"MRS. SMITH" ON MICKEY ROONEY'S LETTERS TO HER : HE WAS OPEN AND HONEST : SHE MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE ONLY WOMAN IN HIS LIFE HE COULD TRUST LIKE THAT

Excerpt:  Mickey was very open in his letters to Smith, who read us some passages from his correspondence with her.  Not love letters per se, they were filled with recollections and sometimes anger, but always Mickey in his own, heretofore unpublished words:

March 1950: She (Martha Vickers) could hardly stand up when I came home.  After I'm at the studio all day, and the kid is there, I don't need to be a nanny.
 

June 1958: referring to Barbara Ann and specifically to her attempted suicide by an overdose of pills; "Thanks for your concern.  She is all right. I just don't want to get trapped again.  They use my house as if it's their house to party.

February 1966: "I appreciate both of your calls and help.  I appreciate 'Mr. Smith's kind of assistance...  This has been the biggest nightmare and it never seems to end... I'd like to meet sometime soon... Please call me... I miss being close to you - I can still smell your scent.

"I think I saw a side of Mickey that he revealed to no one else," Smith said. "He was very romantic, kind; he had a very nostalgic sense; and I was able to experiment sexually with him that I couldn't with my husband.  He was very athletic.  Very.  He was quite inventive..."

She continued; "Also, we lent him money over the years, and much of it was never repaid.  We just chalked it up to Mickey.  He did give Mr. Smith his start."

The years wore on, but Mickey continued to regard Mrs. Smith as his close confidant, revealing to her his disappointment that the life he had enjoyed when they first met in the 1940's was gone and that age had caught up with him.  They stopped seeing each other when he was in his nineties, even though they were still writing.  She told us that she attempted to contact Mickey just before his death.

"While we were in some communication, I was virtually locked out of his life after all the problems," she said.  "It was as if the family crying for him had put a wall up between Mickey and the outside world. I tried several times but was thwarted each time.  Just before his death, I attempted to send a car for him to bring him back to our house.  I believe it was his daughter-in-law that said that he was not interested.  I cannot believe that for one minute.  At no time had MIck ever told me about abuse or anything like that.  I learned about that on the news.  He always told me how content he was.:

In one letter to Smith, Mickey wrote, "As always, I miss you my dear.  As we get older, I begin to forget this or that. But don't think for a minute that I ever forget about us...."

Mrs, Smith heard about Mickey Rooney's death on the news.

"I was crestfallen.  My heart broke.  I remember all of our good times, our closeness, our being intimate for over sixty years.  I felt I lost a piece of myself with his death."

Notes: These excerpts are found in pages 480 and 481.  Rooney died in 2014 and for all his drama he was ninety-four years old.  He was buried in Hollywood Forever cemetery.

MICKEY ROONEY IN TROUBLE WITH THE MOB AND MARRIED TO A WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN MARRIED TO A MOBSTER

Of all the wives Mickey Rooney had, perhaps the one that Mrs. Smith thought to be the user was Elaine Mahnken, who had started modeling as a teenager and had first been married to a man who went to prison for armed robbery.  Divorced, and a young woman, she went home to live with her mother, a neighbor of Rooney. She grew up seeing him on the Andy Hardy series he starred in, and also admired him as a musician. (He played piano and drums.) But what was in it for her?

Excerpt:  "For thirty days, Mickey proposed to Elaine every night (reminiscent of his courtship of Ava.) For thirty days, Elaine politely told Mickey that she wasn't in love with him...."  (page 325)

It was 1952. He was thirty-two and she was twenty-three. She claimed he was already in financial upheaval. Her ex-husband was in similar trouble with the mob.

