I didn't really mention what was coming up on TCM following this week's installment of the Women Make Movies spotlight in my "briefs" post yesterday, mostly because I was planning a post of its own for the programming. Actor Mickey Rooney was born on Sept. 23, 1920, making today the 100th anniversary of his birth. It's unsurprising that TCM should spend the day with Rooney's movies, especially considering he worked much of his career at MGM and those movies are in the old "Turner library".
The "Women Make Movies" spotlight continues into this morning, so the Rooney tribute only begins in the early afternoon, containing nine of Rooney's movies:
Life Begins for Andy Hardy at 12:15 PM, one of a couple of Andy Hardy movies also featuring Judy Garland. This is the only Andy Hardy movie airing today, although not the only Judy Garland film by a long shot.
Girl Crazy follows at 2:00 PM, including not only performances from Rooney and Garland, but a hilarious turn from a young Nancy Walker.
At 4:00 PM is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Rooney as Mark Twain's character who goes down the Mississippi on a raft.
Rooney plays the younger son of Spring Byington in Ah, Wilderness!, which comes on at 6:00 PM. The elder son and main character is played by Eric Linden. The movie was remade as a musical in the late 1940s called Summer Holiday with Rooney taking on the role played by Linden in this movie; Summer Holiday is not on today's schedule.
Prime time begins at 8:00 PM with Boys Town, which is of course better remembered as a Spencer Tracy vehicle.
Rooney gives one of his finest performances in The Human Comedy, at 9:45 PM, as the second son in a family who is forced to take on the role of man of the house when Dad dies and the elder brother goes off to fight in World War II
A much older Mickey Rooney got his final (sixth, if memory serves) Oscar nominatin for The Black Stallion, which comes on at midnight (so still late Wednesday evening in more westerly time zones).
The last of the Rooney/Garland pairings we'll see is 1940's Strike Up the Band, which comes on at 2:15AM.
The tribute concludes at 4:30 AM with Killer McCoy, which might be notable because of the story Rooney told Robert Osborne about this movie during his Private Screenings interview. Apparently there wsa some friction on the set between Rooney and director Roy Rowland, and when Rooney talked about it all those years later with Osborne, he got so animated that it scared Osborne!
1 comment:
I have always wondered why Mickey Rooney never recorded any commentary tracks for DVDs. No doubt he would have had alot of stories and memories to share of some of these movies.
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