The Mickey Rooney Show three stormy marriages by the early 1950s to actresses Ava Gardner, Martha Vickers, and Betty Jane Rase had marred his wholesome "Andy Hardy" image. (His fourth wife at the time, Elaine, was not an actress.) Although Rooney was thirty-four years old in 1954, his character Mickey Mulligan was only twenty-three. The series aired from August 28, 1954, to June 4, 1955 on Saturday evenings opposite the first half-hour of both CBS's "The Jackie Gleason Show" and ABC's "The Dotty Mack Show", a low-budget novelty program in which Dotty Mack lip-synced many of the works of other singers. Rooney's then-manager Maurice
Mickey Rooney many cameos. In the 1960s, Rooney returned to theatrical entertainment. He still accepted film roles in undistinguished films but occasionally would appear in better works, such as "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962) and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963). He portrayed a Japanese character, Mr. Yunioshi, in the 1961 film version of Truman Capote's novella "Breakfast at Tiffany's". His performance was criticized by some in subsequent years as a racist stereotype. Rooney later said that he would not have taken the role if he had known it would offend people. On December 31, 1961, Rooney appeared on television's