The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney Read online

  Yule shrugged and said rather indifferently, “Sorry, lady, that’s all I can find. Take it or leave it.”

  She left it, and stomped off in a rage.4

  Yule remarked to his coworker, “Imagine bringing that home to Mom.”

  Though that first interaction didn’t seem to hold any romantic promise, Joe and Nell started to tease and rib each other playfully as the days passed. Joe was very intrigued with Nell, and repeatedly asked her out for dinner, but Nell always gave an unequivocal no. Joe brought small gifts, wrote notes, but Nell was not to be swayed. She earned more money than Joe, had a far higher stature in the company, and was not going to get stuck with a lowly prop man, one who was even shorter than she. Joe Yule was, however, nothing if not persistent. In the meet cute realm, it was like the motion picture teaming of Tracy and Hepburn, or Hudson and Day. They continued their good-natured teasing and ribbing, but Joe was not to be deterred.

  At the Riviera Theatre, near Niagara Falls, New York, Joe put the pressure on Nell, and she finally acquiesced to a date with him. They went to the Falls, and with the heavy spray hitting him in the face, he popped the question. Surprised and pleased, Nell accepted, and the two were married by a judge in a courthouse in nearby Rochester a few days later.

  There was a well-defined caste system in the world of theater, clearly established social strata in which stage hands did not marry the talent, and in particular a lowly property man did not marry the gorgeous end pony. When producer Jack Reid discovered the marriage, he became outraged.

  “This can’t be,” Reid bellowed. “You can’t marry this worker, Nell. It just is not done.” But she and Joe Yule were already married. And she loved him. She stood her ground and told Reid it was none of his business, that he had no right to tell her whom she could marry. It was said by other performers in the show that Reid had his own infatuation with Nell and was planning to feature her as a main performer. Notwithstanding his affections for Nell, Reid, realizing that he was not getting anywhere with the pugnacious end pony, turned to the new groom, and reiterated his feelings that the two could not be together. “It’s too late,” Yule told him. “We’re already married. What’s the use of talking about it?”

  “You’re right,” Reid snapped back. “You’re both fired!”5

  Luckily, Nell was in demand, and with her talent and versatility, she was quickly snatched up in New York by Pat White and His Gaiety Girls. She was now part of a package deal, which included Joe, who got the job as property man. Actually, Pat White liked Yule, and after watching Joe’s comedic reaction after dropping a heavy prop on his own foot one night, he thought he had the ability to be a comic. Joe had carefully watched the original top banana—the term originated from a routine loaded with double-talk in which three comics try to share two bananas—Harry Steppe, the stage name for Abraham Stepner, “the Hebrew Gent.” Steppe, whose characters and routines, similar to those of “Funny Girl” Fanny Brice, brought the Yiddish dialect to both burlesque and vaudeville and was the gold standard for aspiring comics such as Joe Yule. According to Rooney, his father stood in the wings as a prop man during several of Steppe’s performances and, in the tradition of most performers, adapted, or stole, many elements of his act.

  Soon after Pat White took notice of Joe Yule’s comedic abilities, the top banana of the show died unexpectedly, and White asked Yule to step in for him. Since Yule knew the routines as well as the bits of stage business he’d seen in the other standard comedic skits such as “Crazy House” and “The Doctor,” he jumped at the chance to fill in. Pat White must have liked his debut performance, because after that night, he made Yule the company’s top banana.

  The Yules toured happily with Pat White for the next few months. They were in wedded bliss, and Yule was enjoying his newfound success as the banana. However, the calm was interrupted with the discovery of Nell’s pregnancy. The Yules were still scraping by, and now with a baby on the way, Nell was forced to take a break. She remained in the chorus line until about six weeks before the birth. Meanwhile, Yule refused to accept his impending fatherhood. He wanted nothing to do with the birth. When he felt the baby kick in Nell’s belly, he celebrated by getting drunk.

  Six weeks prior to the birth, Nell retired to the rooming house they lived in on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn. She wanted her son born in a hospital, which required a one-hundred-fifty-dollar deposit, which the couple scraped together. However, Nell panicked when she read that hospitals could keep babies until the full bill was paid, so she decided to use a midwife at the Willoughby boardinghouse. Joe was able to convince the hospital to return his deposit.

