The best way that I can convey the enormity of Mickey Rooney’s film career is by stating this–he made his movie debut in 1926, and he was still making movie appearances in the last couple years. That means he had film credits in a mind-boggling ten different decades.
In the late 1930s and the early 1940s, the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Mickey Rooney was America’s most popular movie star.
Rooney survived a number of personal crises and wound up outlasting (and outliving) nearly every one of his contemporaries.
It’s safe to say that no other present or future performer will ever have a career like Mickey Rooney.
