Twilight Zone - Mickey Rooney Wants to Be BIG

 I watched "Love Finds Andy Hardy" (1938) on December 5th as part of my annual Christmas movie schedule (the film only become part of the schedule after last year when I watched Christmas day), and Mickey was such a happy, light-on-his-feet, innocent kid in the portrayal of Andy. Andy loves his judge father, wants this car so badly, and has girl trouble. I am talking Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford, and Judy Garland. That's quite a nice pickle to be in, I guess. This is all whimsy and honestly sweet-natured pablum from MGM. It is comfort food that I admittedly embrace without much concern of it remaining on the mind very long after its conclusion. "Love Finds..." takes place during a few days of the holiday season as Christmas approaches. Garland is a teenager visiting from New York, portraying a singer and performer extraordinaire smitten with Andy, who doesn't see her as anything but a friend. Rutherford leaves for grandmother's for a Christmas vacation with family while Lana is a friend's girlfriend. The friend wants Mickey's Andy to look after Lana and keep other guys away from her...but Lana seems to be smitten with him as well. 

Now why am I writing about "Love Finds..." when this is supposed to be about "The Last Night of a Jockey", the fifth episode of the fifth season? While watching this episode I couldn't help but think back to a much younger Rooney, this young man still in high school, going through girl trouble, trying to figure out how to pay for his own ride, missing his mother who is away on a trip to Canada, and enjoying the company of Garland. The Rooney of this 1963 episode has him as this pathetic, aging, balding, raging, spitting, sweaty, furious, and blustery failure of a jockey having a big spat with his calm, piercing, cool and collected surfacing strength that most desperately call on for help when needing a lifeline. Rooney in a suit, hair combed neat, all together as he mocks and irritates Grady, so far on his downward spiral, all the papers say he's done as a jockey due to horse doping scandal, it is quite a parallel. Now this subconscious down deep inside each of us talks to Grady through reflections. Like in mirror glass, off a tea pot, wherever a reflection can be cast, Grady sees his reflection provoking quite a bit of anger from him due to basically calling him out for all his mistakes and pitfalls. Grady wants to be big, no longer a small man in a jockey's body without a horse to ride to success any longer. So the "inner monologue" subconscious reflecting back at him "grants him" what he wants. Grady awakens to find the room smaller, and he continues to grow bigger, taller. When he gets a call from the racing commission about being reinstated, Grady realizes his wish granted has put him in a very bad position. And this wish can't be reversed.

Seeing Mickey in 1938 and 1963, it is astounding the difference. Aging is the shits, really. This is like if Andy went down the wrong path and took the role of a jockey corrupted by bad characters who only use him for their own personal gain, whether some mobster or moll. It really felt that way, though I like to believe Andy made a good living for himself and married a nice girl. What if Andy fell on hard times and this Mickey Rooney is that dark route the judge would have been so disappointed in seeing. 

Once again, we spend time in this dirty-walled apartment box room the size of Andy Hardy's family home kitchen. Grady just wrecks the apartment when enraged at his conscience for laying it thick on him about granting him his wish while also not letting up on exactly who he is as a person. That's the thing about this episode's Mickey Rooney. Gone is sweetheart boy with a good heart who loves his family and wants to do the right thing. What this episode has instead is a character who has a history of criminal behavior, despite all the trophies and awards, seemingly taking short cuts and bribes in order live high on the hog. And with all that bad behavior, Rooney is on his knees in the middle of the floor with a dresser, table, among other furniture he's trashed and tossed across the room, as wrecked a human as the apartment. This is where the episode leaves him, too. So despite being quite an acting showcase, I felt the character remains exactly as he was when we met him...and that is a mess of human wreckage left to wallow in misery.

I couldn't help but think of the third episode of the second season, "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" with Jackie Rhoades, while watching "The Last Night of a Jockey". Jackie also sees a reflection of an inner personality wanting to have a chance to operate the mind and body in order to go a different direction in life. Now in the case of Grady, who he talks to, that voice in his head, offers him the chance to alter his current trajectory. While Jackie gives way to John in order for a different path to be traveled, Grady is left to just sink into oblivion. Really depressing. Serling just seemed to see no detour for Grady...his road to hell seemed unaltered despite a change in height and size.