Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Mickey Rooney" in English language version.
Time put Rooney on the cover, noting that his movies had grossed a whopping $30 million for MGM the previous year and praising him for 'his most sober and restrained performance to date' as young Edison, 'who (like himself) began at the bottom of the American heap, (like himself) had to struggle, (like himself) won, but a boy whose main activity (unlike Mickey's) was investigating, inventing, thinking.'
Hollywood's No. 1 box office bait in 1939 was not Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, or Tyrone Power, but a rope-haired, kazoo-voiced kid with a comic-strip face, who until this week had never appeared in a picture without mugging or overacting it. His name (assumed) was Mickey Rooney, and to a large part of the more articulate U. S. cinema audience, his name was becoming a frequently used synonym for brat.
Time put Rooney on the cover, noting that his movies had grossed a whopping $30 million for MGM the previous year and praising him for 'his most sober and restrained performance to date' as young Edison, 'who (like himself) began at the bottom of the American heap, (like himself) had to struggle, (like himself) won, but a boy whose main activity (unlike Mickey's) was investigating, inventing, thinking.'