  Now, with their income sliced in half, the couple struggled. Luckily, the show had extended its run in Brooklyn, so Joe would be close to home for the birth. His brother, Jimmy, who had just been discharged from the navy, gave them three large naval kerchiefs, which Nell stitched together into a maternity dress. Joe continued in his top banana role in the Gaieties, but was unhappy and drinking heavily.

  Joseph Yule Jr., who would later be known as Mickey Rooney, was born on September 23, 1920, weighing five pounds, seven ounces, in a back room three flights up in the brownstone on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn, where his first cradle was the top drawer of Nell’s wardrobe trunk. Nellie was thrilled with her new baby and thought Joe would be, too. But when the Yules’ neighbors found Joe to bring him the news that he had a son, he was sitting amid a pile of clothing at the bottom of a laundry chute with a bottle of Scotch in his hand, warbling the song “Glasgow Belongs to Me.”

  The day after Joe Jr. was born, the Gaieties moved across the Hudson to Newark, New Jersey. Joe went off with the show, leaving Nell to fend for herself. Then, because the family desperately needed the money, Nell packed everything up and joined her husband in Newark two weeks later, where she resumed her place as the end pony in White’s Gaiety Girls chorus line.

  Nell was very aware that Joe was unhappy and drinking heavily. But she was not going to let him disappear when they now had a son to raise. They would stay together as a family, Nell, Joe, and Joe Jr., but despite the public appearance of unity, there was a great deal of tension. Close friends on the burlesque circuit with the Yules noticed the friction and, in interviews years later, talked about it. Frank Faylen, for example, whom most people remember from his role as the cab driver in Frank Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life and his role as Dwayne Hickman’s father in the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, remembered how disconsolate Joe Sr. became as he shouldered the responsibilities of fatherhood. He didn’t want them, and he drank until he could barely remember what he was supposed to do. “He could drink you under the table,” Faylen recalled. Faylen’s wife, Carol Hughes, who played the plucky blonde reporter Dale Arden standing up bravely to the Emperor Ming the Merciless in the serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, among many other roles, remembered that “Joe was never sober. When we started appearing on the Columbia Circuit in 1928, Frank and I had a song and dance and comedy act called ‘Faylen and Hughes.’ Joe was a comic on the circuit. He chased every girl on the line. He was never a headliner. His main goal was drink and girls.”

  Nell, for her part, took her responsibilities very seriously, traveling with her husband around the country on the grueling circuit while caring for Joe Jr., whom Joe Sr. had nicknamed Sonny. In Oklahoma, Nell bought a padded Indian basket that served as Junior’s crib. She turned their dressing rooms into nurseries, cluttering them up with bottles, bottle warmers, diapers, and other apparatus for the baby. Toys, gifts from Sonny’s “uncles and aunts” from their show family, were strewn about. Joe resented having their income go directly to pay for this kid, but as long as they stayed together, there was nothing he could do about it—other than complaining, “You and that kid are going to drive me crazy yet.”

  At about ten months, Sonny began to walk on his own, mostly backstage, but he seemed fascinated by the goings-on in front of the audience as he explored the boundaries of his
new world. He was pampered by the other performers, who all took a parental interest in the infant. The burlesque house, with all its colorful costumes, scenery flats, funny props, baggy-pants comics like his father, and showgirls with their flashy and skimpy attire, was Sonny’s nursery school. Who needed a sandbox or toys? Sonny had the stage and the sounds of raucous music. The props served as his amusement. Just as a baby learns the first language it hears, Sonny Yule learned the language of burlesque, its rhythms, its patterns, its music—all of which were imprinted on his brain, building a neural network that would drive his talent for the rest of his life.

  By the time he was one year old, Sonny began to talk while exploring the theater, soaking up the environment. During one particular performance, just as comic Sid Gold began his monologue, pattering away in his Yiddish accented English, Sonny wandered over to the orchestra pit and, with the audience carefully watching him, crawled onto the kettledrum and began aping the motions of playing it. The audience began to snicker, which only encouraged Sonny to play more energetically. The louder the laughter, the more animated Sonny became. The orchestra leader had no other choice but to go along with the antics, because now no one was paying any attention to Gold’s monologue. The comic admitted defeat and left the stage, and Sonny became the sole performer before the audience. But this wasn’t the first time, according to Mickey.

