They play old Army buddies who team up to open their own gas station. Rooney is the overly self-confident brains behind the operation, and Bracken plays along with his schemes. Their new business turns out to be a success, but trouble looms when a big oil company opens a competing station directly across the street. The only solution, as far as Rooney can see, is to try to siphon gas from the other guys' pipelines, which, in a stroke of dumb luck, run right beneath our heroes' lot. That turns out to be a bad idea.
Rooney and Bracken were a fitting screen team, but they had more in common than their nerdy, unglamorous screen characters. Both actors began their careers at very young ages, and hit their strides early in life, although Rooney was by far the bigger star of the two. In light of that, it's surprising that Bracken wound up coming to Rooney's aid in the 1970s. At the time, Rooney was at a low-ebb, up to his neck in divorce settlements and virtually un-hirable as an actor. In his autobiography, Life Is Too Short, he says he knew he had hit the bottom when he supplied narration for a soft-core porn documentary called Hollywood Blue (1970).
Rooney was utterly broke, having less than $100 in his bank account, when Bracken unexpectedly came to visit him in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Bracken asked his old acquaintance if he would appear in a play with him called, if you can believe it, Three Goats and a Blanket. As Rooney wrote in his book, Bracken said, "We can't pay you what you're worth, Mick, but we'd love for you to do it. It's going to start in about ten days, and we'd like to go into rehearsal in the next two or three days." Rooney goes on to say that he wanted to kiss Bracken on the lips.
Not surprisingly, Rooney aced his role as a man who's shelling out the vast majority of his income on alimony payments. The play became a regular part of his career for the next decade, keeping him in decent money whenever he needed it. Bracken even returned once in a while to re-join Rooney for a few performances.
Later, Rooney's screen career would also pick up again. He would eventually garner appreciative reviews for his work in Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion (1979), and even received a well-deserved Emmy award for his role as a mentally challenged man in Bill (1981). Bracken, for his part, is probably best known to younger viewers as the owner of the Disney-like Wally World in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983).
Who says American lives don't have second acts?
Producer: Henry Berman
Director: Don Weis
Screenplay: Jerry Davis (based on the story by James Poe)
Cinematography: Ray June
Editor: Ben Lewis
Art Design: Cedric Gibbons and William Ferrari
Principal Cast: Mickey Rooney (Augustus "Geechy" Cheevers), Eddie Bracken (Frederick Winthrop Clopp), Elaine Stewart (Beverly Ambridge), Marilyn Erskine (Emily Clopp), Douglas Fowley (Mr. White), Robert Burton (Police Captain), Charles Halton (Willard Maibrunn), Henry Slate (Motor Cop), Rudy Lee (Tommy Clopp), Mimi Gibson (Mary Ellen Clopp).
B&W-71m.
by Paul Tatara
