Mickey Rooney in the movie, Young Tom Edison (from 1940)
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER has just completed the first of two most important pictures. Together they encompass the life story of a man whose influence on modern civilization cannot be overestimated, whose name is known and honored in every land — Thomas A. Edison.
Certainly no career has been so filled with exciting drama from early boyhood, as was that of this great American who gave the world such discoveries as the incandescent electric light, the phonograph, the motion picture … and whose experiments had much to do with the development of the telegraph, the telephone, modern transportation and radio.
The first of these two pictures, “Young Tom Edison,” portrays the blundering boyhood days of the great inventor… his gropings into science as he sat at his cellar workbench and dreamed the wildest of daydreams… the exciting episodes and youthful misadventures which almost spoiled his career, but which led directly to the full flowering of his genius in later life.
Mickey Rooney plays the title role — a role for which he must have been born, so well does it fit him. Giving his most serious and careful characterization, he makes you know young Edison as he was — a real boy, experimenting kid-like in his homemade laboratory — a boy who seemed to have a positive genius for getting into trouble as well as for invention.
It is a great and authentic story, simply said without flag-waving or star-spangled bannering — a dramatic, human picture.
In the supporting cast: Fay Bainter, George Bancroft, Virginia Weidler, Eugene Palette.
Original Screen Play by Bradbury Foote, Dore Schary and Hugo Butler. Directed by Norman Taurog. Produced by John W. Considine, Jr.
Edison the Man
. . . and watch for SPENCER TRACY as EDISON THE MAN
The story of the youthful Edison is complete in itself. Yet it serves, too, as the stirring prelude to another story equal in power and dramatic impact “Edison The Man.”
Out of young Edison’s cellar workbench grew a world-famous laboratory from which Thomas Edison sent out his great inventions to the everlasting benefit of the world.
Gifted Spencer Tracy takes over the role… and stirs the imagination with his vivid, living portrait of “the Wizard of Menlo Park.” See “Young Tom Edison” — then watch for “Edison The Man,” soon to be released.
Mickey Rooney as seen in Young Tom Edison
