Mickey Rooney: The Depression Era star who said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show” and became the most famous teenager in America as the optimistic Andy Hardy, has died at age 93 in North Hollywood, Calif. From 1939 to 1942, he was the biggest box office draw in the movies.

  A man who could sing, dance, play comedy and drama, Mickey Rooney had one of the longest running careers in show business. He made his first appearance on a burlesque show stage when he was less than two and appeared in his last movie in 2012.

Rooney was one of the last of the actors who worked in the old studio system, signed to one production house and occasionally loaned or traded like a baseball player. He was cast as Puck in the 1935 film version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. He played a spoiled rich kid opposite Spencer Tracy in “Captains Courageous,” and again with Tracy as Father Flanagan, he was a juvenile delinquent in “Boys Town.” He made 15 of the Andy Hardy movies.

Rooney’s real name was Joseph Yule Jr. and he was born in a Brooklyn tenement. He lived a turbulent life, poor as a kid, rich as a teenager and broke at middle age. The 5-3 Rooney married the statuesque Ava Gardner when he was 21 and she was just 19. It lasted only a year and he went on to marry seven more times. The NY Times obituary said, “Suits for alimony, child support and back taxes pursued him like tin cans tied to the bumper of the car he was driving to his next wedding.”

He always managed to come back, both in his personal and professional lives. Rooney was nominated for four Academy Awards but never won. He was given an honorary Oscar in 1982. He once said, “I’ve been coming back like a rubber ball for years.”

World: A Russian soldier shot and killed a Ukrainian naval officer in Eastern Crimea, according to the Ukraine defense department. No other details were released.

Yesterday Pro-Russian demonstrators stormed government buildings in three Eastern Ukraine cities, hanging Russian flags on the buildings and demanding a vote on independence. The actions took place in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv, the major city centers close to the Russian border. Many of the demonstrators wore hoods and masks as they chanted “Russia, Russia.” President Vladimir Putin has vowed to “protect” Russian speakers in Ukraine, although they are not under attack.

>Blade runner Oscar Pistorius made a tearful apology in court today to the family of his dead girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He said, “There hasn’t been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven’t thought about your family. He said, “I was simply trying to protect Reeva.” He shot Steenkamp through the bathroom door and said he thought an intruder was in there.

To Thine Own Self: The White House might ban the taking of “selfies” with the president after it was learned that Red Sox slugger David Ortiz took a snap of himself and President Obama as a promotional gimmick for Samsung cellphones. White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on CBS Sunday that,  “Someone who uses the President’s likeness to promote a product… that’s a problem with the White House.” It’s not the first time a supposedly spontaneous selfie was taken for promotional purposes. The group shot of actors taken with Ellen DeGeneres’s phone at last month’s Oscars was also a Samsung put-up job.

Slapshot: The NY City police and fire department hockey teams had a bench-clearing brawl during yesterday’s annual fund-raising game. Evidently no one called the cops to stop the fight.

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