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Post by hi224 on Apr 12, 2020 23:30:16 GMT
any opinions on him as an actor?.
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 13, 2020 3:37:06 GMT
He's great.
I watched KILLER MCCOY a while ago and didn't think he would be convincing as a boxer but he was. And good at song and dance as well. DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD and THE LAST MILE --where he is a convict ringleader of a prison escape shows his range.
I liked this review someone did for THE MANIPULATOR 1971:
"The legendary Mickey Rooney gives an incredibly wild, hammy and over-the-top full-tilt insane, inspired and uninhibited performance as B.J. Lang, a deranged and delusional psychotic washed-up Hollywood has-been who thinks he's a great successful big-time film director ala Orson Welles. Lang relentlessly torments and terrorizes hapless lovely aspiring actress Carlotta (the beautiful Luana Anders) on a dingy and decrepit abandoned studio back lot: he rants and raves to himself with rip-snorting gonzo aplomb, spoon feeds her baby food, impersonates an effeminate make-up artist (Rooney sports bright red lipstick and gaudy blue eye shadow!), pretends to have a fatal massive heart attack, and occasionally breaks into these astounding impromptu a cappella renditions of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which he heartily belts out in this pained hoarse'n'wheezy croak of a voice."
Very intense and charismatic for a little guy.
I suspect his marriages were staged though.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 13, 2020 4:08:44 GMT
I liked him. Not in everything but mostly With a film career that lasted from 1926 to 2015, he has the longest career in cinema history. Rooney's credits span ten consecutive decades: 1920s-2010s.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 13, 2020 4:12:34 GMT
Horse racing .... YEARS apart ! National Velvet The Black Stallion
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Post by petrolino on Apr 13, 2020 5:25:26 GMT
Don't like him. Never did, never will.
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Post by hi224 on Apr 13, 2020 6:16:16 GMT
He's great. I watched KILLER MCCOY a while ago and didn't think he would be convincing as a boxer but he was. And good at song and dance as well. DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD and THE LAST MILE --where he is a convict ringleader of a prison escape shows his range. I liked this review someone did for THE MANIPULATOR 1971: "The legendary Mickey Rooney gives an incredibly wild, hammy and over-the-top full-tilt insane, inspired and uninhibited performance as B.J. Lang, a deranged and delusional psychotic washed-up Hollywood has-been who thinks he's a great successful big-time film director ala Orson Welles. Lang relentlessly torments and terrorizes hapless lovely aspiring actress Carlotta (the beautiful Luana Anders) on a dingy and decrepit abandoned studio back lot: he rants and raves to himself with rip-snorting gonzo aplomb, spoon feeds her baby food, impersonates an effeminate make-up artist (Rooney sports bright red lipstick and gaudy blue eye shadow!), pretends to have a fatal massive heart attack, and occasionally breaks into these astounding impromptu a cappella renditions of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which he heartily belts out in this pained hoarse'n'wheezy croak of a voice." Very intense and charismatic for a little guy. I suspect his marriages were staged though. Especially when he married Gardner come on now.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2020 6:17:25 GMT
I'm indifferent. He was fine in films like Boys Town & The Human Comedy. I don't believe I've ever seen any of his Andy Hardy movies. I'd never watch a movie just because he's in it but wouldn't turn one off if he's in it.
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 13, 2020 6:35:32 GMT
Especially when he married Gardner come on now. Supposedly he was cheating her, and because she didn't divorce him, they gave her a movie contract.
NOW COME ON.
PS
His role in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM was really irritating. I haven't seen any of his Andy Hardy movies.
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Post by london777 on Apr 13, 2020 13:02:48 GMT
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Post by marshamae on Apr 13, 2020 13:22:45 GMT
Supremely talented, he could sing ,dance, play piano and drums, had good comic timing and could play comedy ,drama, costume , westerns and Shakespeare. He knew how to dial it all the way up ,and he knew how to play so small he could make his mark without moving an eyebrow.
There are films he made as a child that are simply brilliant . One is Hide Out , a Robert Montgomery little comedy. Rooney is the kid in a farm family . He is natural, touching and completely at ease. If only he had played that simply all the time.
As an adult still playing a young man, National Velvet is one of his best performances. Elizabeth Taylor was so Ernest and moving she brought the best out in everyone. But it was also that Mickey was allowed to play a character who had a dark side, cynical, untrustworthy. MGM. Routinely miscast a whole generation of talented actors forcing them to play “ aw shucks “ good guys. Frank Sinatra cast as a naive boob, Tyrone power , Gene Kelly, all complex me with lots of anger, some depression ,forced to play Sunny Jim.
Mickey hit some good roles in his later years. His run in Sugar Babies, the Black Stallion were gifts to an aging performer who had wasted a lot of chances.
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Post by petrolino on Apr 13, 2020 13:38:12 GMT
Don't like him. Never did, never will. And you are usually so charitable. You must agree he was cruelly denied a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this sensitive portrayal:
You might like this picture of Martha Vickers feeding him cake.
