D23's Jim Fanning takes a fond look back at the Mickey Mouse Club, which celebrates its 55th anniversary next month.

Playing his signature Mousegetar (today, a cherished treasure
of the Walt Disney Archives), head Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd
makes music with merry Mouseketeers (clockwise from left) Doreen,
Tommy, Karen and Cubby. Often paired with Karen (the two were
even bride and groom on the very first episode), Cubby was also
a musician and an accomplished drummer.


Though many of you faithful D23.com readers have grown up watching Walt Disney's the Mickey Mouse Club either first run on ABC or in syndication as a treasured childhood memory, I have no such association with this classic TV series. I never saw it as a child, and — it's blasphemy, I admit — I didn't even know who Annette was, and wondered who this mysterious person with one name was whenever I saw one of her record albums promoted on Disney record liner sleeves. I came to the show as an adult — and though I obviously missed out on a cherished childhood experience, I'm glad it happened that way, for unencumbered by nostalgia I can honestly state that the Mickey Mouse Club is truly engaging and thoroughly fun for all ages, though it was the first production Walt ever created expressly for children. Thanks to DVDs and the Internet, people still value the unique Disney entertainment offered in this memorable TV show, filmed in glorious black and white; I personally know small children, entrenched contemporary citizens of today's computer-and-video game world, who love the Mickey Mouse Club, with its infectious song-and-dance and irresistible sincerity.


Though the Mouseketeers debuted on the Mickey Mouse Club during its first broadcast on October 3, 1955 — 55 years ago this October — these appealing kids are today still applauded and appreciated by audiences small and tall, including youngsters who simply assume that these talented Disney stars are children of today. Everyone has his or her favorite Mouseketeer, including me. Think you can guess which of the Mouse ear-capped kids it is? Keep reading, Mouseketeers, and I'll reveal the famed name after these fascinating Mouseka-facts.

Mousekartoon Time Now Is Here
No doubt about it, the leader of the Club is none other than M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. Described as "the best known personality in the world" in an early Club proposal from September 30, 1953, Mickey introduced each day's show in specially created animation by such Disney Legends as Ollie Johnston and John Lounsbery, with Walt Disney personally performing Mickey's folksy, welcoming dialog. "Big doin's this week!" Mickey cheerfully promised on Fun with Music Day (Monday to the uninitiated). "Adventure, fun, music, cartoons, news… Everybody ready? Then let the show begin!" As always, Donald Duck was not to be outdone, and in an eagerly anticipated, fondly recalled ritual at the end of the title sequence, the ever-frustrated mallard attempted to hit the Mickey Mouse Club gong with a mallet, with varying but always hilarious results. "There will be a little surprise about this each time," was the way Walt envisioned Donald's determined but disastrous efforts. "Sometimes Donald will hit and sometimes he won't, and maybe the thing will just disintegrate." Many other TV shows, from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Muppet Show to The Simpsons, have been inspired by Donald and the gong to incorporate surprises into their title sequences.

Stars of the beloved Spin and Marty serial, one of the must- see elements of the Mickey Mouse Club, Tim Considine (Spin, pictured on the left) and David Stollery (Marty) escort a certain female Mouseketeer on a visit to the Triple-R Ranch. While Annette reigned as queen of the Club, Tim was the most popular boy on the show, though neither he nor David were official Mouseketeers. When Annette was awarded her own self-titled serial in 1958, both boys were co-stars.


