This is the transcript of the interview with Mickey Rooney by the host of her show, Sally Jessy Raphael:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY2wifHpK6I&t=3s

 

Transcript

[Applause]

Sally Jesse Raphael: “We are back with Mickey Rooney, All right

it's important since we started it, if

you would to tell us you were in a

coffee shop or something?”

Mickey Rooney: “ Yes up in Lake

Tahoe and I was very depressed, down. One

of the down periods of our lives you

know. If anybody says that you know you

don't everybody in the world

unfortunately goes through two things

depression and loneliness.

Everybody gets lonely no one escapes it.

Anyway I'm depressed and I'm there

having my breakfast in the morning

with one of my buddies and is

about nine people at the table and it is

so boisterous and and the noise is a

cacophony of everybody talking and it's

like 7:30 in the morning and, and

everybody's being served in somebody's...

and they're all talking at the table. No

one's talking to each other and nobody's

listening. And a certain young gentleman

came up over to the table, the table, he was a

busboy he had a white coat, his hair

Sally Jessy Raphael was absolutely

gossamer. It was gossamer. You've never

seen anything like this in your life. It

was like gold, was a hue and he leaned

over the table directly to me and I

thought all the other people saw him too

and he said are you Mickey Rooney and I

thought maybe I was being called for a

telephone call or something you know,

you're wanted on the phone.

 

And I said yes I am Mickey Rooney and he

leaned in and he said Jesus Christ loves

you very much and he knows what you're

going through

and now I, I'm in shock

and I turned to Joey Foreman is sitting

right to my right here and I said Joey,

Joey did you hear this?

He said hear what? I said what this

young fella just told me. He said what young

fella? Are you, what's that, you, huh? are you all

right? I said yeah, I said you saw him

Sid. Sid Gould was with,... said Sydney, I

didn't see him

I didn't see him. No one saw him. So after we

left the table I went up to the maitre'ess

who was sitting everybody down and

(audience laughter)

well that's another way of saying Maitre D'

but it was a lady so I said have you

got a busboy here with this golden hair

and so on so it's outside she said no

there's no such boy here you can look

around anywhere you want Mr. Rooney and

I said well I'd be very happy to. I went

into the kitchen, I went into where they

were washing dishes I went all over the

place and I went upstairs in my room

still not understanding and I said I

don't understand, I don't understand and

at that time right out on my balcony was

the same boy again

and I opened the French Venetian door he

said, “You looked for me that's all I

wanted”

[Applause]

Needless to say my life changed after

that traumatic...”

Sally: “ That's why in in your

mind you are able to do the seven

decades, the movies then, the movies now and

all those people have gone and you've

seen all this history of show business.”

Mickey: “I'm more than a survivors yeah yeah yeah

it's more than I survived. If anything

I'm a Reviver, a Reviver I-I-I I'm...

so people wondered see,

see “but how can you

have all this energy?”

how can you?”

Sally: “Well let me just say

something, this man was the ping-pong

champion of California for five years

[Applause] , end of video section on youtube.