Tears and Terror: The Disturbing Final Years of Mickey Rooney
Life is such a complicated thing,
who knows what our final years may bring?
Look no further than
Mickey and Judy's complicated story
to illustrate this allegory,
Why was there ultimately so much tragedy
for this pair who loved to give the world comedy?
Though a cat may have nine lives,
unlike Mickey, usually?, not that many wives.
And Judy, that complicated dame,
also often found her life a losing game.
Is the lesson that it's best to remain anonymous
when happiness and fame are so far from synonymous?
And choose a life that's quiet
with plain clothes and simple diet,
as well as put up with a mate who may be sometimes boring,
a bit overweight or even snoring,
and too often you ignoring?
After all, perhaps it's better, as Emily Dickinson knew,
just to be a Nobody, like me and you?
HZL
10/22/15
Mickey Rooney: 9 Wives - Much-married celebs - Pictures ...
www.cbsnews.com/pictures/much-married-celebs/
Actor Mickey Rooney and his wife, Jan, arrive at the 81st Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on Feb. 22, 2009. Although Jan is the ...
CBS News
I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!
In the news
Judy Garland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American singer, actress and vaudevillian. She was renowned for her vocals ...
Wikipedia
Judy Garland - IMDb
www.imdb.com/name/nm0000023/
Judy Garland, Actress: The Wizard of Oz. One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character ...
Internet Movie Database
He was one of Hollywood's greatest actors, someone whose estate could have been worth hundreds of millions when he died in summer 2014. Instead, he endured beatings, humiliation and poverty at the hands of his eighth wife and one of her sons, both accused today of elder abuse and destroying a legend.
This story first appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Mickey Rooney shrieks in pain. Is he OK? "No, I'm not," he says, choking back tears. It's July 2010, inside The Grill on the Alley in Thousand Oaks, and in the midst of an interview with one of the authors of this piece, the diminutive 89-year-old has been kicked under the table by his eighth wife, Jan, as confirmed by his stepson,Chris Aber, who also is at the table. "She kicked him real hard," says Chris with a laugh. Rooney's offense? Rambling in his answers.
This meeting took place because the interviewer (who, as a then-freelance writer, was gathering material for a book) agreed to requirements set forth by Jan and Chris and conveyed to him over the phone by Kevin Pawley, Rooney's Kentucky-based manager: Bring a check for $200 and slip it to Chris when Rooney wasn't paying attention (ostensibly because financial transactions make him uncomfortable) and treat the three of them to lunch at the restaurant (Jan later ordered dinners to go for each of them).
A flip cam at the end of the table rolls as Jan, theatrically seeking the source of what caused her husband's pain, peers under the table for a moment and then turns to Chris and scolds him for confirming, in part, what the general public only would learn later: In his final years, Rooney was the victim of ongoing elder abuse.
The alleged wrongdoing and how it went on for so long has been a mystery — until now. Five years after that interview, and more than a year after the star's death, an investigation by The Hollywood Reporter (uncovering legal documents, witness testimony and financial records that never before have been publicized) indicates Rooney's life was more abusive than he let on while he was alive. What's more, the trouble persisted until he died in April 2014 in a Studio City rental, with only $18,000 to his name. (Rooney's body rests at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where many legendary movie stars are buried.)
Just weeks after Chris was served with a restraining order on Valentine's Day in 2011 accusing him of financially exploiting Rooney as his business manager, the actor flew to Washington, D.C. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate Special Aging Committee, had read press reports that a conservator for Rooney was pursuing elder-abuse charges, and he invited Rooney to testify about what he'd been through. As a transcript of that hearing reveals, Rooney, without naming names, tearfully explained that he'd himself been a victim of the increasingly common crime, stripped "of the ability to make even the most basic decisions about my life," leading to an "unbearable" and "helpless" daily existence. In a process that began after Rooney confided in a Disney executive during filming of 2011's The Muppets, Rooney's attorneys filed court papers in their petition for a conservator (to protect him and recover his assets) that revealed the extent of the control — he wasn't even allowed to buy food or carry identification.