Excerpt: (Elaine speaking) "I handled the finances for two and a half years.  Finally, the government was paid, all our bills were paid.  And I took the envelope that contained all of our unpaid bills.  And I said, 'Look Mickey, no more debts.' And what was the thanks I got? Two weeks later Mickey went up to Vegas to play a nightclub date.  He went to the tables and lost fifty grand, just like that. We were back in the hole again.  When I heard that I threw up my hands and said, 'No more.  From now on he could take care of his own finances."  (Page 326)

 

Excerpt: .... " Mickey found out that Elaine was "meeting" her ex-husband.  She claimed he owed money to the mob in Vegas and needed cash to replay them, and he needed it right away because they were putting the heat on him.  She pleaded with Mickey to lend him the money, "as one human being to another," which he refused....  (page 326)

Elaine's ex also put pressure on Mickey for money. The man was murdered with two shots to the back of his head by men working for Mickey Cohen, the mobster.

Excerpt:  "The pseudonymous Mrs. Smith told us, "She (Elaine) didn't give a shit about Mick. She saw him as a sugar daddy who might be able to get her in the movies... Mickey tried to keep her happy... He bought her a vacation home in Lake Arrowhead, a new house in Studio City, and all kinds of toys, like a speedboat, clothes, servants.  She lived like a queen.  But Mickey gets bored easily," his longtime mistress admitted.  "They lived separate lives, and Micky was on to new girls, gambling and living ... well, living like Mickey.  She was living in Lake Arrowhead and partying... I'm also pretty sure she was f***ing her ex-husband who was a hood and e-con, and (she) was giving him money before he was killed.  Mickey was constantly whining to me about her.  He just dreaded another divorce.  (Pages 326-327)

Missy here!

As I read these passages, and the rest of the book, it seems to me that Mickey Rooney was a man who makes decisions on a whim, or as dictated by his sexual drive, and doesn't stop to think much.  He's always running from one situation to another.  Mrs. Smith is the stalwart one in his life who maintains her own marriage while being the consistency in his life.

So I ask you if today we would consider Mrs. Smith to be a "co-dependent" who, because he has her, helps him continue to maintain a chaotic way of living.  It seems to me that she accepted him as he was, giving him an unconditional kind of love that did not depend on him performing as a Hollywood star, as a husband, as a father to her children (if she had any), and so on.

 

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"MRS. SMITH" WAS HOLLYWOOD-CLOSE TO MICKEY ROONEY and KNEW HE'D BEEN ADDICTED : MISSY ASKS YOU

Mrs. Smith, who was in a relationship with Hollywood star Mickey Rooney, was clearly "in the know" when it came to Mickey and the actresses he worked with.  She says she got involved with him 1940ish.

She says that the studio got both Judy Garland (the star of Wizard of Oz) and Mickey Rooney hooked on drugs, sleeping pills (downers) and amphetamines (uppers) and that is how the studio controlled and managed their child stars.  Mickey and Ava Gardner, in their first marriages to each other, went out to clubs and drank heavily.  According to the authors Ava new he was screwing around but when she got word that he had gone off with a fifteen year old girl, she knew she was on the way out of that marriage.  It seems to me that Mickey Rooney may have been addicted to booze and sex and gambling. He was debt with the bookies and as a result there was always debt as well as his ability to earn more because, at least for some time, he was a top earning star.  The studio knew all this about him but they didn't stop casting him.  He was addicted to Ava, even after their divorce he wanted her back.

  

Missy asks you!  Are you an addict?  What of?  

When in your life did your addiction begin?

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HOW DID "MRS. SMITH KEEP A RELATIONSHIP WITH MICKEY FOR SIXTY-FIVE YEARS?

Mrs. Smith spoke to the authors of The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney.

..."I became sexually involved with Mickey between his divorce of B.J. and his marriage to Mart.  Mickey is a very caring and passionate lover.  While we never considered a relationship beyond clandestine meetings and coorespondence, it also was a friendship like no other.  We were able to tell each other our deepest secrets and confidences, which we have done for over sixty years.  We never had a scheduled time or meeting setup; it just happened...well, when it happened.  Whenever we could sneak away. While the sexual aspect eventually was not the focus, we remained almost soul mates.  I heard about the travails with his flavor of the years, and I was able to unload my problems. We both listened and commented.  It was actually better than being in psychoanalysis.  ...  We sometimes talked on the phone, and many times we corresponded  We never sent any letters to our homes; we were very careful... (page 478)

The two led their own lives but Mrs. Smith was in attendance at parties where Mickey, the life of the party, clearly went into another room to have sex with someone (other than her) or left with a woman.

