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.
Francis Thomas Avallone , better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. Billboard singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" and "Why" in 1959.
Annette Joanne Funicello was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She was one of the most popular Mouseketeers on the original Mickey Mouse Club. In her teenage years, she recorded under the name Annette, and had a successful career as a pop singer. Her most notable singles are "O Dio Mio", "First Name Initial", "Tall Paul", and "Pineapple Princess". During the mid-1960s, she established herself as a film actress, popularizing the successful "Beach Party" genre alongside co-star Frankie Avalon.
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.
Walt Disney Records is an American record label of the Disney Music Group. The label releases soundtrack albums from The Walt Disney Company's motion picture studios, television series, theme parks, and traditional studio albums produced by its roster of pop, teen pop, and country artists.
Babes in Toyland is a 1961 American Christmas musical film directed by Jack Donohue and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It stars Ray Bolger as Barnaby, Tommy Sands as Tom Piper, Annette Funicello as Mary Contrary, and Ed Wynn as the Toymaker.
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 Misadventures of Merlin Jones is a 1964 American science-fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. The film stars Tommy Kirk as a college student who experiments with mind-reading and hypnotism, leading to run-ins with a local judge. Annette Funicello plays his girlfriend, with Leon Ames, Stuart Erwin, Alan Hewitt, Connie Gilchrist, and Dallas McKennon rounding out the film's supporting cast. This film was followed up by a sequel called The Monkey's Uncle the following year.
Beach Party is a 1963 American film and the first of seven beach party films from American International Pictures (AIP) aimed at a teen audience. This film is often credited with creating the beach party film genre.
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.
Beach Blanket Bingo is a 1965 American beach party film directed by William Asher. It is the fifth film in the Beach Party film series. The film stars Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Linda Evans, Deborah Walley, Paul Lynde, and Don Rickles. Earl Wilson and Buster Keaton appear. Evans's singing voice was dubbed by Jackie Ward.
Darlene Faye Gillespie is a Canadian-American former child actress, most remembered as a singer and dancer on the original The Mickey Mouse Club television series from 1955 to 1959. Her Irish father and French Canadian mother were a former vaudeville dance team. When Darlene was two years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September 1956 at the age of fifteen. After her career in entertainment ended, she became a nurse.
The Mouse Factory is an American syndicated television series produced by Walt Disney Productions and created by Ward Kimball, that ran from 1972 to 1973. It showed clips from various Disney cartoons and movies, hosted by celebrity guests, including Charles Nelson Reilly, JoAnne Worley, Wally Cox, Johnny Brown, Phyllis Diller, Joe Flynn, Annette Funicello, Shari Lewis and Hush Puppy, Lamb Chop, Dom DeLuise, Don Knotts and many more visiting the Mouse Factory and interacting with the walk-around Disney characters from the Disney theme parks. The series was later rerun on the Disney Channel in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Tall Paul" is a song recorded by Annette Funicello and written by the Sherman Brothers, along with Bob Roberts.
Mia Dillon is an American actress.
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.
Rainbow Road to Oz was a proposed, but never finished, Walt Disney Studios 1950s live-action film about characters in the Land of Oz. Inspired by L. Frank Baum's early 20th century Oz novels, it was to have starred some of the Mouseketeers, including Darlene Gillespie as Dorothy Gale and Annette Funicello as Princess Ozma, as well as Bobby Burgess as the Scarecrow, Doreen Tracey as the Patchwork Girl, Jimmie Dodd as the Cowardly Lion, Tommy Kirk as the villainous son of the Wicked Witch of the West, and Kevin Corcoran.
The Horsemasters was a 2 part episode of the Disneyland TV show from 1961 which screened theatrically in some countries.
Escapade in Florence is a two-part episode of the Disneyland television show which was released theatrically in some countries. Walt Disney described it as a "two-part teenage comedy adventure" which was "international in flavor". The show first aired on September 30 and October 7, 1962, and was repeated in June 1963 and June 1969.
