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Joe Yule, Jr. (born September 23, 1920), better known as Mickey Rooney is an American film actor.
Rooney was born into a vaudeville family. He moved into film in 1927, making his name with a series of over forty silent two-reel comedies (1927 to 1933) where he was the Toonerville Trolley cartoon character, Mickey McGuire. (During this period Rooney once met Walt Disney, who Rooney would later claim named Mickey Mouse after Rooney's character.)
He legally changed his name to Mickey Rooney in 1932. In 1934 he signed to MGM and was educated at the studio's School for Professional Children. His first starring role was in Hoosier Schoolboy (1937) with Edward Pawley playing his father. Rooney's successful role as Andy Hardy in A Family Affair (1937) led to fourteen further films featuring that character from 1938 to 1958.
His fame peaked in World War II with a string of successful musicals with Judy Garland, including the Oscar nominated Babes in Arms (1939) as well as more serious roles in films such as The Human Comedy (1943) and National Velvet (1944). After his return from the service Rooney's career slumped. He appeared in a number of indifferent films, including Words and Music in 1948 which paired him for the last time with Garland, and one final Andy Hardy film in the late 1950s. The Mickey Rooney Show, also known as Hey Mulligan, appeared on NBC for 39 episodes during 1954 and 1955. In the 1960s Rooney returned to theatrical entertainment, but he kept on accepting film roles, frequently in undistinguished movies, but also including better work in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) and The Black Stallion (1979).
He was awarded an Academy Juvenile Award in 1938 and a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1983.
He continued to be busy in stage and television work throughout the 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the acclaimed Sugar Babies stage play 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 Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt. He also appeared in the documentary That's Entertainment III.
He was married and divorced seven times (including to actresses Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers) before marrying his current wife, January Chamberlin, in 1978. He has five sons and four daughters.
In January 2005, Rooney made headlines when a commercial he made for a medication was pulled from a scheduled broadcast during Super Bowl XXXIX, which includes a comic turn that saw Rooney's backside briefly exposed. The pulling of the ad is considered more fallout from Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" a year earlier.
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