Clube do Mickey

Next year this children's show of children's shows marks its 50th anniversary, and I am steamed that The Disney Channel does not air the retreads anymore. In fact, The Disney Channel hardly airs anything Disney anymore. Therefore, I don't watch The Disney Channel anymore.

It would be a great tribute to a classic if the following happened:

1) The Disney Channel would start airing the shows and airing them WITHOUT those cuts.

2) Disney Studios would put together either a 'season' or 'best of' set on DVD.

(At least, Disney should consider putting the Club serials on DVD, you know, Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Corky and White Shadow, Annette).

When our first TV arrived in March, 1959, this was the show which materialised out of the ether. 6.05 PM on a Tuesday night, if my memory serves me correctly. And thus began a decade-long love affair with the lovely Annette Funicello - only she didn't know it! A wonderful team of young performers who could do just about anything, a cartoon or two, a guest star and the serial which probably starred Tim Considine. Was it 'The Hardy Boys'? I watched every episode and it was a sad day when due to changing times, the MMC left our screens.

When several members toured Australia (Jimmy, Darlene and possibly Karen or Annette) they were mobbed by thousands. I wasn't one of them as we didn't have a car and I had no easy way of reaching Mascot Airport. It would be years before I came across the souvenir brochure, my one small memento of those great times ...

For the five years of the run of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club it was the most exclusive club in the world for the cool kids. So what if you had to wear those dorky ears and in front of millions of viewers to be a member. You got to wear those cool cowboy clothes at the end of the week on Talent Roundup Day. And wouldn't you like to leave the world you knew behind just to hang out with everyone from Annette and Bobby to the little ones Karen and Cubby.

Kids who grew up watching this show faithfully when they learned the world according to Disney wasn't exactly the truth were the ones that tuned in, turned on and dropped out in the next decade. I wasn't one of them, but I sure knew where they were coming from.

These kids in the Disney movies, in the serials on the Mickey Mouse Club and in their singing and dancing and all around talent were the role models of a generation. It seemed like if you put on those Mousekeears you could dance like Bobby Burgess, sing like Darlene Gillespie, or even play the drums like Cubby O'Brien. Millions like me wished they were good enough to join.

The show had two big Mooseketeers as they were called, Disney cartoonist Roy Williams who should have gotten a lot more money for looking so ridiculous and singer/actor Jimmy Dodd.

In fact Dodd I believe was a big part of the reason for the show's success. As an adult he looked right at home with the kids and I'm not talking about Michael Jackson kind of at home. Dodd had a middling career as a journeyman character actor, mostly in western roles. Mainstream movie fans might remember him for his small bit in Yankee Doodle Dandy calling young George M. Cohan out to greet his public, the public being a group of tough kids who took literally his boast to lick any kid in town in Peck's Bad Boy.

Dodd reached real stardom in the Mickey Mouse Club. He set a respectful tone to the show, told the kids at home to mind their parents and lead an upright life. Dodd according to contemporaries was a religious man, but never overtly proselytized. According to many of the now grownup Mouseketeers Jimmy Dodd was the real deal, exactly as you saw him on television

In the hour you saw Disney cartoons, true life adventure films, good kid's serials like Spin and Marty and Corky and the White Shadow and the singing and dancing of the coolest kids on the planet. Those good enough to be members of the Mickey Mouse Club.

This was the high point of many of my days back in the mid-50's. I thought Jimmy Dodd was a little flakey, but the kids were who I wanted to see anyway so I put up with him and Roy the big mousketeer. Little did I dream that Paul Peterson, Bobby Burgess, and Johnny Crawford would go on to such superstardom. Not to mention Annette's brilliance in all those epic beach films. This was a nice program to come home to after school every day, especially friday because that was western day.

Current description of original MMC, verifiable by many published sources, are: 1) there was no Mouseketeer Bob (Robert Thornon); 2) Ruth Carell was not a Mouseketeer and did not "recur" on the show; 3)

Tommy Kirk was not a Mouseketeer, although there is a photo of him in the outfit; 4) Dr. Miller, Julius Sumner, did a recurring science segment on the first two years; 5) R.G. Springsteen not a director-only Miller and first year Dik Darley directed the show;6) the show ran one hour the first two years, then half hour third year, half hour reruns fourth year 1958-59; 7) Paul Petersen, later of "Donna Reed Show" only lasted a few weeks of the first year.

There were 39, only, kids on the first show 1955-59 and only 9 lasted the entire filming: Annette, Karen, Sharon, Doreen, Darlene, Cubby, Lonnie, Bobby, Tommy. First year there were 24 (+four fired)= 28. Only two lasted two seasons: Dennis years 1 & 2, Cheryl, 2, 3 & reruns. The others lasted only one season.

MHB