Rooney had a black eye, a missing tooth and other injuries as the result of an incident in January 2012 in which he later told acquaintances that he had fallen onto a big-screen TV.
For her part, Jan, 76, who now lives with Chris at his house (and receives $100,000 a year from Rooney's SAG pension and Social Security benefits), insists that she has been falsely accused and characterizes her late husband's Senate testimony as coerced and unreliable. "Mickey was a 90-year-old man who was in and out of it mentally and was easily influenced by other people," she explains.
Only now will the public learn that the alleged debasement was not just financial but physical, too. Numerous family members and others close to Rooney say the small-statured actor frequently was abused by Jan, his wife of 36 years, who weighed twice what he did. THR also has learned that she was struggling with mental health issues during this time. These close acquaintances also say Rooney — who himself was arrested in 1997 by the Ventura County Sheriff's Department on suspicion of hitting Jan during a fight (the case was dropped) — was bloodied and bruised in multiple altercations, in his final years emerging as a feeble man lying to his doctor about why he was being treated for this black eye or that missing tooth. While Rooney always denied spousal abuse, multiple sources tell THR that, when confronted, Jan herself acknowledged assaults. In a long interview with THR via email, Jan is adamant that "I never physically abused Mickey, but we had some minor pushing scuffles, tempers flared when we were angry. Sometimes it was his fault, sometimes mine. We always made up." (As a condition of answering questions, she insisted that THR publish a transcript. It can be viewed here.)
One of the insiders is Hector Garcia, who was brought in by the conservator to oversee Rooney's safety, including during periodic visitations with his wife after he moved out of their home. Days after Garcia began this job, he heard yelling and a thump coming from a second-floor bedroom and rushed inside. There, he found Rooney on the ground with Jan standing over him. "I told her, 'You cannot be hitting Mickey; I won't allow it,' " recalls Garcia. "She responded by telling me: 'Get used to it. I hit him because that's the only way he learns — by hitting him like a kid.' " (He told her if she did it again, he'd place her under citizen's arrest.) Jan allows, "That might have been one of the very few times when we slapped each other on the arm during an argument. But we never meant to hurt each other."
The abuse claim is complicated by Jan's abiding closeness with son Chris — who, accused by Rooney's conservator, attorney Michael Augustine, of stealing $8.5 million, agreed in 2013 to a $2.8 million civil settlement. Garcia describes an incident in which he was bringing Rooney for a visitation with Jan when the actor saw Chris getting into his car and got so upset at the sight of his stepson that he "dropped down to the floorboard of the vehicle and literally started crying, shaking, scared. In fact, he soiled himself, and I had to go clean him." (Responds Chris: "That's ridiculous. Mickey had a problem soiling his pants all the time.")
Chris, 56, who has yet to pay a cent, maintains his innocence: "[Rooney's lawyers] had to save face, so my attorney told me to make up a number, so I made up a number."
Responds Augustine, "He was always in Hawaii, the wife was with the big diamonds — they were spending it fast and furiously."
How much Jan knew of Chris' alleged financial wrongdoing remains unclear, as is the contentious role played by her younger son Mark, 53, a former punk rocker with a drug-riddled past who (along with his wife, Charlene) became Rooney's stay-at-home caregiver and extracted the star from the grip of Chris and Jan. Meanwhile, multiple legal entanglements still are keeping L.A.'s Superior Court busy 18 months after Rooney's death, including a dispute over the rights to his estate — which could rise in value if key possessions, such as his juvenile Oscar from 1939, are sold — that's being pursued by seven of his biological children.
What is clear: One of the biggest stars of all time, who remained aloft longer than anyone in Hollywood history, was in the end brought down by those closest to him. He died humiliated and betrayed, nearly broke and often broken.
Rooney testified to the Senate in March 2011 about the frightening elder-care abuse he had suffered but didn’t name names or mention physical abuse.
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