What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s

6. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney: Babes and Beyond

120 ★★★★★★★★★★ ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ 6 Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney Babes and Beyond SEAN GRIFFIN Early in the musical Strike Up the Band (1940), Jimmy (Mickey Rooney) and Mary (Judy Garland) envision their futures as the leader and lead singer in a big band. Jimmy sees these aspirations to popular music as artistically honorable: “Look at George Gershwin. His music’s as good as Beethoven or Bach. And best of all, he’s American.” Audiences in the 1940s seemed to regard Rooney and Garland in the same way: popular and good and American. At the time Strike Up the Band was released, Rooney was enjoying the second of a three-year run as the top box-office star in the United States, and Garland would enter the top ten for the first time (second only to Bette Davis as the most popular female performer of Judy Garland portrait, c. 1942; Mickey Rooney portrait, c. 1942. Both photos collection of the author. 1940). Rooney and Garland at the zenith of their popularity—whether together or on their own—personified a youthful energy and promise that seemed to embody America and its future. For a country emerging out of a Depression and facing another World War, such an optimistic image resonated with moviegoers. Once the United States entered the war, their image of homespun can-do ability helped bolster confidence in American superiority and victory. By appearing largely in musicals and light comedies (albeit with a dash of sentimentality often included), Rooney and Garland also helped audiences escape from the harsher aspects of the real world. During the early 1940s, Rooney’s popularity was strongly tied to a series of films about the fictional Hardy family with Rooney as teenage son Andy, such as Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940), Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary (1941), Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941), The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942), Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1943), and Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble (1944). Garland’s career was overseen largely by MGM producer Arthur Freed (and his associate Roger Edens) in a series of polished musicals—Little Nellie Kelly (1940), For Me and My Gal (1942), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). During this period, both stars were regularly paired together, with Rooney joining Garland in a number of flashy backstage song-and-dance extravaganzas produced by Freed (Babes in Arms [1939], Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway [1942], Girl Crazy [1943]), and Garland appearing occasionally in the Hardy films as Andy’s friend Betsy Booth (Love Finds Andy Hardy [1938], Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Life Begins for Andy Hardy). In the second half of the decade, the careers of both performers went through major changes. In part, such changes involved their move through adolescence to adulthood. Rooney’s popularity diminished significantly in the late forties, as the press and audiences began to regard him as irresponsible and egotistical—claims were made that teenage stardom had “stunted” his emotional growth. Garland remained a major box-office draw, but with a growing public concern about her emotional and physical stability. Instead of optimistic youth, Rooney and Garland—each in their own way— were increasingly regarded as cautionary tales about growing up within the classical Hollywood studio system. Beyond the problems of transitioning to adulthood, the optimistic Americana that Rooney and Garland had symbolized during the first part of the 1940s no longer seemed to match popular attitudes. The prized innocence of their youth was increasingly anachronistic in the wake of such sobering events as the Holocaust and the onset of the atomic age. Cold War paranoia actually cautioned against American naivety. Although their postwar films JUDY GARLAND AND MICKEY ROONEY 121 do show connections to the first half of the decade, reviewers and columnists began sensing cracks in the façades. Perhaps in an unwitting parallel to the rise of the shadowy distrust of film noir, the postwar images of Garland and Rooney came to represent the dark shadows lurking behind the American Dream. ★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩★ ✩ Born in a Trunk Both Rooney and Garland entered “the business that is show” at extremely early ages. Rooney, born Joe Yule Jr., had parents who performed in burlesque, and he supposedly began his stage career by the time he was three. Judy Garland, born Frances Gumm, joined her two older siblings in their singing act also at the age of three. Both also headed west to California...