Andy Hardy Comes Home

Mickey Rooney gets his second chance in Sugar Babies

Forty years ago, when people still cried at tearjerkers, it would have made a great movie. A cheeky kid becomes the country's top box office draw, goes off to war, comes back and discovers that nobody loves a 30-year-old brat. He spends too much, drinks too much and wives too much. At the studios, they don't even know his name, except as a joke. He gets older, paunchier and balder, but though few seem to know it, he is still one of the best actors in the business. Then he finds himself in his first Broadway show. It opens, the critics turn handsprings, and that cheeky kid is once more swaggering down the block--Puck in middle age.

Today such a plot would be laughed out of town, unless, of course, it was called The Mickey Rooney Story. That is precisely what it is, and Mickey's success in Broadway's new hit, Sugar Babies, that happy send-off to burlesque, may very well boost his career back into orbit. Rarely has so much energy been packed into so small a package. Rooney dances, he sings, he mugs, he dresses in drag. Even when he's offstage, he's on, and his raucous laugh can be heard from the wings. "Seldom does a person get a second chance in life," he says. "Up until Sugar Babies, Mickey Rooney was a famous has-been.

Today he has an opportunity to become a famous now-person. He's on Broadway!"

Though it is Mickey's first Broadway show, it is not his first time in burlesque His mother was a showgirl, his father was a vaudeville comic. Mickey, who was born Joe Yule Jr., was telling jokes onstage almost before he could talk. "The jokes are like old friends," he says. "My father was a burlesque comic, and now I am too. It's a complete circle. I am my father's son. I am my father." Neither mother nor father did very well in burlesque, however, and money problems led to divorce. Mickey's mother took him to California and got him parts in films; his big break came in 1937 when MGM cast him as Andy Hardy, the typical small town boy, in A Family Affair.

Nobody expected very much from the film, but to an America just emerging from the Depression the story of the Hardy family was a symbol of what was best in the country. MGM quickly scheduled sequels, and in 1939 and 1940 Mickey was the box office king, bigger than Gable or Tracy. He made $5,000 a week --in real dollars. His teen-age escapades became staples of the gossip columns, and the studio hired a male duenna to keep him in line. That was not easy, and when he was 21, Mickey took his first wife, an unknown actress named Ava Gardner, 19.

They were divorced two years later. Following that, Mickey went through wives the way most men go through cars: "I'm the only man who has a marriage license made out To Whom It May Concern."

After the jokes are over, his multiple marriages are an obvious embarrassment to him. "Nobody's proud about having eight wives," he says. "You're supposed to marry your childhood sweetheart and go off into the sunset with a box of Duz, saying, 'It's forever, darling.' It doesn't work out like that, and every marriage and every divorce are like a five-car crash." Several of those marriages lasted long enough to produce children, however: a total of five boys and five girls.

Even Mickey admits that Mickey can be difficult. His present wife, a country-and-western singer whose performing name is Jan Chamberlin, lived with him several years before she agreed to become the eighth Mrs. Rooney. "Naturally, I was frightened because of his track record," she says. "I still am." Their chief problems center on her singing. Mickey tries to run her career for her. "He wants the complete say-so about everything," she sighs. While he has been touring with Sugar Babies, Jan, 40, has stayed at their home, just north of Los Angeles, which they share with her two sons by a former marriage.

Serene and shy, Jan is a calming influence on Mickey's mercurial moods. Occasionally he missed that steady hand when he was on the road with Sugar Babies. "Mickey hates to rehearse," says Co-Star Ann Miller. "He learns instantly what's tough for a lot of other people, and he'd come in like a little bull, snorting, stomping and yelling, 'I'm not going to rehearse it.' He usually would when someone would sit down with him and explain why it was necessary. When he's in a good mood, it's like the sun coming out."

These days the sun is shining almost constantly at the Mark Hellinger Theater. At 59, Mickey once again has the approval he needs and demands. "The audience and I are friends," he says "We're family. They grew up with me. They allowed me to grow up with them. I've let them down several times. They've let me down several times. But we're all family, and it's a time for reunion. What warmth comes over you when they laugh! It's as if they're saying, 'It's all been worth it. Thank you!' "

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