Most of Mickey Rooney’s career was one version of an “aww shucks” kid or another, but for car nerds, two of Rooney’s movies stand out in a big, big way as some of the most notable automotive movies ever produced.
The first, of course, is It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which Mickey Rooney starred with every comic star in the known universe. It’s a three-hour car chase, and if you haven’t seen it, you must stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and go watch it, and never tell anyone that you’ve missed it up until now.
Rooney plays “Ding” Bell, and his partner for an erstwhile trip to Las Vegas is Benjy Benjamin, played by Buddy Hackett. Their trip starts out in a 1954 Volkswagen Convertible, and ends up at the controls of an inebriated Jim Backus’s twin-engined aircraft.
It’s one of the greatest sequences in comic film, chock full of lines I use on a near-daily basis, much to my wife’s chagrin. “Now stop kidding around and make us some drinks! Just press the button back there marked ‘BOOZE.'”
The Mick was also in the 1949 film The Big Wheel.
It's pretty much standard Mickey Rooney cornball fare, with one exception. It's rather revolutionary in the way that it captured racing scenes at the Indianapolis 500.
The second half of the movie features dozens of 1940s-era race cars from Offy, Maserati, and Fageol.
It’s well worth seeing for the racing footage. It’s on Amazon Instant Video, and you can also watch the full movie on YouTube.
Even in some of his other movies there were some neat old cars and such.
Your say CRAP but in his day he made great movies with lessons for kids in every film, especially his father and son movies were great, Anyone who says his movies are Crap, are arrogant A holes, He was a great kid actor and Ill stand up for him every time, So There you arrogant Critics kiss it!
When I saw that crap word I couldn’t understand it either. Talk about a very poor choice of a word for a head line. In his time that was entertainment and very popular. Don’t think the term cornball is a polite way to speak of the dead, after all he was very popular in his time. It was a different world. Wow, what a shame.