The cornerstone of each Mickey Mouse Club episode was the Mousekartoon, a screening of a vintage Disney animated short. The first week alone featured such animated delicacies as Pueblo Pluto (1949), Mickey's Service Station (1935), The Wise Little Hen (1934), Mickey's Kangaroo (1935) and Two-Gun Mickey (1934). When these timeless cartoons were showcased on the Mickey Mouse Club, more people saw them in one day than during their original theatrical releases. Each Mousekartoon was introduced by a Jimmie Dodd-composed jingle, "Mousekartoon Time," that today is heard on Disney Channel's hit show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Music Is The Language We All Understand
Music, that Disney standard, was at the heart of Mickey Mouse Club, and with five episodes a week showcasing almost completely original songs, the show was virtually a non-stop musicfest. Many of the eminently singable songs came from head Mouseketeer Jimmie Dodd. In addition to creating the show's unforgettable theme song, "Mickey Mouse March" — one of the most oft-performed tunes in Disney history — and "The Merry Mouseketeers" for Annette, Tommy and the rest of the gang to sing, Jimmie also wrote a number of lively songs about Mickey and his friends, such as "Cooking with Minnie Mouse" (performed on the show by Jimmie's wife, Ruth) and "Quack! Quack! Quack! Donald Duck." Each specially themed weekday also had its own signature song, and Jimmie provided the tuneful tributes to Guest Star Day ("Today is Tuesday") and the self-titled ditty for Wednesday's Anything Can Happen Day and Thursday's Circus Day ("Here Comes the Circus!"). Many of the lilting Mickey Mouse Club songs are available on iTunes.

Mouseketeer Roll Call
To produce this ambitious show, Walt selected Disney Legend Bill Walsh, who had produced the first smash season of the hour-long series Disneyland. "Walt told me he was taking me off the weekly show," Bill later remembered. "I said, 'Thank God — I'm exhausted.' He said, 'There's a new show I want you to do called the Mickey Mouse Club. This one will be an hour every day… and with children." Other children's TV shows of that early TV era featured children only as audience members but Walt changed everything when he jotted the note: "Audience not necessary — just kids." What could be more appealing to a TV audience of millions of children than performers who were just like them — as Walt directed, regular kids, seemingly neighborhood children being themselves and having a good time putting on a show, just as audience members might in the backyard or the school auditorium. "The majority of the kids were not professionals," emphasized Mousketeer Lonnie Burr. "The audience would see that the Mouseketeers were not perfect kids and they can do what the Mouseketeers could do. We weren't kids playing a role, we were kids playing ourselves and there were no others like that on television." Though many Mouseketeers came and went through the years, when the show was first presented on ABC (1955-1959), nine exceptionally gifted youngsters — Sharon Baird, Bobby Burgess, Lonnie Burr, Tommy Cole, Annette Funicello, Darlene Gillespie, Cubby O'Brien, Karen Pendleton and Doreen Tracey — were the core Mouseketeers, "likeable youngsters of whom we are very proud," as Walt Disney put it. "Their job is, of course, to sing, dance and generally regale the home audience with entertainment… we feel that there is a secondary value here — in that watching the Mouseketeers and their guests in action, boys and girls in homes throughout the land will feel impelled to discover and develop their own talents, whatever they may be."

This LP record album was released in 1964 in association with the first syndication of the Mickey Mouse Club, indicating how much music was composed for the daily show. Fourteen regular composers backed up by 40 songwriters created original music with Jimmie Dodd personally composing some forty Mouseka-tunes himself, including the celebrated "Mickey Mouse March." Eight record albums were released during the show's original broadcasts, including Musical Highlights from The Mickey Mouse Club TV Show and Songs for All the Holidays by the Mouseketeers.

Who's the little lady who's dainty as a dream? Who's the one you can't forget? I'll give you just three guesses. Annette! Annette! Annette!

The shiniest star among the big nine was unquestionably Annette, who possessed not only talent but also something far rarer — genuine star quality. Of the 24 original Mouseketeers who appeared on the original October 3, 1955, broadcast, Annette was the last to be cast when Walt himself selected this shy young dancer after seeing her in a local recital — and overnight, she captured the hearts of the TV audience. "All she had to do on the first shows," Jimmie Dodd, who wrote the song "Annette" in her honor, later recalled, "was face the camera, wave, smile and say her name, Annette, and the letters came pouring in." By the end of the first season, Ms. Funicello was receiving 6,000 fan letters a month, 10 times more than any other Mouseketeer. This bright-eyed girl-next-door was a star, and in 1958 she was given her own starring Mickey Mouse Club serial entitled, naturally, "Annette," and when she sweetly sang "How Will I Know My Love?" popular demand dictated that a recording of the song be released, and Walt Disney started this self-professed non-singer on a spectacular recording career.

