Mickey Rooney: Age at Death, Movies, Net Worth, Marriages & More

Born: September 23, 1920 ·
Died: April 6, 2014 ·
Age at death: 93 years ·
Film career: 1926–2014 (88 years) ·
Number of films: Over 300 ·
First teenager nominated for an Oscar: Yes

Key facts at a glance

Seven facts, one pattern: a performer who kept working through studio stardom, wartime service, and every personal reset.

The pattern: the table is a compressed version of the man — seven rows that barely contain 88 years of work.

How old was Mickey Rooney at death?

The short answer is 93. The longer answer involves a life that began in vaudeville and nearly touched every era of American show business that followed.

Date of birth and death

• Born: September 23, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York
• Died: April 6, 2014, in North Hollywood, California, at age 93 (Encyclopaedia Britannica, reference biography)

Rooney was born Joseph Yule Jr., the son of vaudeville performers, and he joined their act almost as soon as he could walk. When his parents separated in 1924, he moved to California with his mother; by 1926 he was appearing in silent shorts. The name Mickey came from the Mickey McGuire series that gave him his first real fame.

Cause of death

• Reported at the time as natural causes (ABC News, obituary coverage)
• No further medical detail was made public

For a man who had lived so publicly, the quiet end was fitting — by then, the story was the career, not the final illness.

The pattern: Rooney treated his age as a number on the payroll. The date of death matters less than the 88 years of credits that preceded it.

What movies did Mickey Rooney star in?

The honest answer is too many to list. The useful answer is a handful of landmarks.

Notable films: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, National Velvet, and the Andy Hardy series

• Andy Hardy series: 15 films, beginning with A Family Affair (1937)
• National Velvet (1944)
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
• MGM musicals with Judy Garland, including Babes in Arms (1939) (per ABC News obituary coverage)

The Andy Hardy films turned Rooney into the most bankable teenager in America. Contemporary rankings put him at No. 1 at the box office from 1939 through 1942 (CBC News, public broadcaster), and his musicals with Judy Garland made that run even louder. The streak ended when he entered the Army during World War II (CBC News, public broadcaster).

The Disney question and later landmarks

• Broadway debut: Sugar Babies, 1979
• Emmy: Bill, 1981, a victory noted in retrospective media commentary (GetReligion (media commentary site))
• Oscar nominations: The Bold and the Brave and The Black Stallion, per obituary coverage (Boston Herald (regional daily obituary))
• Postwar films: Baby Face Nelson (1957), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), The Black Stallion (1979)

The Disney question comes up constantly, but his studio identity was MGM, and his family-film legacy rests on the Andy Hardy series. Obituary counts that exclude the early Mickey McGuire shorts settle closer to 200 features (GetReligion, media commentary site); broader career retrospectives stretch toward 300 when television and stage work are added.

The trade-off: the volume made him omnipresent, but it also diluted the spotlight. The films that matter most are the ones where his energy had a structure to push against — an Andy Hardy script, a Garland duet, a character part in The Black Stallion.

What was Mickey Rooney’s reputation like?

Reputation is where the record splits. The public image was a whirlwind; the private one was more complicated.

The talent and energy

• Known for explosive comic timing and versatility across comedy, drama and musicals
• The Andy Hardy films made him the face of American adolescence for nearly a decade
• Added a special juvenile Oscar in 1939, an Emmy in 1981, and an honorary Oscar in 1983 (per Encyclopaedia Britannica)

At his peak, Rooney’s energy was the point. He could sing, dance, crack jokes and cry on cue — a one-man repertory company that MGM built release schedules around. That same energy made him a natural for the postwar character roles that extended his career into the 1970s and beyond.

The difficult side

• Had a reputation for being hard to manage on set, especially after his peak stardom
• Eight marriages kept his personal life in the headlines for decades

The standard account of Rooney’s personality is a study in contrasts: generous and loyal with friends, demanding and sometimes combative to work with. As the studio system that contained him weakened, the behavior that read as “drive” in a teenager read as “ego” in an adult. The marriages added another layer — each public break reinforced the image of a man who could not sit still.

