Sep 23, 1920

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr.) is an American film actor. He is best known for his work as a child actor in the 1930s and 1940s. Entering the movie business in 1926, he literally made his name as the title character in the Mickey McGuire shorts. These were a series of more than 40 silent, two-reel comedies adapted from the Toonerville Trolley comic strip, in which he starred through 1936. For a time he billed himself as Mickey McGuire, but legally changed his name to Mickey Rooney in 1932... ... (read more...) . Also during this period he met Walt Disney, and later he would claim Disney had named Mickey Mouse after him. It is difficult to verify, and others have made similar claims, but Rooney takes credit for giving rising starlet Norma Jean Baker the stage name Marilyn Monroe (his co-star in the 1950 film The Fireball).

In 1934 he signed to MGM and was educated at the studio's School for Professional Children.
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He was awarded an Academy Juvenile Award in 1938, and in 1983 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted him their Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime of achievement. Laurence Olivier called Rooney "the single best film actor America ever produced", a sentiment echoed by actor James Mason. Judy Garland stated that Rooney was "the world's greatest talent."

Rooney did the voices for three Christmas TV animated/stop action specials: Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), and Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July—always playing Santa Claus.

He continued to be busy in stage and television work through the 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the acclaimed stage play Sugar Babies with Ann Miller beginning in 1979; starring in a long-running TV series based on The Black Stallion; touring Canada in a dinner theatre production of The Mind with the Naughty Man in the mid-1990s; and playing The Wizard in a stage production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt at Madison Square Garden. Kitt was later replaced by Jo Anne Worley. He also appeared in the documentary That's Entertainment! III.

He also voiced Mr. Cherrywood in 1985's The Care Bears Movie, and starred as the Movie Mason in yet another family film, 2000s Phantom of the Megaplex (a Disney Channel Original Movie). He plays himself in the Simpson episode "Radioactive Man" of 1995.