Nobody is suggesting that Bill Murray partied Mickey Rooney into the grave.

But the comic actor did make sure the legendary song-and-dance man enjoyed one helluva evening, the month before Rooney died earlier this year.

During his TIFF interview with the Star, Murray said the only thing he really enjoys about the Oscars are the parties, especially the one thrown annually by Vanity Fair magazine. And here’s the story Murray told about what happened back in March, when he ran into Rooney at this year’s VF bash:

“It’s a good party, the Vanity Fair party. All the funny people and all the pretty girls are there. It’s kind of a funny thing to walk around in. I used to think the Vanity Fair party was kind of stupid, but now it’s like a great clubhouse. It really is a clubhouse: they don’t let the outside world in, and you really get to interact with other people who just do it.

“And there’s Mickey Rooney. I’ve known Mickey Rooney a little bit over the years, and he’s in this big lounge, his tuxedo is all like this (dishevelled), and he’s looking like he’s going to die in a week, which he did! (It was actually a month later, on April 6.)

“And I’m like, ‘MICK!’ You’ve got to talk a little loud to him.

“And he was just sort of like, he was sitting with the guy who played Dracula in Ed Wood (Martin Landau), who was also the bad guy in North by Northwest, OK?

“He’s sitting with him and the two of them are doing the old thing and Mick is really down low because they’re playing some kind of rap music and he says, ‘What’s with the music?’

“So I said, ‘Here’s what I do!’ I take a couple of pieces of napkin and I just stick ’em in my ears! Which I do, when the music is too loud or it’s a concert or something. And I make him a couple, and he says, ‘This is great!’

“It’s just the high energy of that music that just killed him. So I went and just started grabbing gorgeous women. There was this passel of gorgeous actresses there and I said, ‘Would you like to meet Mickey Rooney?’

“And they’re like, ‘Yeah!’

“So I started bringing handfuls of women at a time over to Mickey Rooney, because I knew there were no producers that were going to come and get on him, the music was not going to do it for him, he was there to party.

“Most of his friends are dead because he’s 93, but the one thing he could do was light up a room.

“The next thing you know, here’s Mick, and he’s gesturing like this, he’s talking to these girls, and I just kept doing it for him.

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“Every 15 minutes I’d go, ‘Excuse me,’ and I’d get like Emma Stone or someone and say, ‘Would you like to meet Mickey Rooney?’ and I’d just keep dragging them over to him.

“I don’t know why I started talking about this. But that party was fun to go to.”