  One night when he was one and a half, he was standing in the wings watching his father’s act. “My father was onstage doing the ‘bootblack’ scene. And because of the rosin on the stage from the dancers, I had to sneeze. I sneezed. My father went backstage and said, ‘What are you doing back there, Sonny?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Papa.’ He said, ‘What’s that on your neck?’ ‘It’s my harmonica,’ I said. ‘Can you play it?’ he asked. I said, ‘Sure,’ And I played hoop, hoop, book. And everybody laughed. I looked over into the wings on the side and my mother was waving her finger at me as if to say, ‘What are you doing with your father?’ She was afraid he was going to spank my rompers good. So I went offstage, and the manager said to Joe [my father], ‘Why don’t we put the kid in the show?’ My father said, ‘He’s too young. Maybe a little later on.’ So we waited and I got put in the show.”6

  But Joe, watching his son cavort on the kettledrum, began to panic. He figured that Pat White would fire Nell and him on the spot for not controlling Sonny. However, White, watching Sonny perform to the audience’s delight, knew this was a showstopper and decided to make the boy a regular part of Joe’s act, instead of an occasional walk-on. He even had a fifty-dollar custom-made tuxedo made for Sonny to wear while he was doing his stuff on the drum. Soon, perhaps as in indication of his future talent, Sonny quickly became tired of just sitting on the kettledrum and pantomiming drumming. One night, when the tenor started to sing a popular ballad called “Pal of My Cradle Days,”7 Sonny decided to chime in.

  The now-two-year-old Sonny stood up on the drum and yelled out to the conductor, “Pardon me, sir. I bet I can sing that song, too.” That brought down the house. Thoroughly embarrassed, the tenor knew he was in a no-win situation. As comedian W. C. Fields once said, “Never let a kid into the act.” The tenor offered to pay Sonny five dollars on the spot if he could sing the tune. With a shrug, Sonny turned to the conductor for help. Realizing that the audience was eating this up, he led the orchestra back into the song, and Sonny launched into the number with the confidence of a seasoned trouper. And why not? He’d heard the song every night for three months and knew all eighteen lines of music, lyrics, and even the tenor’s hand gestures by heart. According to Nell, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house after he delivered the tear-jerking lyrics on one knee, Al Jolson style. Sonny knew he stole the show and loved every minute of the applause and adulation.

  It had become apparent that Joe “Sonny” Yule Jr. was a born performer. He had everything it took, even at two years old, to make it in show business: chutzpah, talent, and a great competitive instinct. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 1941, Joe Yule Sr. said about his son, “He was a natural born pirate. He swiped laugh lines from everybody’s act, and when he’d get down on one knee on the runway and sing about his gray-haired mother, you needed a bucket to collect all the tears.”

  Recognizing Sonny’s talents, Pat White partnered the now-three-year-old boy with comic Sid Gold, who had a female partner at the time, Babe La Tour. Gold, in an interview with entertainment reporter George Frazier in the October 1948 issue of Coronet magazine recalled his first meeting with Sonny Yule, then two years old:

  I remember Mick held his nose after I sang a song and made a wry face . . . I played it for all it was worth and said to the kid, “I suppose you can sing it better . . . I’ll bet you a dollar you can’t.” As I dropped the humorous challenge . . . the kid borrowed a dollar from the orchestra leader and made a big show of that and then I swear, he tore my dollar in half saying that he will get that dollar back when he was finished. We kept that piece of business in the show every night after that. He later added an impersonation of Moran and Mack’s “Two Black Crows” where once he forgot his lines. I’ll never forget this—the kid looked at the audience and said he was sorry, the record got stuck. That kid has been “on” ever since.8