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Post by mikef6 on Apr 13, 2020 15:03:53 GMT
Oh, come on. Rooney’s turn as Audrey Hepburn’s Japanese neighbor occupies a very small space in that movie and Rooney himself disowned his own performance. Give the guy a break for once, already. About his eight marriages, he commented later in life that his heart must be all scar tissue – although it was his own gambling and screwing around that ended most of them. His fifth wife Barbara Ann Thompson (who is listed under her stage name of Carolyn Mitchell at the database) was the one cheating. She was murdered by her lover who then committed suicide (January 31, 1966). To have something like that happen in one’s own family has to be tough on anybody, even a movie star. An experience like that can age a person fast. For the last couple of years I have been immersing myself in film noir and B-crime films from the ‘30s, 40s, and ‘50s. One of the major discoveries I have made is the importance of Mickey Rooney in dark crime films of that most recent decade. He gives excellent, naturalistic acting in several moves, mainly: Quicksand (1950), Drive A Crooked Road (1954), and Baby Face Nelson (1957). I’m going to catch up with Killer McCoy (1947) sometime soon. I believe that he is a more important figure in 1950s film noir that is acknowledged. He could, however, also do irritating, over-the-top manic comedy as in The Atomic Kid (1954). A very talented actor and very complicated human. Baby Face Nelson. Mickey Rooney, Carolyn Jones, and the belov-ed 1950s bullet bra.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 13, 2020 15:08:46 GMT
FWIW Re: Mr. Yunioshi
Should Rooney have turned down the role ? Probably ! But, he played the role as written and as the director said to play it. The part would have been the same (and just as obnoxious) no matter who was cast. Would it have been acceptable if played by an Japanese or Japanese-American actor ? What if it had been played by a Chinese or Chinese American actor ?
Alec Guinness played a Japanese Man in A Majority of One (Played by Cedric Hardwick on Broadway !] Many actors of European extraction played "orientals". It was the way casting of movies worked then.
It's the ethnic caricature presented by Mr Yunioshi as written and directed not the actor that is the real problem (imo).
These from IMDb : "In his audio commentary for the DVD release, producer Richard Shepherd said that, at the time of production as well as in retrospect, he wanted to recast Mickey Rooney "not because he [Rooney] didn't play the part well" but because Shepherd thought the part of Mr. Yunioshi should be performed by an actor of Japanese ethnicity. It was Blake Edwards' decision to keep Rooney. In a "making-of" for the 45th anniversary edition DVD release, Shepherd repeatedly apologizes, saying, "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie." Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it... and I would give anything to be able to recast it, but it's there, and onward and upward."
"In the 2006 short documentary Breakfast at Tiffany's: The Making of a Classic (2006), Blake Edwards said that when the movie was made, he didn't think about the implications of casting an actor of European heritage, Mickey Rooney, in a role as a Japanese person, but "looking back, I wish I had never done it... and I would give anything to be able to recast it with a Japanese person."
"In a 2008 interview about the film, Mickey Rooney said he was heartbroken about the criticism he received for his role: "Blake Edwards... wanted me to do it because he was a comedy director. They hired me to do this overboard, and we had fun doing it.... Never in all the more than 40 years after we made it -- not one complaint. Every place I've gone in the world people say, 'God, you were so funny.' Asians and Chinese come up to me and say, 'Mickey you were out of this world.'" Rooney also said that if he'd known people would be so offended, "I wouldn't have done it. Those that didn't like it, I forgive them and God bless America, God bless the universe, God bless Japanese, Chinese, Indians, all of them and let's have peace.'"
"For his portrayal of I.Y. Yunioshi, Mickey Rooney wore makeup and a prosthetic mouthpiece to change his features to a caricatured approximation of a Japanese person. Since the 1990s, his portrayal has been subject to increasing protest by Asian-Americans, among others. For instance, the film is used as an example of Hollywood's racist depiction of Asians in the film, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), where the future Asian-American screen legend sees the film with his girlfriend, only for her to suggest they leave the screening upon seeing how upset he is at the film's content, thus implying how Lee would one day challenge those racial film stereotypes."
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Post by bravomailer on Apr 13, 2020 17:25:12 GMT
Liked him in The Human Comedy, The Bridges At Toko-Ri, and The Black Stallion. Not much else. I recall an interview he did with Robert Osborne in which Rooney's venomous side was all too apparent.
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Post by marshamae on Apr 13, 2020 17:43:42 GMT
Re Yunioshi- no one ever mentions that the reason he was played for comedy was that in the novella, Mr Yunioshi is a troubling figure, clearly wanting to take nude or semi nude pictures, and Holly was willing to sleep with him to get his cooperation. None of that could be played on the screen in the early 60’s , and even showing anAsian man being attracted to Holly would have caused trouble. They cast Mickey the same way they did Black face in the 1930’s and 1940’s , to avoid having white actresses dealing with actors of a different race.
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Apr 13, 2020 18:03:26 GMT
A great and multi-talented star that made great contributions to the history of movies and TV.
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 13, 2020 18:32:28 GMT
Mickey Rooney's wives tended to age quickly after being married to him. Gardner, Vickers...
What about James Mason's portrayal of a Chinese ambassador in GENGHIS KHAN 1965? For those who have seen it. It is an odd performance especially since Robert Morley as the Emperor doesn't even have fake eyelids!
And the actor in FALLING DOWN playing the Korean store owner--he didn't really speak like that, but he had to play what was intended to be a greedy hostile character (Hollywood's double standards at work--since it was ok to do that with a Korean but not others. Brando in the Larry King interview was absolutely right about the double standards).
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Post by Jonesy1 on Apr 13, 2020 21:35:53 GMT
As an actor he was extremely talented but I had the opportunity to meet him many years ago and he was one of the rudest people I ever had the displeasure of meeting.
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 13, 2020 21:47:57 GMT
As an actor he was extremely talented but I had the opportunity to meet him many years ago and he was one of the rudest people I ever had the displeasure of meeting. Reminds me of something Phil Donahue said--that when he encounters a fan he always tries to be nice no matter how he really feels because he knows they will remember that encounter forever!
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Post by TheOriginalPinky on Apr 13, 2020 22:47:09 GMT
He was amazing, truly amazing. A consummate professional, he could do just about anything. A quick study, he could do comedy and drama. One fabulous talent! Too bad he was such a bastard!
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