Don’t think I’m nuts, but I’ve now got Mickey Rooney and the popular Pharrell Williams song “Happy” stuck together in my head.
Rooney died April 6 at the age of 93. His is among the latest in a flurry of earthly departures by national and state celebrities, as well as friends/acquaintances, that I’ve been trying to process.
I knew the 5-foot-2 Rooney, born Joseph Yule Jr., had had some rough patches in his life. But reading his obituary, I was struck by just how roller coaster his “roller-coaster nine-decade career in show business, [which] included vaudeville, silent films, movies, television and Broadway,” as CNN put it, had been. He was a No. 1 box-office star for a time. “Yet he became as famous for many marriages - eight, all told - and his regular tumbles off the Hollywood pedestal as he was for his incredible energy and longevity,” according to the CNN story. “Still, he never stopped getting up.”
There you go. He never stopped getting up.
According to this obituary and other online stories, he wasn’t the best steward of his finances. He found it difficult for a time to find work, due to his height. He struggled with alcohol and drug abuse and went through the same thing many silver screen stars seem to do as they age - a few dignity-robbing movie roles - before his star began rising again. But there were Oscar and Tony nominations, an Emmy, a special juvenile Oscar and an honorary Oscar. And, three years ago, he spoke out memorably against elder abuse, testifying to Congress.
He wasn’t classically handsome. He wasn’t tall. He failed many times at marriage. He had money problems that included two bankruptcies.
He never stopped getting up.
As far as “Happy,” I think the reason the song is so popular is that there’s so much in the world to be unhappy about … and we all just needed a catchy excuse to throw off that cloak of heaviness for a few seconds and just let our inner child come out. The song, with its retro beat that’s too fast for any sophisticated or “cool” dance, and beautiful backup-singer harmony that distinguishes its refrain, does just that. As do the lyrics: “Here come bad news talking this and that/Well, give me all you got, and don’t hold it back/ Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just fine/No offense to you, don’t waste your time.”
The reason it and Rooney are so closely associated in the space between my ears is that the song seems like something a young Rooney - in perhaps one of his Andy Hardy movies - would have bopped to had that music style fit in at the time. I could see Andy including the song in one of his makeshift shows and singing it, probably off-key, with that perpetually happy look he always seemed to have on his boyish face.
And, although Rooney’s demeanor seemed to leave a lot to be desired during a 2009 interview with The Guardian’s Tanya Gold, who referred to him as “tricky and hostile” - I feel that “Happy” might have been a fitting soundtrack for his off screen, off-stage life: “Bring me down/Can’t nothing bring me down/my level’s too high … .”
I can’t help but think about how so many of us have wallowed in our circumstances, declared victimhood, walked around looking like Eeyore, the depressed stuffed donkey in Winnie the Pooh, and never tried to do a darn thing to climb out of our own goo. I also can’t help but think about those who chose to end their lives over a lot less than what Rooney went, and put himself, through.
The memorable quotation he gave Gold in 2009: “I keep going because if you stop, you stop. Why retire? Inspire.” Indeed. Why quit? And why not just cut ourselves a slice of “Happy” if it’s not being doled out to us like we think it should be?
Mickey wasn’t the perfect guy. “Happy” isn’t the perfectly written song. But we’d do well to take cues from both.
Get up. Keep going. And send a happy email: hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style, Pages 53 on 04/13/2014