ACTING LEGEND MICKEY ROONEY STAGE & HOLLYWOOD SCREEN MEMORABILIA

Photographed here are a portion of the 250 lots presented in our Live Auctioneers auction.  Click the link to transfer to the auction site and view all 250 lots from the Estate of Mickey Rooney including early original black and white Hollywood photos, stage worn costumes, personal and autographed scripts, autographed stage and film posters, autographed photos, signed and unsigned Sugar Babies memorabilia as well as some of Rooney's art and personal effects.  

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014) was among the last surviving stars of the silent-film era. In a career spanning nearly nine decades and including more than 300 films, Rooney was the top male box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941, and one of the best-paid actors of that era. At the peak of his career between ages 15 and 25, he made 43 films, and was one of MGM's most consistently successful actors.  A versatile performer, he became a celebrated character actor later in his career.  Sir Laurence Olivier once said he considered Rooney "the best there has ever been".  Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said Rooney was "the closest thing to a genius" with whom he had ever worked.  Rooney won a Golden Globe Award in 1982 and an Emmy Award in the same year for the title role in a television movie Bill and in 1983, when he was given the Academy's highest honor, he said "When I was 19 years old, I was the number one star of the world for two years.  When I was forty, nobody wanted me, I couldn't get a job.  And then, a professor from the University of Tennessee got a show together with Terry Allen Kramer and Harry Rigby called Sugar Babies and it resurrected my career...but the one that's responsible outside of God is my wife, Jan, who kept saying to me for the last 7 years - I know you can do it Mick, get up off the canvas, you can do it.  I want to thank you, one and all, for remembering me - thank you for this glorious moment."