Shedding a tear until our ducts are empty….For the life of me,the longer we live, the more we lose those actors with theiraccompanying adrenaline rushes, who we grew up admiring….
Their potash in the face of folksy adversity.
II
Such a fated utopian was Mickey Rooney whose happy go luckycountenance, departed our “mortal coil” as the Spring equinox was arriving.
93 years of 20th and 21st century cyber space, he was true to his combative nature and physique (five foot two)The sprite to his Oberon in Warner’s “the Midsummer Night’s Dream”, the Bard approving of his screen test.
Identifying with Oberon’s jester.
Applying the love juice to the sleeping couples in the forest was the Mick’s jaunt into Jimmy Cagney and Olivia De Haviland’s(age 99, living in London) charisma and the “chief’s” approvalof “takes”, no less Oberon’s, the Sprite’s monarch.
III
Growing up in the depression laden thirties and the New Deal forties, the Mick cast his luck with those vaudeville turns of his Glasgow, Scotland born father and the birth pangs of his KansasCity mother.
On the circuit in Brooklyn, the Yule’s abandoned those wide eyes as his mother lost her grip on the arrival, he falling into the orchestra pit, getting the worst of Mae West and Archie Leachon stilts, in their own consummate routines, the audience undeterred by the cries of t18 month foundling, their own hoots and laughter drowning out the Andy Hardy guffaws, in futuro.
. IV
Evolving into those Andy Hardy juvenile roles of the silence sound, the m other ,not unlike Judy Garland’s or Shirley Temple’s, settled in the City of Angels boot, , searching for abreak in tinsel town , stone dead to “Blues in the night”.(my momma done tole me, my momma done tole me so)
Know thyself was darkened by the Hollywood Wilshire Boulevard kliegs, fantasy overwhelming the biology of down to earth growth and development. Wylie addressing the problem in “Generation of Vipers….status, social climbing, top billing, a phoniness in the caste system as Holden Caulfield grasped inSalinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”.
Not a doctor in the house! The ego trip myopia, blinded by their own narcissus, the sound and fury drowning out relaxed pretense, yielding to up tight money grubbing.
Puck’s “What fools these mortals be”.
V
But it wasn’t until Louis B Mayer and his inner circle at Culver city, emulating “Our gang”, cast
a family… Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone, hi s wife Fay Holden,Andy’s girl friend Ann Rutherford, Rooney as Andy, the Puckthat grew up. Judy Garland,( having a Gump mother) later cast in the series..
But for us , the adolescent yearnings and dreams were cast with his pinnacle role in Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” as the Western Union messenger, delivering those fated WW2 telegrams to the Gold Star mothers, pedaling his bicycle, eyeingtheir ‘stars’ in the windows..
The die was cast and the impressionistic Andy Hardy morphed as an actor, rather than an entertainer, losing himself to find himself.
VI
The surrogate father in the Western Union office was James Craig, a father figure, who may have been the Joe Yule of Scotland, who in entertaining the Brooklyn in crowd, brought the Yule, Jr into vaudeville. The divorce and the subsequent adaptation to the silent silver screen and the talkies may have been the cover, for the Andy Hardy parody (Hollywood High, Ava Gardner) and the marital merry go round he rode, in his continued Darwin Andy Hardy evolution. The Galapagos Islands his starry bound exploration at MGM in Culver City.
Living is not to grow old, but to grow up
. VII
What does 93 years of Mickey Rooney’s metamorphosing all add up to? His imitating and imaging on the stage of the planet’s own evolving galaxy. The indisputable birth pangs of a very young America, the sound and fury since those patriots boarded the English ships, inspiring the Revolution, casting the tea bags into the Boston harbor.
Whence Mickey Rooney aka JoeYule, Jr, buried his Andy Hardyincarnation into the Hollywood Hills for grown up parts.
We will never forget how he used those sound stages to become himself…..a struggle that never diminished his search to find himself.
April 11, 2014 The City that never sleeps
