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In honor of Mickey Rooney's 96th birthday, which happens to be today, this week on «Film Friday» I bring you what remains one of his most famous pictures. This is also the film that made him the first teenager to be nominated for an Academy Award.   Directed by Busby Berkley, Babes in Arms (1939) begins in 1921 with the birth of Mickey Moran (Mickey Rooney), the son of popular vaudeville entertainers Joe and Florrie Moran (Charles Winninger and Grace Hayes). Years later, when vaudeville is eclipsed by the movie industry, Joe and Florrie, along with their former colleagues, decide to resurrect their careers by financing a travelling show of their own. Their children want to be a part of it, but their parents refuse to let them go. Undaunted, Mickey resolves to write a show to be presented by himself and the kids, which include his sister Molly (Betty Jaynes), his sweetheart Patsy Barton (Judy Garland) and their friend Don Brice (Douglas MacPhail), in his hometown of Seaport, Long...

In 1940, up-and-coming Broadway star Gene Kelly was offered the lead role in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's new musical Pal Joey , based on the eponymous novel by John O'Hara about an ambitious and manipulative small-time nightclub performer. Opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Christmas Day of that year, the show brought Gene his best reviews up to that date. For instance, John Martin of The New York Times wrote of him: «A tap-dancer who can characterize his routines and turn them into an integral element of an imaginative theatrical whole would seem to be pretty close, indeed, to unique .»   One of Gene's performances in Pal Joey was attended by established Hollywood star Judy Garland , who requested to meet him after the show. Gene agreed and then accompanied Judy and her entourage, which included her mother Ethel and several press agents, to dinner at the newly-opened Copacabana nightclub, at 10 East 60th Street. They sang and danced until 3 a.m., after whi...