How does that happen to a bona fide Hollywood legend? It depends on which warring side of his surviving family members you ask. Today The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg runs down the ugly feud between Mark and Chris Aber, the sons of Jan Chamberlin Rooney, who married Mickey Rooney in 1978. Though the couple never divorced, the Rooneys remained estranged when Mickey died; as Jan told The Hollywood Reporter, she learned of her husband’s death when “someone from TMZ called me.”
The root of the couple’s rift went public in 2011, when Mickey Rooney testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging about his experience with elder abuse at the hands of stepson Chris Aber and his wife, Christina. A legal complaint alleged that Aber “threatens, intimidates, bullies, and harasses Mickey,” and the couple was asked to stay 100 yards away from the actor at all times. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, though, Chris Aber says it was all a setup orchestrated by his brother, whom he claims was stealing from Rooney: “I caught him. And then, in order to defuse [the situation], he got a restraining order on me and told Mickey that I did it. Mark Aber was Rooney’s caregiver for the last year of his life, and Chris blames his brother for their mother’s unfortunate phone call from TMZ: “My brother, whom [Rooney] died in front of, didn't even have the decency to call my mom [upon Rooney’s death] . . . That's how evil these attorneys and my brother are."
Feuds among family members of the rich and famous are nothing new, but it’s especially distressing to see a family torn apart in this way—not only over money, but accusations of violence and stealing, all with the law forced to take sides. Mickey Rooney’s life was never free from scandal—he was married eight times, after all—but this is an especially tragic ending for a man who became a star because he could make people laugh.
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