Whitehorse welcomed Mickey Rooney with a standing ovation Wednesday evening as the 89-year-old entertainer shuffled onto the Yukon Arts Centre stage.

While Rooney has lost his singing voice and his dance steps, the man has not lost his charm. The sizable crowd which turned out to see the legendary star of stage and screen seemed happy just to be in the man's presence.

Operatic singers Julian Gallo and Lenni Stewart opened Let's Put On A Show, a reprise of Rooney's and wife Jan's musical revue they first staged in New York City in 2004.

Peppered with Rooney's anecdotes about divorce and the predictable alimony jokes – Jan is Mickey's eighth wife – the show is more a vehicle for Jan's singing than Mickey's comedy or showmanship.

When the two were on stage together, Mickey basked in his wife's glow and appeared to be truly enraptured by her. The pair, who have been married for 32 years, met on a piano bench at a Hollywood shindig back in the mid-1970s and obviously share a love for singing and performing together.

Prior to meeting Mickey, Jan Chamberlain was a successful performer in her own right, having acted for film and television, and was an established nightclub singer.

After she caught the ear of Warren Beatty, he introduced Jan to David Geffen, who would later record her original songs.

But on Wednesday, it was Jan's vocal tributes to Patsy Cline and John Denver that provided the highlights for Let's Put On A Show.

Nineteen years Mickey's junior and nearly a foot taller than her husband, Jan still has her pipes and faltered on just one number where she sounded a tad flat. That aside, Jan took the audience down a musical Memory Lane and back again.

After 88 years in show business, Mickey's mantra these days is "don't retire, inspire” and with the help of a teleprompter, and an ensemble of musicians that includes Sam Kriger (musical director, piano), Steve Pemberton (drums) and Ken Seiffert (bass), the elder statesman of Hollywood can still hold an audience.

When Rooney seated himself at the piano to accompany himself for one song, there were vestiges of the man's former singing voice that with time has been reduced to crackles as he talked his way through lyrics of other songs.

During his monologues, scenes from several of his more than 300 Hollywood film appearances provided a nostalgic backdrop, with a heavy focus on Rooney's costarring roles with Judy Garland.

In lighter moment, clips from a 1978 Rainier Beer commercial, in which Mickey is dressed as a Mountie and Jan as a yodeling Heidi-type character, played while the present day couple looked on.

The first take ended with Mickey pouring Jan a glass of beer, but the mischievous pair couldn't help showing an out take that depicted Mickey pouring another beer down Jan's top.

Indeed, Let's Put On A Show is born from an old-school notion of entertainment value and makes no bones about it.

Between the musical numbers, there were the cracks about rice marks on his face and Rooney likening alimony to "pumping gas into another man's car.”

But it was when Rooney recalled the down-and-out days when he "couldn't get a picture in Hollywood”, that he revealed a man, raised on show business, who still views the world from that tiny, often insular bubble.

Even during a brief meet-and-greet session following the show, Mickey barely looked up at the folks who stood before him for an autograph, and he appeared in no mood for chit-chats or photographs with his star-struck fans.

But he's Mickey Rooney, after all; his legend on par with iconic Americans like Frank Sinatra, Ginger Rogers or Fred Astaire. He needs no introduction, he need not sign any more autographs, talk with fans, or for that matter, put on a show to cement his legacy.

But for a brief moment this week, Rooney swept through Whitehorse and delivered the latter.

Undoubtedly, he's little worse for the wear and tear that eight marriages, hundreds of films and an equal number of days spent on the stage will leave on a man, Rooney managed to leave a little magic dust in his wake.