Le Club Mickey

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 ...

To create a show or movie with an animal character, such as Lassie, Benji, Charlotte or the Black Stallion is reasonable enough, especially for children. A show based on the worship of an animal character, in this case a mouse, seems a little ridiculous. Yet the whole Mickey Mouse Club idea has to be very American. Entertainment industries have constantly capitalized on icons produced for movies and television and exploited them to the hilt for profit. The studio corporations know that when Americans fall in love with characters and worlds from the movies and television, part of the spectator public wants to connect with it on a deeper level. The Mickey Mouse Club allowed younger viewers enthralled with the Disney universe to experience their favorite mouse on television once a week instead of only when mom and dad would take them to the cinema.

Simultaneously, all things considered, The Mickey Mouse Club was a good children's show with merit. The original show incorporated games, educational segments, sing-a-longs, and even some dramatic episodes. It seems to me I remember the Hardy Boys, but I am not sure. In short, the Mickey Mouse Club encouraged children to be children. And hey, the young Annette Funicello was worth the price of admission. She will probably be best remembered for this show rather than her silly beach movies 10 years later.

Today most children's programming via the networks is about pure entertainment, barring PBS, and a lot of it seems grossly inappropriate for underage viewers who are not yet pre-adolescents. Propagating that 8-to-10-year-olds should have boyfriends and girlfriends, i.e. behave like adults or even adolescents, is I think harmful misinformation. Children are still learning what is appropriate and inappropriate except for what they see modeled in front of them, which is often on television. If the Mickey Mouse Club had a clear message, it was that childhood should be enjoyed for what it is, and there is a magical wonder about childhood that should not be missed.

Still, it raises my eyebrow that the show's participants would not only sing hymns to a fictional mouse but don mouse-inspired attire. Even as a kid, I thought the mouse ears were ridiculous, especially on the adults! But given the low-quality of material being presented to children today, maybe the mouse ears are a small price to pay. Afterall, donning the mouse ears represents "make believe", the essence of childhood.

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.

The Mickey Mouse Club is one of the great achievements of television. A heartwarming beautiful show that always presents good individual segments. A classic that gives you a warm feeling. Great!

Disney goes to people's living rooms throughout the world in 1955 through their television sets with "The Mickey Mouse Club," a show for kids that was not only just entertaining, but in fact, so great that two more versions have been spawned: one in the late 70s, and, of course, one in the early 90s for the then-good Disney Channel (they also showed the other two versions as well on "Vault Disney").

What I like about this show: I haven't seen the 1955 version, although the old Disney Channel used to show it, but it was too late at night. However, I've heard about how great this show is and I know the theme song to it:

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-e!!!!!

Also, remember those Mickey Mouse ear hats that you now can buy at Disney World? Those were worn, too!

"The Mickey Mouse Club" - No longer on the tube, except for DVD!!!!!

10 stars! 10 stars! 10 stars!!!!!