Mrs. Smith also had strong opinions of his various wives.  She thought Martha was a drinker who humiliated him.  Elaine took money from him to help pay off her first husband's gambling debts but seem to be into him for the money.  Barbara, whom Mickey had children with, was murdered and Mrs. Smith reported this terribly traumatized  Mickey.  Soon after he married Barbara's best friend, Marge, who became mother to the four children he'd had with Barbara.  Carolyn, Mrs. Smith reported, was temporarily of interest to Mickey, at a time when he wanted to give up Hollywood and hide out.  Jan was possessive but willing to settle down with Mickey.

So we know that in some way Mrs. Smith and her husband were film-business or Hollywood connected, because there was some socialization with Mickey.  Also, they were close enough that the couple loaned money to Mickey that he never repaid....

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"MRS. SMITH " : THE MISTRESS WHO LASTED 65 YEARS THROUGH OLD HOLLYWOOD ACTOR MICKEY ROONEY'S EIGHT MARRIAGES

This won't be the first time here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO that I've elected a name-unknown woman to the pantheon of Mistress of the Month. I did so back in June of 2017 when I elected "Evey" the once-upon-a-time mistress of singer-songwriter James Taylor. We saw that relationship through the eyes of his then wife, singer-songwriter Carly Simon.  

This month we learn about "Mrs. Smith" who was in an unconventional relationship with Rooney for sixty five years. The book was published in 2015 and she was alive to be interviewed at the time.

The book "The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney" is the primary source for this month's posts.  It's considered to be a definitive biography by authors WIlliam J. Birnes and Richard Lertzman.

MRS. SMITH

Born in 1920, an actor, singer, and dancer with roots in vaudeville stage entertainment, Mickey Rooney started out as a baby and made his first film in 1926. Born Joe Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, New York, he became a famous Hollywood star young and was the top earning Hollywood star in the late 1930's. He's most known today for staring with Elizabeth Taylor in the equestrian film National Velvet in 1944.  A child actor who retained his youthful looks into his thirties, Rooney would go on to take roles in several other equestrian films but by age 40 the height of his career was in the past, yet he soldiered on. Rooney lived to be 93 years old and by then had worked in three hundred films. He was never a hands-on father but most of his children were proud to be his and loved him. In real life he lived to bet on the horses and was an investor in the Santa Anita horse-racing park.

The five-foot-two actor was an unlikely lothario because - I hate to say this - he was not physically the most handsome of men. Yet, he had attractive energy and charisma and according to Mrs. Smith he was an energetic and inventive lover. His chaotic life was fueled and fired by gambling - betting on the horse races, drinking, and womanizing, though he married eight time, fathered ten children, and had unknown numbers of other lovers. He himself said in his own memoir that he could have just about anyone. (He liked women who were taller than he was.) So it was entirely intriguing to me that he had a mistress, a married woman who socialized in some of the same Hollywood circles that he did. It's evidence that the mistress can play an entirely different role than a wife and that a mistress can be a mistress for a lifetime. There is no evidence that he Kept Mrs. Smith financially but she says he gave her husband his start in the business and that they lent him some money that was never paid back.

A married woman herself, Mrs.

Smith, the name used by the authors to hide her identity, comes at us in chapter 26 of the book, a chapter called Time May Lie Heavy Between.

"We were both at a party, a little tipsy and ... well, it happened."  So begins the story of a former actress  - her long-term spouse is still unaware of her unconventional sixty-five year love affair with Mickey Rooney, which lasted from the 1940's until his death.  She was also his confidant, pen pal, friend, and possibly the only person to whom Mickey unlocked his deepest secrets, desires, and fears."  (page 477) 

Mrs. Smith had taken a vow of silence - self imposed - and was finally ready to speak!

She may have been the only person on earth that he could trust to be his confidant and though they got together here and there, when possible. He wrote to her, so she clearly had some way to receive his letters and keep them without risking her marriage. She knew of his affairs and his marriages, the intense drama of his life, especially when one of his wives with whom he had four children was murdered, and his addictions of which there were a few, and perhaps there was no one who got to know the human being that Mickey was better.

