***SPOILERS*** In one of his best adult roles Mickey Rooney is car mechanic and race car driver Eddie "Shorty" Shannon who gets caught up in a bank robbery not for money but for love in him impressing gun moll Barbara Mathews, Dianne Foster. It was Barbara who made a play for Eddie in getting him involved, as a wheel man, in a bank robbery that her boyfriend greasy Steve Norris, Kevin McCarthy, and his pal Harold Baker, Jack Kelly, were planning to pull off.
Not at all interested in his take of $15,000.00 in the robbery but only wanting to impress Barbara Eddie against his better judgment went along with the plan only to end up getting stiffed by her in dropping him like a hot potato and planning to check out to France with her greasy boyfriend Norris. Eddie for his part heart broken as he was still carried a torch for the double-dealing Barbara and after he escaped being murdered by Baker in order to keep him from talking to the police went back, bloodies and battered after his escape, to the beach house where Norris & Barbara were and that's where the real action in the movie began.
***SPOILERS*** A tour de force by Mickey Rooney who's acting in the film was so both tragic as well as touching that it should have easily earned him an Academy Award. Mickey playing against type and a lonely and shy , with girls, young man compared in real life where he romanced the most beautiful women, Lana Turner Norma Sherer Ava Gardner & Marilyn Monroe, in Hollywood Mickey made you forget who he was in the role, as a love starved schnook, that he so convincingly played.
Not at all interested in his take of $15,000.00 in the robbery but only wanting to impress Barbara Eddie against his better judgment went along with the plan only to end up getting stiffed by her in dropping him like a hot potato and planning to check out to France with her greasy boyfriend Norris. Eddie for his part heart broken as he was still carried a torch for the double-dealing Barbara and after he escaped being murdered by Baker in order to keep him from talking to the police went back, bloodies and battered after his escape, to the beach house where Norris & Barbara were and that's where the real action in the movie began.
***SPOILERS*** A tour de force by Mickey Rooney who's acting in the film was so both tragic as well as touching that it should have easily earned him an Academy Award. Mickey playing against type and a lonely and shy , with girls, young man compared in real life where he romanced the most beautiful women, Lana Turner Norma Sherer Ava Gardner & Marilyn Monroe, in Hollywood Mickey made you forget who he was in the role, as a love starved schnook, that he so convincingly played.