Mickey Rooney’s ex-wife has alleged that the actor had sex with Elizabeth Taylor when the actress was just 14-years-old, and he was 26-years-old.
A friend of Betty Jane Baker, who was married to Mickey Rooney between 1944 and 1949, made the claim in a new book entitled, The Life And Times Of Mickey Rooney.
The book insists that Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney had an affair while the latter was married, which Betty Jane learnt of when she was pregnant and walked in on the pair engaged in a sex act.
Two years earlier, Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor originally met and starred together in National Velvet , a 1944 film that helped to turn the actress into a star. At the time of the film’s production, Elizabeth Taylor was only aged 12, while Mickey Rooney was 24.
According to the Daily Mail , The Life And Times Of Mickey Rooney has been written by Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Birnes, who interviewed Mickey Rooney about his sexual conquests before he died at the age of 93 on April 6, 2014.
But the biggest revelation came courtesy of the rumors regarding Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor. These were made by Pam McClenathan, who was a friend with Betty Jane Baker.
McClenathan explained, “She went to visit her husband at the studio one day. When Betty Jane reached his dressing room and opened the door, she found Elizabeth and Mickey together.”
Both Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor were contracted to work at MGM at the time, but they were filming different films.
McClenathan added, “After that, all hell broke loose. Betty Jane was pregnant with their second son. She got a top attorney and a big settlement, but she was not happy. She wanted a faithful husband.”
Despite the fact that Mickey Rooney was married eight times, this is the first occasion when the actor has been sexually linked to Elizabeth Taylor. The pair were lifelong pals, though.
Like Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor herself was married numerous times. In fact, Taylor was eight times, and on two of these occasions she decided to wed the actor Richard Burton. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London in 1932 and died in Los Angeles at the age of 79 on March 23, 2011.
Speaking about his ability to seduce in his own memoir, Life Is Too Short , Mickey Rooney insisted that his own sexual appeal was because he had a “combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud,” while he also insisted that he was able to charm women into having sex because of his sense of humor.
Mickey Rooney, who was married to Ava Gardner but also boasted about sleeping with Lana Turner and Judy Garland, wrote about his bedroom antics in his book.
In fact, writing about his appeal to Lana Turner, Rooney explained, “Her body said it all. When I asked her to go out with me she said yes and I soon found out she was so oversexed as I was — warm, passionate, and soft. You may wonder what she saw in me. I don’t know. I do know that on a dance floor I could make her breathless.”
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 6, 1927, Betty Jane Baker originally rose to prominence after winning Miss Alabama back in 1944, before she then went on to finish 4th later that year in the Miss America Pageant.
During her five-year marriage to Mickey Rooney, the couple had two children, Mickey Rooney Jr., who was born in 1945, and Tim Rooney, who was born in 1947 and died in 2006.
Following her divorce from Rooney, Betty Jane Phillips married two more times to composer Buddy Baker and Barney Kessel, both of which ended in divorce. She died at the age of 74 due to complication from a stroke.
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