Though his career had begun in childhood, with impish star turns in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), and found him as he matured into his teen years playing the apple-cheeked spirit of American can-do-ism in such films as Babes in Arms (1939) and Babes on Broadway (1941) - not to mention his ongoing role as quintessential boy-next-door Andy Hardy in MGM's long-running family film franchise - Mickey Rooney gravitated towards crime films as he aged beyond his ingénue years. In films such as Quicksand (1950), Baby Face Nelson (1957), and The Big Operator (1959), Rooney shucked his wholesome image to play complex and frequently unlikeable antiheroes, even the occasional villain. After the cancellation of his short-lived ABC sitcom Mickey (1964-1965), the 45 year-old actor signed on for the international coproduction 24 Hours to Kill (1965), playing a member of a commercial flight crew in league with gold smugglers who makes the unwise decision to double cross his partners in crime. Second-billed below 6'4" leading man Lex Barker, Rooney looks like a ventriloquist's dummy by comparison but makes the most of his screen time as a marked man scrambling around Beirut just ahead of an assassin's bullet. Produced by trash entrepreneur Harry Alan Towers, 24 Hours to Kill benefits immeasurably from the widescreen Technicolor photography of Ernest Steward, a former second unit director for David Lean.

By Richard Harland Smith