MICKEY ROONEY: A HARDY SHOW-BUSINESS PERENNIAL

A funny thing happened to Mickey Rooney on his way through childhood: He became a star. At the age of 2, he was appearing in his parent’s nightclub act. At 5 came his motion picture debut, playing a midget. At 15, he was signed by MGM. At 18, he received a special Academy Award for “Boys Town” and the Hardy Family movie series. That same year, he and Bette Davis were dubbed king and queen of the box office.

Nowadays the movie roles are less frequent, but at 66, Mickey Rooney (formerly Joe Yule Jr. and Mickey McGuire) is still working hard. On Tuesday, he arrives at the Pantages in a revival of the 1962 Burt Shevelove/Larry Gelbart/Stephen Sondheim musical farce “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a mildly lascivious romp through ancient Rome, based on the comic writings of Plautus. Rooney plays Pseudolus, a role created by the late Zero Mostel.

“We’re delighted to be bringing in this show,” he announced, “because Los Angeles has no theater: 475 square miles and we have no theater. Oh, sporadically a show comes to the Pantages or the Ahmanson or the Huntington Hartford (Doolittle). . . . Sure, there are people working on Santa Monica Boulevard in (100-seat) houses. Those are very nice training grounds. But I’m talking about theater : 1,800 seats; 1,500 seats. There is no theater in Los Angeles.”

Nor, according to the Brooklyn-born actor, a film industry.

“The motion picture business was killed purposefully--or weren’t you aware of that? They paid a lot of money to have an antitrust law, paid a lot of money to kill Hollywood, so that only a few people would own it all. They said it was against the law for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to make a picture and show it in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theater. They said it was against the law for Warner Bros. to make a picture and show it in their theater--or for Paramount, 20th Century Fox or Columbia.

“But,” he added, “it’s perfectly all right for Chrysler, Chevrolet and Ford. It’s all right for Kinney’s to manufacture shoes and sell them in their stores. It’s all right for Burger King, Wendy’s and McDonald’s to manufacture hamburgers and sell them in their stores. And yet you can’t make a picture and show it in a theater you own.

“I knew it was coming (in the late ‘40s),” he said with a shrug. “I tried to warn everyone. See, I’m a renegade. But it’s that whole axiom of divide and conquer. The actors are not together. We have a Screen Actors Guild that cared nothing about us. Cared nothing about us.”

He sighed in disgust. “The last two nights, they’ve been running ‘National Velvet’ on TV. They don’t give me residuals, they don’t give anybody else residuals. Who are ‘they’? Nobody knows. ‘They’ are very quiet. And in the meantime, Ted Turner owns Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pictures, which he’s going to turn into videocassettes. He’s selling my pictures right now. I didn’t make them for Ted Turner. Where’s my money? “

Rooney was bellowing now. “We need a new union that monitors residuals! I want to rend the Screen Actors Guild asunder. It’s ‘Pay your dues’--and get screwed. That’s all it is. See, I’m not talking about me; I’ve got hay in the barn. The Lord has been more than good to me. But I know a lot of people on relief. I’m a citizen of the United States and I’m going to see that (the exploiters) are brought to justice.”

It’s a stand that certainly can’t endear him to the studios.

“I’ve got news for you, dearie,” he said evenly. “They don’t endear themselves to me very much either. At some point, you must decide to go with them or not.” And if it means no more movies? “Then I’ll work onstage. That’s where I work anyway. Before ‘Sugar Babies,’ I was the biggest dinner-theater attraction in the world. I don’t care if I ever make another picture. It’s meaningless to me.”

For now, he claims that the ongoing battles “only put more fight in me. If I can’t get in the front door, I’ll go in the back. If I can’t get in the back door, I’ll come through the chimney or the attic.”

Doesn’t all the anger eat him up?

“I’m not mad,” he said, an innocent expression coming over his face. “I just want justice to be done. Do I sleep well? Yes. All that stuff doesn’t bother me. I run my own businesses. I own part of TCBY, The Country’s Best Yogurt, out of Little Rock, Ark. I have 30 stores; I do their commercials, write all of their product. I’m building theaters all across the United States called Entertainment USA. I have Mickey Rooney’s Fun Time Family for people who share the same disease: being over 50. And I have a new company called Galaxy Films.”

Within a matter of minutes, the raging Rooney had become docile.

“I’m a man of opposites,” he acknowledged. “I’m a very loud, quiet man. I’m a very impulsive, analytical man. The Mickey Rooney you see onstage is not the Mickey Rooney you’re talking to here. My (autobiography) will soon be out from Knopf--nobody wrote it for me, by the way. I talk about Mickey Rooney as a third person; I think that’s very healthy. I know when he stinks, when he’s fair, when he’s rotten, when he’s pretty good, when he has a shot.

“The Mickey Rooney you’ve read about--that I made millions of dollars and squandered it, that my wife Barbara was murdered in the ‘30s, that I’ve been married eight times--it’s all lies.” He hasn’t been married eight times? “Well, yes. But 90% are lies. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference what they say. It didn’t make any difference when I was No. 1 at the box office. I still went to Fairfax High, I never stepped over my old friends to make new ones.

“I’m a normal person. I write: I’ve got seven novels finished. I paint, I fly, I play golf--a lot of golf. I’m not that different from anybody else. I put my pants on one leg at a time. I have to go to the toilet, I have to eat, I get constipated, I get a headache, I have to wear glasses, I’m bald. What do I care? I know who I am, and I accept that.”

Recently, the new, improved, self-accepting Rooney (he’s quit cigarettes, alcohol and caffeine) has also seen a career resurgence (an Academy Award nomination for 1979’s “The Black Stallion,” a 1982 Emmy for the TV movie “Bill,” super-successful tours of “Sugar Babies” in 1979 and 1984), plus a happy marriage to singer Jan Chamberlain (“We have fights, but nobody leaves”) and conversion to “newborn” Christianity. (“Jim and Tammy Bakker,” he says sadly, “were our dearest friends.”)

Not for a moment does Rooney take his current good fortune for granted. “I was dead broke,” he noted. “I didn’t have $50 in the bank. This is the resurrection of the career of a former has-been. Mickey Rooney didn’t mean a thing before ‘Sugar Babies.’ And there are still people out there who don’t like me, for no other reason than they don’t like me. But the American public is my family. I’ve worked with them--no, that’s the wrong word--I’ve had fun with them all of my life.”

Has it always been fun?

“No,” he said slowly. “A lot of times it’s been lonesome.” And painful? “I’ve got news for you: I’ve gotten used to the pain. I’ve had a lot of pain in my life. I certainly don’t look for it. But I love people, I love the public. They’re the ones I work for anyway. Not the critics. Most of them show up with their write-ups already written. Look, we’re not doing ‘Othello’ here. I’m doing what I’ve found the public expects of me. I can’t please all of them. But as Mr. Lincoln said, you can please some of the people some of the time. And I sure aim to try.”