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 to the depths, Rooney kept on working and growing, the mark of a professional." Some of the films which reinvigorated his popularity, were "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962), "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963) and "The Black Stallion" (1979). In the early 1980s, he returned to Broadway in "Sugar Babies", and "found himself once more back on top". Basinger tries to encapsulate Rooney's career: One of the most enduring performers in show business history, Rooney appeared in over 300 films. He was one of the last surviving stars of the silent film era, having one of the longest