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 based on Red Buttons, in the live 90-minute television drama "The Comedian", in the "Playhouse 90" series on the evening of Valentine's Day in 1957, and as himself in a revue called "The Musical Revue of 1959" based on the 1929 film "The Hollywood Revue of 1929", which was edited into a film in 1960. In 1958, Rooney joined Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in hosting an episode of NBC's short-lived "Club Oasis" comedy and variety show. In 1960, Rooney directed and starred in "The Private Lives of Adam and Eve", an ambitious comedy known for its multiple flashbacks and