As many people may not know, Mickey Rooney loved sports. He loved, golf, tennis, ping pong, horse riding, swimming, bowling, football, ect. Mickey's love of sports was not in worshiping professional athletes as we do today, but he loved to play them. He was known as the best athlete in Hollywood next to Douglas Fairbanks.
Please read the article below. I typed it out of an old magazine. It's very enjoyable reading. I truly believe Mickey could have been either a professional athlete or musician if he had not chosen acting. Thankfully, he chose acting.
California Comet
By Ned Brown
Physical Culture Magazine
Printed in 1941
A TOW-HEADED youngster was whanging out practice balls near the clubhouse of the Lake-side Country Club. A sunlamp-tanned gent drew up in spiffy roadster and called: “Hey, kid, where’re the other caddies?” “I dunno, Mister,” replied the tow-head carelessly, as he whanged out another ball.
“Whaddaya mean, you dunno? Who are you?” barked the motorist.
“Who me? Oh, I’m just another guy named Joe!”
“Fresh kid,” muttered the now lobster-pink gent as he jerked his car into gear and went away from there.
But the tow-headed kid was simply telling the truth—he was “just another guy named Joe.” He was christened Joe Yule, Jr., nineteen years ago in
Most everybody knows Mickey Rooney as the Number One box office attraction in the motion picture world. Only a few hundred know him as the best all-round athlete that has hit
He probably excels, however, in tennis, a game he learned when Bill Tilden, Elizabeth Ryan and other net stars visited
Recently Mickey played a couple of sets of lawn tennis with Bill Tilden. “Gimme the works,” said Mickey, “I want to see just what sort of a game I can put up against a real player.” Long William obliged. He had little Mickey running all over the court, but the kid was fast as a streak and he made some amazing shots and recoveries. Indeed, he had streaks of brilliance when he took games from the great Tilden, and at the finish of the match, which Tilden won 6-2, 6-3, the former world’s champion knew he had been in a match.
“He’s the most amazing little athlete I’ve ever known,” said Bill when he had recovered his breath. “If Mickey had chosen tennis as a profession he could have been a champion. I don’t know of anyone in the entertainment world who can take a set from him, playing the way he did today.”
Another time, Mickey played one set against Elizabeth Ryan, the woman professional star, in
But tennis isn’t the only game in which Mickey has distinguished himself. In 1936, ’37 and ’38 he had his own M-G-M Lions, and with his team played in many benefit football matches, as well as preliminary and between-halves contests at professional games in Gilmore Stadium in
Mickey was adept at any position, but he preferred one of the half-back positions, because this game him greater opportunity to carry the ball. Half-back Rooney emulated the style of the great Red Grange, and when he cut loose with the ball, in an open field, he was almost always in cinch to score a touchdown.
It was after one of these spectacular runs, during which Mickey was tackled just enough to spill him headfirst, only to have him turn a somersault, land on his feet and keep going to the goal-line, that the power-to-be in the M-G-M studios tabooed further footballing by young Mickey.
In golf, Rooney consistently drives between 225 and 250 yards, and he shoots in the low 80’s. On one occasion he scored a 79 and the resultant Rooney “Yip-e-e-e!” and war dance, flabbergasted the clubhouse, devastated the eighteenth green and shocked a patriarchal player on another green to such an extent that he almost holed himself out instead of the ball.
Indeed, if it weren’t for his abundance of energy and enthusiasm, which are at once the delight and despair of his fellow players, Mickey would make a much better score. But he plays what you might call “galloping golf.” No, that doesn’t mean “shooting craps” in this case; it means that when Mickey socks the ball, he can’t restrain himself, can’t control the urge to gallop after the ball and give it another swat. He likes action.
In bowling, it’s the same way. Here Mickey’s natural timing and ability to swing a heavy ball enable him to bowl regularity. There have been occasions when he has done 220, but when he starts knocking over strikes he “presses” in an endeavor to score a “perfect 300”—something he hasn’t given up hope of achieving.
He is an avid horse back rider—as a matter of fact, he once aspired to be a professional jockey, and in several of his pictures where he portrayed jockeys, insisted on doing his own riding. Somehow, horses seem to have a strange affinity for him, and he can ride with abandon some of the friskiest animals that others find “uncomfortable” to handle.
Tumbling and gymnastic are favorite exercises with Mickey, and on several occasions he has scared W.S. Van Dyke, Norman Taurog and other directors our of their wits by doing a funning front somersault on the set. Mickey is an expert swimmer and diver, and he has starred as a water polo player in games that were most strenuous.
