‘The Boy from Barnardo’s’

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1939, Page 2

‘The Boy from Barnardo’s’

Mickey Rooney believes that, like Peer! Gynt, he’ll never grow up. He is starting a new career, he says, not as a boy actor but a boy character actor. As such he makes his bow as the-student petty officer in a nautical school, tCtmed with Freddie Bartholomew, in “The Boy From Barnardo’s,” drama o£ the training of boys for the British Merchant Marine.

Mickey* is a veteran. He has been oh the stage, or screen since he was 'a baby, first with his mother in vaudeville, then in his own act as a boy coinediari. Lately he has been exceptionally busy in pictures, with the Hardy Family series and boy character roles in other pictures scheduled for a busy season ahead. '

Mickey was born on the twenty-third of September, in Brooklyn, New York, where his parents, Nell Brown and Joe Yule, were engaged in vaudeville. Exactly eleven days later he took his first train ride, going to Albany With the vaudeville troupe. Ho ,can well be called a baby of the back-stage.

' When he was eleven months old he made his debut on the stage with his mother and' father in a burlesque routine; He wore a specially made tuxedo Which he still treasures as a souvenir .of his initial stage appearance. He was-given, a special work permit by Alfred E. Smith, then Governor of New York, because Of his tender age. • '

,It was from Will Morissey’s Revue in New York, where he was brought to the attention ; of a studio executive, that he came to play the role of the midget in “Not to be' Trusted.” He Was four years old at the time. He next worked hi: “Orchids and Ermine,” and again he portrayed a midget.

ThOji cabae an avalanche of screen roles which included “Fast Companions,” “Love ; Birds,” “Manhattan Melodrama,”; “Cjiained,” “Blind Date,” “Hide-Out,” the role Of Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Ah, Wilderness!” “Riff-Raff,” “Little, Lord Fauntleroy,” “The Devil Is a Sissy,” “Captains Courageous,” “A Family Affair,” "Live, Love and Learn.’ “Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry,” “You’re Only jYoung Once,” “Love Is a Headache” and “Judge Hardy’s Children.”