Wiggle Your Ears Like Good Mouseketeers
The most famous headgear in the 1950s — besides that other Disney-produced hat, the Davy Crockett coonskin cap — was the Mouse ear hats worn by the Mouseketeers. These distinctive caps were created by the most unlikely Mickey Mouse Club cast member, Big Mooseketeer Roy Williams. "In 1929 after the sound cartoons came out Walt hired me to sketch some ideas for his animated shorts," Roy later related. "One of them [The Karnival Kid] had Mickey tipping the top of his head to Minnie… . So when the Mickey Mouse Club came about years later Walt said, ''How do we dress the kids?' and I said, 'Why not with Mickey Mouse ears?' I made sketches of the first hats and Walt liked them." Replicas of the Mouseketeer Mouse ears were marketed but the first commercially produced Mickey hats had only an "M " on the front. Because the design was easily imitated, the "M" was replaced with the word "Mouseketeers" and Mickey's smiling face. These trademarks could not be duplicated and the knockoffs were soon off the market. After only 12 weeks of the Mickey Mouse Club, more than two million Mouse ear hats were sold. Today the Mouseka-ears are still sold by the millions at Disney Theme Parks worldwide, most likely making the Mickey Mouse hat the best-selling piece of Disney merchandise in history.

Mouseka-data
The Mickey Mouse Club was an unqualified hit, one of the most popular children's TV shows ever produced. A March 1956 report placed viewership at more than 14 million, with over one-third of that audience made up of adults. Like all of Walt Disney's productions, the Mickey Mouse Club has universal appeal, and it was seen in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy Switzerland, Canada and Japan. In South America, eager audiences ate it up in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay. In Australia, the four seasons of the Mickey Mouse Club were broadcast for 14 years. The show even has its own Mouseka-language, with such terms as Mousekatune, Mousekariddle, Meeseketeer (small Mouseketeer), Mousekadance and Mousekamess. It was Walt's own idea to call the Club's performers Mouseketeers, a Disney-coined term first used in the Silly Symphony Three Blind Mouseketeers (1936). Disney had permitted MGM to use the term for some of their Tom and Jerry cartoons, but in 1955 he asked Metro to refrain from using that now trademarked name in anticipation of its use on the Mickey Mouse Club. MGM complied, using the term "mouse musketeers" instead.

The cover of the first issue of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club Magazine (Winter 1956) boasts a full-color photo of Jimmie, Roy, and the Mouseketeers (including Lonnie, front row, second from left) in their Talent Round- Up Day western duds. Published through 1959, this fun-f illed magazine was chock-a-block with vibrant illustrations by such legendary Disney artists — and Disney Legends — as Herb Ryman, Bill Peet, Sam McKim and X Atencio. "The Mickey Mouse Club magazine is dedicated to the leaders of the twenty-first century, some of whom are among you Mouseketeers of today" wrote the always far-seeing Walt in this first issue. "Every one of us has some talent, and talent is developed by doing. This is the theme of our television show — and of this magazine as well."

You're As Welcome As Can Be

So who is my favorite Mouseketeer? Like you, I find it a tough call: How can you overlook adorable Cubby and Karen or sweet Cheryl Holdridge (close contender for the title of 10th core Mouseketeer) or that lovely Pineapple Princess, Annette, always the most popular of the Mouse ear-capped kids? However, my choice is Lonnie, a performer who later proved himself a writer, a poet and a bit of a rebel. Already experienced in movies and TV variety shows when cast as a Mouseketeer in 1955, young Master Burr brought an unusual level of professionalism to the Club. Smart and self-confident, Lonnie was respected by home viewers as cool. Annette shared that opinion, noting that Lonnie was "the first big crush that I ever had. And I also gave him my first kiss. I thought he was just so cool." Whoever your favorite Mouseketeer may be, each of these young performers — be it Darlene the vocalist, Tommy the smooth narrator, or Bobby the tireless dancer — transcended even their own considerable talents with that most prized television quality: personality. Ultimately it doesn't matter if we first responded to those personalities during the show's first run in 1955, in syndication in the 1960s and 1970s, on Disney Channel in the 1980s and 1990s, or even more recently on DVD. As Walt said, "Everyone who regularly watches the Mickey Mouse Club is automatically a member of the Mickey Mouse Club and a Mouseketeer First Class in good standing." So forever let us hold our banner high!

By D23's Jim Fanning.

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