Perfect signature in black marker on a 3x5-inch white card, dating to the 1980s.  In very good condition and ideal for matting with a favorite photograph.  The juvenile and then adult leading actor was a firecracker of an entertainer, singing, dancing and mimicking with tremendous energy that made up for his trademark lack of height.  Rooney first gained fame as Mickey McGuire in over 50 two-reel comedies, based upon the "Toonerville Folks" comic strip, from 1927 through 1934.  He was thereafter an MGM contract player, wonderful in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Ah, Wilderness! (1935) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936).  His appearance as Andy Hardy, the wise-cracking son of a small-town judge, in the B-movie A Family Affair (1937) turned out to be a turning point in his career:  It was such a success that it led to a string of 15 more Andy Hardy pictures over the next twenty years.  Rooney went on to a memorable role in Boys Town (1938) and several high-energy musicals with Judy Garland which made him America's biggest box-office attraction by 1939.  That year, he was given a special Oscar, alongside Deanna Durbin, for his contributions to juvenile cinema.  As he matured into adulthood, he gave strong performances in The Human Comedy (1943) and National Velvet (1944), but, audiences had somehow lost interest, and, by the 1950s, he was practically penniless.  He has since then increasingly accepted character roles, most memoranly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and on a classic episode of T.V.'s "The Twilight Zone" entitled "The Last Night of a Jockey" (1963) in which he sort of plays himself, longing for the days when he was "big".

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