I loved Mickey Rooney. He was great. Hollywood turned a page today.

Mickey Rooney, pictured in 1998, was a Hollywood survivor. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times / November 17, 1998)

By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times Film Critic

April 7, 2014, 4:00 a.m.

...But Rooney (click here) was more than just any star. In the final innocent prewar years of 1939, 1940 and 1941, he was the country's biggest box-office attraction, period, end of story. And the actor reached that pinnacle not by being a dashing action hero lead or a glamorous romantic lead, but by playing a teenage boy, a character one contemporary critic called "the perfect composite of everybody's kid brother." Nothing says more than that about how America's popular culture movie tastes have changed in the interim....

Mickey Rooney (click here) was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents' vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film....

He was a vital person in the USA until his waning days.
  
by: Linda Trischitta 
March 3rd, 2011
3:53 PM

It is perhaps (click here) one of the most terrifying aspects of old age: friends have died, family may live far away and you’re living an isolated life. That is, except for the one person you rely on for help, who is taking advantage of your dependence upon him or her....