Mickey Rooney

In nearly thirty years of interviewing celebrities and big names, I didn’t often get very Starstruck, but this day I did.

It’s hard to overstate how big a star Mickey Rooney was. For decades, he was one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of Hollywood. If you’ve ever watched one of his movies on one of the classic movie networks, you know his Andy Hardy series, and all those hey kids, let’s put on a show movies with Judy Garland.

To the general public, Mickey was known primarily for two things: his height, he was only five foot three, and his marriages, of which there were many.

So when he published his Memoirs in 1994, I jumped at the chance to interview him.

But as you’re about to hear, Mickey wanted to talk about not just the book he was there to promote, but all his other books. I think he was a frustrated author at heart.

Anyway, here now, from 1994, the great Mickey Rooney.

Had he lived, Mickey Rooney would ha veeb 100 today. He died in 2014, at the age of 93.

Noel Neill

One of the most popular, and most iconic series from the early days of television was “The Adventures of Superman,” which ran from 1952 to 1958.

George Reeves was Superman / Clark Kent. Jack Larson played young photographer Jimmy Olson, and Noel Neill was reporter Lois Lane.

But, like so many TV stars, Neill saw her career take a new and unexpected path, and not necessarily the path she had planned.

I met her in 2003. She was still very popular on the campus and classic-TV circuit, and she was then promoting an authorized biography called “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

So here now, from 2003, Noel Neill.

Noel Neill died in 2016. She was 95.