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 Jr. Mickey Rooney Jr. Mickey Rooney Jr. (born Joseph Yule III; July 3, 1945) is an American former actor, and the eldest son of the actor Mickey Rooney. He operates the Rooney Entertainment Group, a movie and TV production company. He is a born-again Christian, and he has an evangelical ministry in Hemet, California. He was born Joseph Yule III in Birmingham, Alabama to actor Mickey Rooney (1920-2014) and former Miss Birmingham and singer Betty Jane Rase (1927-2002). After appearing as a "Mouseketeer" in "the Mickey Mouse Club" in 1955 along with his brother Tim, he played his first film role