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Monday, March 06, 2006

Mickey Rooney Preservation Society

Posted by John Holbo on 03/06/06 at 12:59 AM

Well, that’s who won. (Eh. Didn’t think much of Crash myself.) Chat about this important cultural event, if so inclined. In para-Academy news, James Wolcott makes an interesting aside:

Glimpse of Mickey Rooney in the audience: truly the last survivor of golden-age Hollywood, and one who has never quite gotten his critical due as a performer. Pauline Kael was going to do a long profile-appreciation of Rooney in the manner of her Cary Grant essay, but it never happened and now there’s no one with the wealth of knowledge and sympathy to him justice. But the fact that he’s in the audience proves that he hasn’t been forgotten.

Going off on a tangent from this aside, by way of working back to Lawrence’s post: one of my very favorite movies that’s irritatingly not available on DVD is Max Reinhardt’s 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with a 14-year old Rooney as Puck. Not to mention James “Angels With Dirty Faces” Cagney as Bottom, Dick “Murder, My Sweet” Powell as Lysander. And the lovely Olivia ‘all those Errol Flynn flicks’ de Havilland as Hermia. Victor Jory - who evidently went out with a whimper, narrating Tubby the Tuba - makes a great Oberon. I’ve got a magnificent still up at J&B. It’s so very Guy Maddin, yet stays this side of sheer camp ridiculousness. (Well, to the extent that the play itself does.) It’s beautiful. What the hell do we have the Criterion Collection for if not to get this sort of stuff out? (IMDB trivia fact: “When the forest that Reinhardt designed could not be lit properly, cinematographer Hal Mohr thinned the trees slightly, sprayed them with aluminum paint and covered them with cobwebs and tiny metal particles to reflect the light. As a result, he became the first (and only) write-in winner of an Academy Award.")

So what’s your favorite movie that irritatingly isn’t available on DVD? I’ll mention one more: Little Fauss and Big Halsy, starring Robert Redford no less, isn’t even available on VHS. I remember watching it once on late-nite and really enjoying it. It’s got a special late-60’s/early-70’s motorcycle thing. And you can buy the the Cash/Perkins soundtrack. And you can buy the screenplay (that’s for you, Lawrence). But you can’t buy the film itself. So if you want to do film criticism, you’ll just have to misremember and lump it. Maybe it’s crap and I only liked it because I was learning to ride a motorcycle at the time and coveted Redford’s blue and yellow 70’s leather. (And the memorable quotes, neither of which I remember, seem sort of “Brokeback Mountain”, which I haven’t seen.)

You can get the Reinhardt Midsummer used on VHS [Amazon], if you haven’t yet thrown out your old VCR. I give it two thumbs up.

Comments

A glimpse of Mickey Rooney brings to mind yet another complaint against God, if that’s who’s responsible for the ravages of time. To think, that body once lay conjugally w/Rita Hayworth’s. (The images you included in a long-ago post on Maynard Ferguson brought on similar thoughts.)

By Lawrence LaRiviere White on 03/06/06 at 03:06 PM | Permanent link to this comment

It’s true about Mickey Rooney, at least for my generation. I didn’t know who he was until I saw him in some fascist Hollywood films in college. Before that, I only knew the name from a song on the cartoon Animaniacs:

It’s a big universe, and we’re all really puny;
We’re just tiny little specks, about the size of Mickey Rooney.

Is that sad?

By on 03/06/06 at 03:46 PM | Permanent link to this comment

An earlier generation may have gotten their poetic reference from Mad: “As I was going to St. Ives, / I met a man with seven wives. / That may sound absurd and looney, / But that poor man was Mickey Rooney.”

By Lawrence LaRiviere White on 03/06/06 at 04:50 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Monday, March 06, 2006

Mickey Rooney Preservation Society

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