Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney plays Shockey Carter, a small-town Indiana schoolboy whose quick temper and ragged clothes hide the real problem: a widowed, shell-shocked father (Frank Shields) who's lost the will to work. When the town's new schoolteacher takes an interest in the boy, local busybodies use it as an excuse to run the family out of town. A Monogram drama directed by William Nigh that gave the teenage Rooney one of his better pre-Hardy dramatic roles. The film is in the public domain.

Drama

Andy Hardy returns from army service to Carvel and falls for a sophisticated exchange student, chasing her all the way to South America in pursuit of romance. Mickey Rooney stars in the last of the long-running MGM Andy Hardy series. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Romance

Dan Brady is a garage mechanic who wants to impress a waitress, so he borrows twenty dollars from the till at work, intending to pay it back before anyone notices. He does not. One small bad choice leads to another, and within a day Dan has stolen a car, robbed a nightclub, and talked himself deeper with every lie. Mickey Rooney plays him as a normal guy who keeps making the wrong decision under pressure, and the film watches a petty theft snowball into serious crime with a kind of grim inevitability. Peter Lorre is the amusement-pier owner who pulls Dan further in. The film was shot on a low budget with Rooney and Lorre helping to finance it themselves. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir

A carnival boxer (John Darrow) falls for a nightclub girl (Merna Kennedy) who is mixed up with a gangster, and tries to fight his way out — literally, in a fixed fight he is paid to throw. Mickey Rooney, thirteen and billed as Mickey McGuire, turns up in a supporting role on the way to stardom, and J. Carrol Naish plays the heavy. A typical poverty-row crime melodrama of 1933, it is worth watching mainly for Rooney and for the seedy carnival atmosphere Albert Herman shoots on real midway locations. Released the same year as King Kong and Forty-Second Street, this is what the other half of Hollywood was making. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama · Romance

The cocky son of a champion racer killed at the Indianapolis 500 fights his way onto the track to redeem his father's name, alienating his loved ones along the way. Mickey Rooney stars in this independent racing drama, which features Hattie McDaniel's final screen appearance. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Sport