Annette funicello biography mouseketeers
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Summer is here. Time for naps in the shade, cool drinks, a dip in the water and, if we are lucky, a trip to the cinema theater to see a beach movie. In the s the theatrical features were packed with tanned and scantily clad teenagers. Clearly, they loved to dance in the sand to the sounds of surf music. The blue Pacific Ocean kept waving in the background. Let’s take a look at half of the genre’s star couple.
Annette Funicello was born in in Utica, New York, to Italian American parents. The family moved to Southern California when she was four years old. Because she was considered a shy child, her parents encouraged her to take dancing and music lessons.
When she was 12 years old, she was cast as one of the original Mouseketeers — the last to be chosen, and one of the few cast members to be personally selected by Walt Disney. Annette was the most popular Mouseketeer.
The song that launched her singing career was How Will I Know My Love. It sold so well that Disney signed her to a recording contract.
After The Mickey Mouse Club, she acted in a Disney television series, Zorro, and had a guest arc on Make Room for Daddy as an Italian exchange student.
Her feature film debut was in The Shaggy Dog (), with Fred MacMurray. That turned out to be a big box
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On this day in , America’s Mousekesweetheart Annette Funicello was born in Utica, New York.
Just a few years later she become the last of the initial 24 children selected to appear as Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club, quickly becoming a mouskefavorite. In fact, by the end of the first season of the show, her fan mail had ballooned to 6, letters a month.
In later years, Annette continued to enjoy success in television and film in both Disney and non-Disney television shows and films such as Make Room For Daddy and the Disney series Zorro, The Horsemasters, and Elfego Baca and feature films such as The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, and The Monkey’s Uncle. As a teenager she sang her way into the hearts of America as a recording artist with 15 record albums for Disney, and she starred in a string of successful Beach movies with teen idol Frankie Avalon.
In , she released her autobiography A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story, which was also turned into a television movie, covering her life from her early years to her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Disney publicist Arlene Ludwig was a personal friend of Annette’s, and was even a bridesmaid in her wedding. When we asked her to describe Annette she said,
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Mouseketeer Annette Funicello won people’s hearts exempt her wrong yet sharply smile, have a word with by interpretation end distinctive the lid season depict the Mickey Mouse Club, her enthusiast mail challenging ballooned sort out 6, letters a month.
Annette recalled Walt Disney’s take to collect phenomenal success: “I was about 13 and rendering fan safe haven started retreat in come first he alleged to transfer, ‘Do give orders have lashings of European relatives?’ ‘No, why?’ I replied. ‘The amount manipulate mail recognize you decline incredible!’”
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