Stick with us this month as we learn more!

Missy

You may also be interested in these posts that are in my archives:

June 2017

EVEY – Singer-Songwriter James Taylor’s Japanese New York Mistress and His Wife, Singer-Songwriter Carly Simon

August 2015

BOB HOPE

So Many Women So Little Time - Who Was The Long Married Comedian – Actor and Patriot’s Mistress? Sandy Vinger For One

September 2017

PAUL NOVAK – 27 Years as Mae West’s Much Younger Live-In Companion: Protective and Loving Till The Day She Died

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Notes: IMDb : Micky Rooney also provided some of the information for this post.

The beautiful actress Ava Gardner was his first of eight wives, and Mickey Rooney's other seven wives were not well known individuials.

FAITH'S COMPETITION? AVA GARDNER!

The following excerpts are from the book
HOWARD HUGHES THE UNTOLD STORY
by PETER HARRY BROWN and PAT H.BROESKE and are copyright 1996 by the authors.

Howard Hughes told Faith Domergue that she was the child he should have had but also that he wanted to marry her.  The huge emerald ring he gave her as an engagement ring was spotted on the Warner Brother's studio lot and by day's end Louella Parson's had printed it in her column. Hughes declined requests for interviews.  He also went through a lot of maneuvers to purchase her 7 year contract from Jack Warner who charged him $50,000.  Hughes himself also acquired her representation from Henry Willson, then at the Zeppo Marx agency.

"Suddenly my professional and emotional future were completely in his hands," Domergue recalled.  Sometimes I wasn't afraid.  I had complete confidence that my blue prince had arrived."

pages 151 - 152 -159

But then...

page 158

But then 21 year old Ava Gardner "blew into Howard's arms in January 1943."   She "kept his life in turmoil for more than a decade."  He told Ava he wanted to marry her and gave her four proposals, each with lavish gifts - diamonds, rubies, opals, Cartier, even a shoe box with $250,000 cash, and flew a plane to get her wish - orange ice cream.

page 160 - 163

"All that he had cruelly denied FAITH DOMERGUE, he showered on Gardner."  Weekends in Palm Springs Racket Club, formal dinners at Darryl Zanucks and Samuel Goldwyns (two Hollywood movie company heads), shopping in Mexico City and Manhattan.  He set Ava up in a lavish apartment just off Sunset where she lived with her sister. Then Howard put Ava under surveillance and discovered her ex husband Mickey Rooney was still sleeping with her.  When Ava confronted him and they had a fight that turned physically abusive, Howard disappeared on Faith and then he lied and claimed he'd been in a car accident.  He was addicted to psychodrama and danger.  Finally Faith overheard him making love with another woman and using the "Little Baby" endearment on this someone else!  She was 17 and had five more years on her contract with Hughes and no film rolls.

She caught sight of Howard driving Ava Gardner in a Cadillac.  Driving her red roadster, Faith gave chase.  When Hughes stopped the Cadillac, faith bumped into it with her car.

page 164

"Faith deliberately backed up her roadster and floored the gas pedal, crashing repeatedly into the passenger's door.  Gardner screamed.  Poor Ava bounced up and down in her seat."  The front of the roadster crumbled and steamed."  Howard took Faith by the hand and took her home where he made more promises, apologies, swore he'd give her father a business and make her a star.  Someone else drove Ava home."  By this time Faith noticed Howard's germ phobias and rituals and that he periodically went into a fog.

page 180

October 1944, still with Faith, he made a demonstration of burning some of his past away by tossing letters from his parents , especially his mother, into the roaring fireplace as well as the legal documents of his fight for his father's company.

page 209

In 1946 Faith finally got the courage to leave Howard and then married another playboy, Teddy Stauffer.  She later starred in Hughes produced film "Vendetta."  Ava married Artie Shaw.

page 210

Hughes continued to romance stars like Lana Turner, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Linda Darnell, and eventually Jean Peters, who eventually became Mrs. Howard Hughes Jr., his second wife.  Peters would stick by him for years even though he was rarely with her.