Mickey Rooney remained with the
project until shortly before shooting began in April 1938, when he was suddenly
pulled by MGM. Ignoring Paramount's casting department, Ruggles told his
assistant director, Arthur Jacobson, "Find me another Mickey Rooney and
we'll start the picture." It so happened that Jacobsen was scheduled to
attend a benefit for the Motion Picture Relief Fund at the Biltmore Hotel,
emceed by Bob Hope; in addition to movie stars, a few vaudeville acts were
recruited to fill out the bill, amng them the O'Connor Family, with its
sparkling twelve-year-old wunderkind, Donald.
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Jacobson made an appointment with
O'Connor. "I asked him if he could act. He said, 'If it's entertainment, I
can do anything. I can sing, I can dance, I can act." Asked if he could
ride a racehorse, Donald replied, "No, but I'll learn," and did.? Jacobson asked him to listen to prerecordings
by Bing and Fred and harmonize with them. Within days Donald knew the script
cold. On Monday morning Jaco brought him to see Ruggles, who immediately advised
Paramount to sign him. O'Connor had been on the stage since he was three days
old. He had played every kind of theater and circus. When he Bing, he felt as
though he already knew him:
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"I would see him on the
screen in between shows and, like everybody else, I always thought he was a
friend of mine. So when I met Bing, he was extremely nice. Had a wonderful
smile. And he never said too much to me on the movie. He was very, very patient
with me. I was a very small child at twelve and I was riding this big goddamned
race-horse and I was scared to death of this horse. There was one scene down at
the track, an exposition scene, where I tell him I've been bribed, I've got the
money and I feel awful, I'm letting the family down. It's a long scene and Bing
is in front leading me on the horse and he's pumping me and at the same time
reassuring me not to be worried. We get right down to the end and I blow my
lines. So we turn the horse around, all the way back, and it was a cold day at
Santa Anita, and we have to start again with all the crying and everything. I
blow the line again. We must have done that forty times. And Bing never
complained, not once. I told him, "I'm so sorry, my mind just can't get
this." He said, "Don't worry about it, kid, you'll get it, we have no
place to go." We had a lot of fun on that movie. He treated me like a
pal."
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Gary Giddins, "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams -
The Early Years 1903 - 1940" (2002)
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