Biography:

Annette Joanne Funicello (October 22, 1942 – April 8, 2013) 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.^[1] 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.

In 1992, Funicello announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987. She died of complications from the disease on April 8, 2013.

Early life

Annette Joanne Funicello was born in Utica, New York, to Virginia Jeanne (née Albano),^[2] and Joseph Edward Funicello. Her family moved to Southern California when she was four years old.^[3]

Career

The Mickey Mouse Club

Funicello took dancing and music lessons when she was a child in order to overcome her shyness. In 1955, the 12-year-old was discovered by Walt Disney when she performed as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at a dance recital at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank, California. Disney cast her as one of the original Mouseketeers. She was the last to be selected, and one of the few cast members to be personally selected by Walt Disney himself.

In 1955, she signed a seven-year contract with Disney at $160 a week to rise to $500 a week if all options were exercised.^[4][5]

Funicello proved to be very popular, and by the end of the first season of The Mickey Mouse Club, she was receiving 6,000 letters a month, according to her Disney Legends biography – more than any other Mouseketeer.^[6]

She had a crush on, dated, had a first kiss with,^[7] and went steady^[8] with fellow Mouseketeer Lonnie Burr. In 1958, at the finale of the show, she had to say goodbye to each of the members of its cast, and, in her own words, “I never cried so hard in my life”.^[9]

In addition to appearing in many Mouseketeer sketches and dance routines, Funicello starred in several serials on The Mickey Mouse Club. These included Adventure in Dairyland, the second and third Spin and Marty serials – The Further Adventures of Spin and Marty (1956) and The New Adventures of Spin and Marty (1957) – and Walt Disney Presents: Annette (1958) (which co-starred Richard Deacon).

Singing career

In several scenes in the Annette serial, she performed the song that launched her singing career. The studio received so much mail about “How Will I Know My Love” (lyrics by Tom Adair, music by Frances Jeffords and William Walsh),^[10] that Walt Disney issued it as a single, and gave Funicello (somewhat unwillingly) a recording contract.^[11]

A proposed live-action feature Rainbow Road to Oz was to have starred some of the Mouseketeers, including Darlene Gillespie as Dorothy and Funicello as Ozma. Preview segments from the film aired on September 11, 1957, on Disneyland‘s fourth anniversary show.^[12] By then, MGM’s The Wizard of Oz had been shown on CBS Television for the first time. Theories on why the film was abandoned include Disney’s failure to develop a satisfactory script, and the positive reception of the MGM film’s television screening. Disney ultimately replaced this film project with a new adaptation of Babes in Toyland (1961), which starred Funicello as Mary Contrary.

Post-Mickey Mouse Club

After the Mickey Mouse Club, Funicello remained under contract with Disney for a time. She had a role on the Disney television series Zorro, playing Anita Cabrillo in a three-episode storyline about a teen-aged girl arriving in Los Angeles to visit a father who does not seem to exist. This role was reportedly a 16th birthday present from Walt Disney, and it was the first of two different characters she played opposite Guy Williams as Zorro.^[13][9] She had a multiple-episode guest arc on Make Room for Daddy as an Italian exchange student.^[14]

Funicello made her feature film debut in the Disney-produced comedy The Shaggy Dog (1959) with Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk. The film was a success at the box-office.^[15]

Although uncomfortable being thought of as a singer, Funicello had a number of pop record hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, mostly written by the Sherman Brothers and including: “Tall Paul“, “First Name Initial”, “O Dio Mio”, “Train of Love” (written by Paul Anka) and “Pineapple Princess“. They were released by Disney’s Buena Vista label. She also recorded “It’s Really Love” in 1959, a reworking of an earlier Paul Anka song called “Toot Sweet” (which was later reworked again into Johnny’s Theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Paul Anka was said to have a crush on her; though she was only a year younger, Walt Disney “protected” the underage actress from Anka’s advances. Anka’s song “Puppy Love“, is said to have been inspired by his hopelessly unlikely romantic crush on Funicello.

In an episode of the Disney anthology television series titled “Disneyland After Dark“, Funicello can be seen singing live at Disneyland. Walt Disney was reportedly a fan of 1950s pop star Teresa Brewer and tried to pattern Funicello’s singing on the same style. However, Funicello credits “the Annette sound” to her record producer, Tutti Camarata, who worked for Disney in that era. Camarata had her double-track her vocals, matching her first track as closely as possible on the second recording to achieve a fuller sound than her voice would otherwise produce. Early in her career, she appeared on the NBC interview program Here’s Hollywood.^[11]

In December 1959, Funicello attempted to have her contract with Disney set aside, claiming that it was unequitable and that she was without an agent or legal counsel when she signed it. She was receiving $325 a week (About $3,000 in 2020 dollars). The court refused.^[16]

Credits:

Wikipedia