She was the fifth Mrs. Mickey Rooney, between Elaine Mahnken (No. 4, 5 1/2 years) and Margaret “Margie” Lane (No. 6, 104 days). She’s the one who was shot to death by her crazy boyfriend. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Her name was Barbara and at 17, she was Miss Muscle Beach, Miss Surfestival and Miss Bay Beach for 1954. The Times noted her “winning measurements, which pleased the judges” as 5-3, 120 pounds, 36-21-35.
By 1958, she was sharing a place at 1436 Laurel Ave., with Pat Landers, a nightclub singer, and as Carolyn Mitchell had appeared in two Roger Corman pictures, “Dragstrip Riot,” featuring Fay Wray, and “The Cry Baby Killer,” starring Jack Nicholson.
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Maybe what happened on that night in August 1958 makes sense if you’re a 21-year-old beauty queen involved with a 38-year-old movie star and have a couple of girlfriends help you try to land him.
This is what they told police: While Rooney was at a dinner party in Beverly Hills, Barbara took an overdose of sleeping pills at his home, 12979 Blairwood Drive, Sherman Oaks. Then she called Landers to come up and help her. While Rooney was busy in Tahoe, supposedly perfecting his golf game, boxer Art Aragon joined Barbara’s friends in Los Angeles in insisting that she and Rooney were involved. “If Mickey says he wasn’t serious about Barbara, he’s not telling the truth,” Aragon said. “Pat [Landers], Mickey, Barbara and myself were out together just before the [Carmen] Basilio scrap and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.”
Less than six years later, on Jan. 24, 1966, Rooney sued for divorce, charging Barbara with mental cruelty over her involvement with Milos Milosevic, 24, an explosive, small-time actor from Yugoslavia who had a bit part in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.” Rooney charged that Barbara “was allowing, permitting, encouraging or harboring” Milosevic.
Milosevic was “very pleasant but nuts,” according to an actor who worked with him on “The Russians Are Coming.” Milosevic “would drive sports cars and aim for people. They would have to jump out of his way. This was always a big laugh to him,” the actor said. In filing for divorce, Milosevic’s ex-wife, Cynthia Bouron, said Inglewood police had arrested him on charges of assaulting her. On Jan. 30, 1966, Barbara visited Rooney at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, where he was recovering from an intestinal infection he caught while filming in the Philippines, presumably “Ambush Bay.” She used a hidden microphone to record their conversation with the help of private detective Herm Schlieske. She and Schlieske returned to the Rooney home at 13030 Evanston St., where they were joined by Milosevic, and two of her friends, Wilma Catania, a visitor from New York who was staying in the guest house, and Susie Sydney. Also in the house at the time were three of the Rooneys’ four children.  The Times said the group gathered in the den, where Barbara played the tape. Partway through the conversation, Barbara apparently turned off the hidden microphone she was using, so the tape was incomplete, The Times said. But at one point in the recording, she said: “If it makes you unhappy for me to see Milos, then I won’t even see him as a friend.” The people dispersed about 7:30 p.m. and about 8 p.m., Milosevic and Barbara went into the master bedroom and locked the door, The Times said. With the children in bed, Catania called out to Barbara, asking if she and Sydney could borrow the car to attend a party in Hollywood. There was no answer, so the women left. Catania said she returned about 2:30 a.m. and went to bed in the guest house.  Photograph by George R. Fry / Los Angeles Times Attorney Harold A. Abeles escorts three of Barbara and Mickey Rooney’s children from their home at 13030 Evanston St. after the murder-suicide. Early the next afternoon, with no sign of Barbara or Milosevic, Catania and the maid unlocked the bedroom door and found the couple on the bathroom floor. He had shot her once in the jaw and then killed himself, using a nickel-plated .38 semiautomatic that Rooney bought in 1964. |
Barbara, who claimed she merely took the wrong pills by mistake, said of Rooney, “I’m madly in love with him and he with me,” but Doff insisted to The Times that there was no romance. In fact, when the story finally broke in the papers, Rooney had left for an engagement at Harrah’s Club in Lake Tahoe.
Eight months after the purported overdose, Rooney announced that he planned to marry Barbara in a year, as soon as his divorce from Mahnken was final. In fact, Rooney had already married Barbara in December after getting “a secret quickie Mexican divorce,” The Times said in June 1959. In fact, Barbara was pregnant with Kelly, the first of their four children, who also included Kerry, Kyle and Kimmie Sue.
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