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Show 'HUCK FINN' KIND OF BOY MICKEY ROONEY HIMSELF WOULD LIKE TO HAVE BEEN The greatest thrill for an actor is to play a character who does all the things the actor himself has dreamed of doing. Which is Mickey's Mic-key's way of explaining exactly howj his character of "Huckleberry Finn" has brought something into his life. The Mark Twain story, "The Adventures Ad-ventures of HUCKLEBERRY FINN" plays at the Cameo Theatre Sunday and Monday.rApril 30 and May 1. "He could go barefooted and fish, didn't bother about school, and in general did as he pleased, which means he did the things all boys want to," says Mickey. "And that doesn't mean that he was spoiled, or shiftless, or vicious. He just was allowed his own self-expression. He expressed a great loyalty among other things in his attempt to smuggle smug-gle a runaway slave to freedom. He expressed a great love when he saved sav-ed the heiresses from the swindlers. With Huckleberry Finn' Mark Twain proved somewhat the same thing Father Flanagan proved in practice in his Boys Town; that there's really real-ly no such thing as a bad boy." Mickey's role as the Mark Twain hero is his first starring role in his own right since his Mickey McGuire comedy series. He has been a featured fea-tured player or co-star ever since. "Not that this business of being starred means anything," he says. "I've alwayssaid that I'm really a character actor. But right now I'm a character actor playing a real character. Every day I find new things about Huck Finn, his thoughts, his motives, and what kind of fellow he really was." The picture, filmed largely on location lo-cation on the Sacramento River, which was called on to do duty for the Mississippi, follows the original story, which Mark Twain wrote as a sequel to "Tom Sawyer," to the letter. let-ter. Richard Thorpe directed. The period just prior to the Civil War in Missouri and Ohio was reproduced from research. |