The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure is a 1956 American TV serial that was broadcast in episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club . It was based on The Hardy Boys stories in particular The Tower Treasure . [1]
According to Diabolique magazine: "Watching the serial today it's very much an item of its time, but Kirk's performance is a wonder – relaxed, energetic, a complete natural; he's not as conventionally good looking as Considine but he seems more at home on screen. He was the perfect Disney star." [2]
The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and returned to social media in 2017. Created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised for four seasons, from 1955 to 1959, by ABC. This original run featured a regular, but ever-changing cast of mostly teen performers. ABC broadcast reruns weekday afternoons during the 1958–1959 season, airing right after American Bandstand. The show was revived three times after its initial 1955–1959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication as The New Mickey Mouse Club, then from 1989 to 1996 as The All-New Mickey Mouse Club airing exclusively on cable television's The Disney Channel, and again in 2017 with the moniker Club Mickey Mouse airing exclusively on internet social media. It ended in 2018.
The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft was an American actor and bass singer. He was well known as one of the booming voices behind Kellogg's Frosted Flakes animated spokesman Tony the Tiger for more than five decades. He was also the uncredited vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the classic Christmas television special, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
The Shaggy Dog is a 1959 American fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and loosely based on the 1923 novel The Hound of Florence by Felix Salten. Directed by Charles Barton from a screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Bill Walsh, the film stars Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk, Jean Hagen, Kevin Corcoran, Tim Considine, Roberta Shore, and Annette Funicello. The film follows a teenage boy named Wilby Daniels who, by the power of an enchanted ring of the Borgias, is transformed into a shaggy Old English Sheepdog.
Thomas Lee Kirk was an American actor, best known for his performances in films made by Walt Disney Studios such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as well as the beach-party films of the mid-1960s. He frequently appeared as a love interest for Annette Funicello or as part of a family with Kevin Corcoran as his younger brother and Fred MacMurray as his father.
William Crozier Walsh was a film producer, screenwriter and comics writer who primarily worked on live-action films for Walt Disney Productions. He was born in New York City. For his work on Mary Poppins, he shared Academy Award nominations for Best Picture with Walt Disney, and for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium with Don DaGradi. He also wrote the Mickey Mouse comic strip for more than two decades.
The Monkey's Uncle is a 1965 American comedy film starring Tommy Kirk as genius college student Merlin Jones and Annette Funicello as his girlfriend, Jennifer. The title plays on the idiom "monkey's uncle" and refers to a chimpanzee named Stanley, Merlin's legal "nephew" who otherwise has little relevance to the plot. Jones invents a man-powered airplane and a sleep-learning system. The film is a sequel to 1964's The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.
The Tower Treasure is the first volume in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap. The book ranks 55th on Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Book List for the United States, with 2,209,774 copies sold as of 2001. This book is one of the "Original 10", generally considered by historians and critics of children's literature to be the best examples of all the Hardy Boys, and Stratemeyer Syndicate, writing.
While The Clock Ticked is Volume 11 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.
Charles Friedman Haas was an American film and television director.
Timothy Daniel Considine was an American actor, writer, photographer, and automotive historian. He was best known for his acting roles in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Spin and Marty is a series of television shorts that aired as part of The Mickey Mouse Club show of the mid-1950s, produced by Walt Disney and broadcast on the ABC network in the United States. There were three serials in all, set at the Triple R Ranch, a boys' western-style summer camp. The first series of 25 eleven-minute episodes, The Adventures of Spin and Marty, was filmed in 1955. Its popularity led to two sequels — The Further Adventures of Spin and Marty in 1956 and The New Adventures of Spin and Marty in 1957.
Walt Disney Treasures is a series of two-disc DVD collections of Disney cartoons, television episodes and other material. They cover material from the studio's earliest days to its more recent work. There were nine waves, each containing two to four sets, for a total of 30 titles. All content is presented uncensored and uncut with digitally restored picture and remastered sound.
Kevin Anthony "Moochie" Corcoran was an American child actor, director and producer. He appeared in numerous Disney projects between 1957 and 1963, leading him to be honored as a Disney Legend in 2006. His nickname, Moochie, established him as an irrepressible character in film.
Walt Disney Presents: Annette is a television serial that ran on The Mickey Mouse Club during the show's third season (1957–1958). It starred Annette Funicello as Annette McCleod, a poor, orphaned country girl who moves into town with her upper-class Uncle Archie and Aunt Lila. The serial also starred Richard Deacon as Archie McCleod, Sylvia Field as Archie's sister Lila McCleod, Mary Wickes as Katie the housekeeper and prolific Disney child stars Tim Considine, David Stollery and Roberta Shore as Annette's friends. The story was adapted by Lillie Hayward from the book Margaret by Janette Sebring Lowrey.
David John Stollery, III is a former American child actor and, as an adult, an industrial designer. He appeared in numerous Disney movies and television programs in the 1950s. He is best known for his teenage role as the loner Marty in the Spin and Marty television serials on the Mickey Mouse Club TV series in the mid-1950s.
The sixth wave of Walt Disney Treasures was released on December 19, 2006. It contains four separate DVD sets.
Robert Wayne Amsberry was an American actor, and one of the original cast members on the first two seasons of Walt Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club, working as both a writer and actor. Amsberry also worked as a voice actor, with a posthumous credit in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959).
In the late 1950s, Disney contracted with the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Grosset & Dunlap to produce two Hardy Boys TV serials, starring Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk. The first of the serials, The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure, was aired on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1956 during the show's second season. To appeal to the show's audience, the Hardy Boys were portrayed as younger than in the books, seeming to be twelve or thirteen years old. The script, written by Jackson Gillis, was based on the first Hardy Boys book, The Tower Treasure, and the serial was aired in 19 episodes of fifteen minutes each with production costs of $5,700. A second serial, The Mystery of Ghost Farm, followed in 1957, with an original story by Jackson Gillis. This serial shares some elements with "The House on the Cliff", the second Hardy Boys book.
Russ Conway was a Canadian-American actor and he is best known for playing Fenton Hardy, the father of The Hardy Boys in the 1956-7 The Mickey Mouse Club serial. Born Clarence Russell Zink, he is the brother of the actor Donald Woods, who was born on December 2, 1906, and died on March 5, 1998. Conway graduated from UCLA in 1937, and later earned a master’s in theater arts and a teaching credential from UCLA. During World War II, Conway was in an Army special services unit. For several months, he was entertainment director at Ft. Ord before serving in the Philippines and later in Japan, where he worked as a producer and announcer for Armed Forces Radio. He started acting in Hollywood in 1947. His film appearances included “Twelve O’Clock High” (1949), “War of the Worlds” (1953), “Love Me Tender” (1956) and “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” (1962). His television guest spots included roles on “The Fugitive,” “Mod Squad,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Mission Impossible,” “Sea Hunt” and “The Untouchables.”