A recently posted Vanity Fair piece containing choice portions of an extended 1988 Ava Gardner interview given to biographer Peter Evans includes the following about Mickey Rooney, Gardner’s first husband: “I still didn’t know that he was the biggest wolf on the lot,” Gardner says. “He was catnip to the ladies. He knew it, too. The little sod was not above admiring himself in the mirror. All five foot two of him! He probably banged most of the starlets who appeared in his Andy Hardy films, Lana Turner among them. She called him Andy Hard-on. Can we say that…Andy Hard-on?”

“He wasn’t what I’d call a handsome may-an, and his shortness surprised me, but there was definitely something appealing about him. He had thick, red-blond wavy hair, crinkly Irish green eyes, and a grin that was…well, it definitely wasn’t innocent, honey, I can tell you that!”