Frank Stasio’s Fondest Shows: The Infamous Mickey Rooney Interview

WUNC | By Frank Stasio

Published December 10, 2020 at 12:05 PM EST

Photo of Mickey Rooney from a 1957 television special tribute to George M. Cohan, Mr. Broadway. Rooney played Cohan in the television special.

Mickey Rooney’s Hollywood acting career began in the 1930s. He starred as an all-American teenager in the Andy Hardy series.

Host Frank Stasio looks back at this infamous interview with Mickey Rooney from 2006.

He was Judy Garland's partner in musicals from the 1940s, and a cautious old trainer in the 1979 classic “The Black Stallion.” He was married eight times, including a partnership with North Carolina’s own Ava Gardner. Host Frank Stasio spoke with him in 2006 as he prepared to stage a show about his life in North Carolina.

View the complete list of Frank’s fondest shows airing December 2020.

Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

See stories by Frank Stasio