Oh really? So how many acts were there in the long, complicated and amazing life of Mickey Rooney? Let’s list a few: Child star, teen star, Army draftee, struggling male lead, Broadway revival star and award-winning older character actor on screens both large and small. And then there was the personal side of the drama, with eight marriages and any number of financial setbacks along the way. That’s the kind of life that, when you pass away at age 93, earns you this kind of language in a lengthy New York Times obituary:

Although his career was one of the longest in show business history — about 90 years separated his first movie from his last — it was crammed with detours and dead ends. (“There have been crevices, fissures, pits, and I’ve fallen into a lot of them,” he told The Times in 1979.)

His elfin face and short, stocky body were part of the problem: At 28, with adolescent roles no longer an option and adult roles hard to come by, he said he would give 10 years of his life to be six inches taller. Yet most of his wounds were self-inflicted. …