Customer Reviews

The Mickey Rooney Show "Hey Mulligan"

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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This is such a cute show. I'm so happy to own all the episodes on DVD now. Thanks Timeless Media. This company rocks too by the way.

Mickey Rooney is hilarious in these great shows as he is in everything.
If you love Mickey Rooney and great 50's comedy, you will love this little show.

Sadly, it was short lived. It should have lasted longer. Mickey Rooney is charming and as lovable as Andy Hardy.

Please buy this set. The cost is great and it's WELL WORTH the money!

The 39 black and white half-hour episodes of "The Mickey Rooney Show" were originally broadcast from 1954-55 on NBC. The series was subtitled "Hey Mulligan", a reference to Rooney's character Mickey Mulligan.

This was Rooney's first and probably least known TV series and amazingly the perpetual child star (who was in his mid-30's) is still playing a teenager. Young Mulligan is a page working for a fictional television network and has acting aspirations; generally a reprise of his eager and fast-talking Andy Hardy character.

In 1954-55 much of America had yet to purchase their first television set and even relatively experienced viewers knew little about the inner working of the networks. So the segments of Mulligan at his day job would have had a certain novelty. Segments in which Mulligan attended acting classes in the evening (with Alan Mowbray as his teacher) and segments at home with his parents (played by Claire Carleton and Regis Toomey) supplemented the network page scenes.

The writing (Blake Edwards was chief writer) is not bad by early television standards but the show itself is more interesting as a curiosity than for the entertainment value of its content. Amazingly, it has been released on DVD.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Mickey Rooney fans will love his TV series. Very funny!!This 1954/55 series gives you 3 discs with 10 episodes on each disc plus a bonus extra on each disc. one extra being a Mickey Rooney interview. I never seen his TV series before and decided to buy it just because I really like his movies. I loved it! My husband and kids really like it too, they really never knew Mickey Rooney until now. This was fun to watch with the family We laugh so hard we cried, He is really such a great talent the younger generation can enjoy him too. This is a very good buy for the young and old.

The show is as hilarious as I remember it. It's just a shame that they couldn't have included the missing episodes. Maybe they'll pop up some day.

"Hey Mulligan" may not match up with the best shows of the 50's like "The Honeymooners" and "Gunsmoke", but it does have one terrific thing going for it and that's Mickey Rooney. Mickey's got all of his usual energy, enthusiasm, and wonderful comedy instincts on display here. Sure, he's a little too old for the character, Mulligan is supposed to be in his early 20's and Mickey looks like he's 35 or so, but a good actor can make you forget about that, and that's exactly what Mickey does. It's got lots of 50's humor, and that's not everybody's cup of tea, but if you like Mickey Rooney and/or 50's TV then you will enjoy it. The picture quality is nothing to rave about, it's just OK.

As for the special features, on the first disc there is a highly enjoyable interview with Mickey that runs 27 minutes. On the 2nd disc there are two skits with Mickey and Red Skelton from Red's show, the first one is B&W and runs 17 minutes and the second one is in color and runs 10 minutes. The third disc has 11 Mickey Rooney movie trailers. All in all a very enjoyable DVD set.

Mickey Rooney made a lot of TV appearances as a guest on other people's shows -- and won acclaim in the Rod Serling-scripted drama The Comedian, but he never was able to sustain a long running regular series.

The one with the most potential for longevity was The Mickey Rooney Show - Hey Mulligan! (having two titles made things confusing right there). It ran one season in 1954-55 on NBC against The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS.

Each show began with someone shouting "Hey Mulligan!," a title format adopted over a decade later on That Girl. I don't know if those "Hey Culligan Man!" commercials had any connection or not. Anyway, Rooney played a twentysomething Andy Hardy living with his parents (played by Regis Toomey and , courting a longtime girlfriend (Carla Balenda) and somehow keeping a job as a network page for a fictional TV network.

The network page idea is a great one for a sitcom, not fully realized again until 30 Rock, though Rooney plays it strictly for broad slapstick. Blake Edwards wrote many of the episodes, foreshadowing the legendary success he had with another bumbling character, Inspector Clouseau.

Guest cast members included Angie Dickinson, Guy Williams (Zorro, Lost in Space); Alan Reed (The Flintstones); Pat Carroll (The Little Mermaid, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella); and Robert Shayne (The Adventures of Superman).

One of the strongest assets of The Mickey Rooney Show was the underrated Joey Forman as his "Ethel Mertz." Forman became a favorite featured player in sitcoms and movies of the '60s (Harry Hoo of Get Smart among others) and was a very talented comic actor. This series doesn't maximize his talents as much as it could, but he and Rooney have a good chemistry and it would have been nice to see how the series progressed had it lasted.

Why didn't it last? The competition, first of all, but perhaps more than that, it was an incident in which Rooney was rude to the sponsor at a social gathering. He described it very honestly in his autobiography, Life is Too Short. He felt as if he was being pressed into service as a performer for their social amusement and chose a very off putting way to strike out at the president of the company.

Interesting series, available complete in one DVD set that also includes an interview with Rooney about his career that touches briefly on the show and trailers from his theatrical films.