The Black Stallion (1979), brought his fourth Oscar nomination. He voiced Tod in The Fox and the Hound (1981), made his Broadway debut in 1979 in Sugar Babies (1,208 performances, a Tony nomination), won the Emmy and the Golden Globe for the TV film Bill (1981) and received an Honorary Oscar on 11 April 1983 for his career.

He worked to the end: Babe: Pig in the City (1998), the guard Gus in Night at the Museum (2006), The Muppets (2011) and Gus again in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, shot a few weeks before his death on 6 April 2014 in Los Angeles, aged 93. His filmography runs past 300 titles, shorts included. Three of them, a boxing drama, a barracks comedy and a requiem, put him in the ring or in the corner.