The Mickey Rooney Show
| The Mickey Rooney Show | |
|---|---|
Rooney in the show's premiere episode, 1954.
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| Also known as | ''Hey, Mulligan'' |
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Created by |
Blake Edwards Richard Quine |
| Written by | Benedict Freedman John Fenton Murray |
| Directed by | Leslie H. Martinson |
| Starring |
Mickey Rooney Regis Toomey Joey Forman John Hubbard Claire Carleton Carla Balenda Alan Mowbray |
| Composer(s) | Van Alexander |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 33 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Mickey Rooney Maurice Duke |
| Producer(s) | Joseph Santley |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 26 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | August 28, 1954 – June 4, 1955 |
The Mickey Rooney Show (also known as Hey, Mulligan) is an American sitcom that aired from 1954 to 1955 on NBC. The series stars Mickey Rooney (in his first television role) who was particularly remembered for his starring role in numerous Andy Hardy films made between 1937 and 1958, which overlapped with Hey Mulligan.
Rooney stars as Mickey Mulligan, an Irish American television studio page at the fictional International Broadcasting Company in Hollywood. Mulligan aspires through his night studies to become a recognized performer.
Regis Toomey played Mickey's father, Joe Mulligan, a veteran Los Angeles police officer. Claire Carleton was cast as his mother, Nell Mulligan, who in the story line is a former burlesque performer who met her husband when he arrested her. Mulligan lives at home and earns $47.62 per week as a page. Carleton, however, was only seven years older than Rooney. Carla Balenda, formerly acting under her real name Sally Bliss, played Pat Harding, Mickey's girlfriend, a studio secretary who encourages his acting aspirations. Comedian Joey Forman played Mickey's friend, Freddy Devlin, a fellow page. John Hubbard played the boss, Mr. Charles Brown. English actor Alan Mowbray played Mr. Swift, Mickey's drama coach.
The Mickey Rooney Show was created by Blake Edwards and Richard Quine, also a former child actor and a long-time Rooney friend. The pair had previously co-written and directed Rooney's three feature films for Columbia Pictures, Sound Off, All Ashore and Drive a Crooked Road. The title first proposed for the series, For the Love of Mike, was dropped because it had already been registered. Rooney's career had begun to decline when he left full-time employment at MGM in 1948. The situation comedy emerged at a needed time in his career. Some people, including Rooney himself, speculated that his 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.
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