  Sid’s act with La Tour was made up of songs, patter, and corny jokes, with Sid as the straight man feeding Sonny the pipe for the punch line. For their finale, Sonny would break into “Pal of My Cradle Days,” which made even the toughest burlesque audience members reach for their handkerchiefs. Soon Sonny’s act with Sid Gold became a feature of the show, finding much success. After a while, Babe La Tour, who had built a reputation as a bawdy female comic and singer and was billed as the “Human Live Wire,” quit the act and went back on tour as a solo. Sid was now working solely with a three-year-old. Teaming with Sonny Yule (Junior’s new stage name) had bolstered Gold to a featured player rather than the comic who came onstage between the featured acts. Previously, Gold had delivered the punch lines. Now, with Sonny, he became a standard straight man. Yet Sonny, for his part, wasn’t your typical comic. Bored with the same routine night after night, he began to ad-lib, which was difficult because it broke Sid Gold’s pace.

  Sonny was making money, but his salary went straight to Joe, for “booze and broads.” Nothing was saved. While Joe resented his son for earning nearly his entire salary at only three years of age, Nell was proud of him and hoped the extra money could let her retire from the chorus line and concentrate on raising her son. At thirty-one years old, she was tiring of the grind as an end pony. It was grueling work, and having performed for nearly seventeen years, it had taken a toll on her. Most of the other girls were in their teens.

  At its core, burlesque was a gentleman’s show, playing mainly to a male audience who sought to be titillated by the showgirls and raunchy comics. On certain days, however, burlesque producers offered a “Ladies’ Matinee,” when the show was toned down for the sensibilities of the small contingent of women who’d peeked in to see what their husbands found so fascinating. Most of the comic routines were the same as in the evening shows, minus the strippers and the risqué jokes. During one of these matinees, Sonny decided to liven things up before the audience of women. When Sid Gold asked him the standard line, “Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?” instead of delivering the usual answer, “To hold up his pants,” Sonny responded, “To hold his jockstrap up!” Not a sound. Sonny was pleased with his ad lib and broke into a wide grin, but there were no smiles in the audience. The women’s silence was deafening. Sonny was unfazed, but Sid Gold’s jaw dropped and Pat White was fuming—and later took it out on Joe Sr., who then gave his son a strict lecture about straying from the lines (an admonition Mickey would receive from Neil Simon more than sixty years later).

  Because of the incident, someone reported young Sonny Yule to the Children’s Society, a watchdog organization formed to stop child labor law violators. At age three, Sonny was prohibited by law from performing onstage. The Children’s So
ciety opened an inquiry and asked the Yules if they were putting their child onstage. As Mickey explained in his 1980 SAG interview, at first Joe Sr. denied that his son was a child, claiming that Sonny was a midget. His parents responded to the organization with the question “What three-year-old would be wearing a fifty dollar tuxedo?” That satisfied no one, and Sonny’s brief stage career was almost at an end. But Pat White had an ace up his sleeve. He contacted Governor Alfred E. Smith’s office and received a special work permit for Sonny. Smith was always fond of people in show business and was very lenient toward them. This turn of events even worked out for Gold, who, now a straight man and more valued than a comic, was hired by another circuit to perform. Pat White decided to offer Sonny a featured spot on his own. Dressed in his tuxedo, he would sing a song and tell some childish jokes. The audiences adored every bit of it and called him back for encores. Mickey was now a featured performer on his own.

  Burlesque as well as vaudeville had its share of minstrel show entertainers, white performers, like Al Jolson, who made themselves up in blackface either as comics doing standard stock character bits or as singers. Among the well-known acts on the circuit were Moran and Mack, who billed themselves as the Two Black Crows. George Moran and Charles Mack did a patter act, sometimes called “fly gab,” where they portrayed African Americans bantering very corny jokes in a stage minstrel dialect. Yes, these acts, indeed racist, were the progenitors to Freeman Godsen’s and Charles Correll’s Amos ’n’ Andy radio show and movies, which became a television series in the 1950s, this time with African American actors Tim Moore, Alvin Childress, and Spencer Williams.

  Sonny loved watching Moran and Mack, and soon began doing impressions of them onstage—which audiences loved. One evening, while doing such an impression, he forgot the punchline. He froze for a moment, then repeated the feed line. When he still couldn’t think of the punch line, he twisted his little face into a wide grin and exclaimed, “I guess the record’s stuck.”