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 as himself in the episode "The Top Banana" of the CBS sitcom, "Pete and Gladys", starring Harry Morgan and Cara Williams. In 1963, he entered CBS's "The Twilight Zone", giving a one-man performance in the episode "The Last Night of a Jockey" (1963). Also in 1963, in 'The Hunt' for "Suspense Theater", he played the sadistic sheriff hunting the young surfer played by James Caan. In 1964, he launched another half-hour sitcom, "Mickey". The story line had "Mickey" operating a resort hotel in southern California. His own son Tim Rooney appeared as his character's teenage son on this program, and