When he visited
“I like all kinds of sports,”—Mickey was answering a question—“and it’s hard to say which one is my favorite, because when I’m playing golf I like that, when I’m playing tennis that seems to be my favorite; I’m crazy about swimming and I used to be stuck on baseball. When I was a kid I played a lot of football.
I guess tennis would be my favorite, because I seem to do better on the tennis court than I can on the golf course, although I’m pretty lucky at golf. In fact I’ve been fortunate in having some of the greatest players in tennis and golf give me a lot of friendly coaching and advice. But I wouldn’t want to be a pro at any of those things. I mean I wouldn’t want to make a business of it. I think sports are games and should be treated as such.
“My ambition is to be a good director. I think that’s what I’m cut out for, because I’ve been raised on that sort of stuff. It must be terrible to get old and have to retire. A director just doesn’t do that, but and athlete does. However, if a fellow has enough work to keep him busy, he can always find time to indulge in any kind of play he wants to—golf, tennis, swimming, or what-have-you. There’s nothing more that a fellow needs to keep him happy and content.
“You learn a lot from sports. In football you learn that one man doesn’t make a team; it takes eleven fellows, all in there “pitching.” Another thing you learn is that you’ve got to keep plugging if you want to get anywhere.”
Well, Mickey is a plugger all right.
“The kid’s a fountain of enthusiasm,” Director George Seitz told me recently, speaking of Rooney. “He can become just as excited over a new way to beat a drum as he can over a leading role in the biggest picture of the year. Enthusiasm drives him to the top in everything he undertakes. It refuses to be satisfied with half measures; it forces him to occupy every moment of every day. It defies fatigue. In fact, he is indefatigable.”
That last is a big word to describe such a little fellow, but it fits Mickey to a T. On the occasion of his visit to
I don’t suppose there’s any other young man with as many varied “ambitions” as young Rooney, or as many talents to satisfy them. His ability as an actor is pretty well proven. But Norman Taurog, who has directed most of Mickey’s recent pictures, call him the George M. Cohan of the future. “With his keep analytical mind he would make an excellent director or author,” says Taurog. When Mickey was rehearsing for “Ah, Wilderness,” director Clarence Brown promised to buy new uniforms for his football team if Mickey mad good in the picture. Brown bought the uniforms.
Young Rooney is really a skilled musician. He can play almost any instrument, but he is expert at the piano, and when he travels, always insists on having a tiny “banquet” piano in his room. His dressing room on the M-G-M set is loaded with all the instruments of a twelve-piece orchestra, and whenever he has a “wait” between shots, he hides himself there, where his “band” is always ready to play under his direction, mostly pieces composed by Mickey himself.
He has composed a few minor hits with his friend Sidney Miller—Sid doing the lyrics and Mickey the melody. Not so long ago Mickey composed a symphony which was considered so good it was scheduled to be played on the Ford Symphony hour, but complications arising out of the ASCAP-B.M.I. conflict prevented this.
Speaking of music, Mickey said: “Lots of older folks think kids nowadays are nutty to go in for swing music and jitterbug dancing. I like swing music. It’s got rhythm and action, but I don’t like it when it doesn’t make sense. Lyrics are important too. Just a lot of words thrown together are the bunk.”
To describe Mickey Rooney physically seems superfluous when one considers that millions have seen him so often on the screen. But we might say here that he is a powerfully built youngster, standing an even five feet and weighing 125 pounds of compact bone and sinew. That he is a blue-eyed blond everybody knows.
“It’s NO secret the biggest break I ever got was having Mom,” he’ll tell you. “She never tried to interfere with a fellow’s work. She doesn’t come on the set very often and when she does we talk about everything except acting. She always says to me that she will take care of m clothes and see that I get what I want to eat, but that the acting is up to me. Of course, she goes with me on trips because I’d get pretty darned homesick if she didn’t. Mother doesn’t want me to play football in college because she thinks I’m too light. But I’m going to try for cheer leader and see all the games free,” he chuckles.
The most embarrassing thing about picture-making is what Mickey called this “puppy love business.” “It’s just played for laughs,” he says, “but no one wants to have people think he believes himself a Don Juan or something. As a matter of fact, I never had a date until about a year or so ago. Girls are not particularly in my line. Sure, I like them and I have dancing dates from time to time with different girls. Right now, my Mother is my best girl and that’s the way every boy my age should feel.
“It’s all right for a guy to get married some day,” Mickey opines, then adds naively, “but why should a fellow marry until he is middle-aged, say twenty-five or so. As long as you’re a bachelor you’re ‘eligible’ and that’s a nice way to be, don’t you think?”
Maybe you’ve got something there, Mickey!