The implication: you cannot separate the drive that made him a star from the friction that followed him. They were the same engine.

What did Ava Gardner say about Mickey Rooney?

The most quoted words about Rooney did not come from a critic. They came from one of his eight wives.

A brief marriage to Ava Gardner

• Married in 1942, at the peak of Rooney’s box-office run
• The marriage lasted about a year

Rooney and Gardner met as MGM was building both of their careers — Rooney as the studio’s biggest draw, Gardner as its newest glamour star. The marriage was brief, a footnote in both lives except for the quote that followed.

What she reportedly said about him

“He was the best lover I ever had.”

— Ava Gardner, reported remark

Gardner also reportedly described Rooney as the funniest man she knew — a compliment that fits the fast-talking, endlessly performing personality visible in every film he made.

Why this matters: the quote endures because it breaks the script. The man who seemed to be performing even in private life was, in Gardner’s memory, genuinely good company — and that contradiction is exactly what makes Rooney hard to reduce to a simple verdict.

Who was Mickey Rooney’s spouse?

The better question might be: how many? The answer is eight.

Eight marriages, one long last act

• Total: 8 marriages
• Notable wives: Ava Gardner (1942), Martha Vickers, Elaine Devry
• Final wife: Jan Chamberlin, married 1978, remained with him until his death in 2014

The eight marriages tracked the arc of his life. The earliest came during his peak fame, when Gardner was the most glamorous of his wives. Martha Vickers and Elaine Devry followed in the late 1940s and 1950s, when his career was in transition. Jan Chamberlin, his last wife, stayed with him for 36 years — a stability that contrasted sharply with the earlier marriages.

The pattern: every marriage read as an attempt to reset a life that kept accelerating. With eight of them, the resets became the story.

Key dates in Mickey Rooney’s life

Eleven dates, one arc: a child performer who became the biggest draw in movies, then spent five more decades finding new ways to work.

The timeline makes the second act visible: after the war, Rooney was never again the biggest star in the world, but he kept finding new stages — Broadway, television, character roles. The fall from the top was real; the career that followed the fall was the one that defined his character.

What’s confirmed, what’s not

Editor’s note: This profile draws on published obituaries and biographical references. Where sources disagree — as they do on the film count and the Disney question — we flag the discrepancy rather than pick a winner.

The takeaway: the facts of Rooney’s life are solid at the center and soft at the edges. The dates and the marriages are confirmed; the money and the myth are not.

The quotes that defined his legend

Two reported remarks from Ava Gardner have followed Rooney for decades. Together they capture the contradiction at the heart of his public image.

“He was the best lover I ever had.”

— Ava Gardner, reported remark

“He was the funniest man I ever knew.”

— Ava Gardner, reported remark

Once the world’s biggest star.

— Boston Herald, obituary headline, April 2014

Both Gardner remarks are reported speech — how she remembered him, not courtroom testimony. That is precisely their value: they show what the people closest to Rooney chose to remember.

What this means: the legend is still being written by the people who knew him, and everyone else is still reconciling a man who could be both the center of the room and the reason the room emptied.

The takeaway

Rooney’s story is not exactly a cautionary tale, because he kept winning in the end — he outlived the financial losses, the bad press and the studio collapse, and he died still married, still working and still famous. The films remain the most honest record of his talent: watch Andy Hardy, watch Babes in Arms, watch The Black Stallion, and the tabloid version falls away. For anyone studying Hollywood’s relationship with its own history, the choice is clear: treat the marriages and the money as headlines, but treat Mickey Rooney’s work as the evidence.

Frequently asked questions

The pattern: the questions people still ask about Rooney are the same ones that followed him for decades.

Related reading

• Rock Hudson: Cause of Death, Relationships, and Untold Story
• Farrah Fawcett: Life, Love, Illness & Last Words Explained