Schulz, in his “Peanuts” comic strip, showed Linus reading a paper, clutching his security blanket and wailing: “I can’t stand it! This is terrible! How depressing. Funicello married her agent, Jack Gilardi. When her mother was asked how she was able to keep life so normal, she answered succinctly, “Nothing impressed us.” She was not allowed to date until she was 16. She and her family continued living as they had, with her father working five days a week at a gas station and everyone pitching in to do housework.
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Then came the television series “Zorro.” Next she was “loaned out,” in industry talk, to CBS to appear on the Danny Thomas sitcom “Make Room for Daddy.” She also pursued a recording career, and had two Top 10 singles: “Tall Paul” in 1959 and “O Dio Mio” in 1960.
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Her first movie role was in “The Shaggy Dog,” Disney’s first live-action comedy. She feared she was going to be fired for growing too tall, but instead he offered her a studio contract - the only one given to a Mouseketeer. In 1958, as “The Mickey Mouse Club” was ending its run, Mr. Disney, whom she considered a second father, convinced her that her own name would be more memorable once people learned it. She once decided she wanted to change her last name to something more typically American. It was deducted from her $185 weekly paycheck. When she lost a pair of felt mouse ears, she was charged $55. Annette quickly became the most popular Mouseketeer, and Disney marketed everything from Annette lunchboxes and dolls to mystery novels about her fictionalized adventures.īut she did not receive special treatment. “The Mickey Mouse Club” was instantly popular, generating orders for 24,000 mouse-eared beanies a day. One reason, she said, was her reluctance to take parts at odds with her squeaky-clean image. Funicello did become a homemaker after marrying at 22. With minor exceptions, like her commercials for Skippy peanut butter, Ms. Disney.” (She could handle “Uncle Makeup” and “Aunt Hairdresser.”)Īt the height of her stardom, she said her ambition was to quit show business and have nine children. Disney begged her to call him Uncle Walt, but she could manage only “Mr. She said that if she had charm (she undeniably had modesty), it was partly a result of her shyness. She wrote in her 1994 autobiography, “ A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” that irate mothers often wrote back to say “how hard Johnny or Tommy had worked to save the money for the gift and how dare I return it?” Anka, her boyfriend, wrote “ Puppy Love” for her in her parents’ living room.Īs a Mouseketeer, she received a steady stream of wristwatches, school rings and even engagement rings from young men, all of which she returned.
She was the youngest member of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour, which included LaVern Baker, the Drifters, Bobby Rydell, the Coasters and Paul Anka.
Sometimes called “America’s girl next door,” she nonetheless managed to be at the center of the action during rock ’n’ roll’s exuberant emergence. Walt Disney personally discovered her at a ballet performance.īefore long, she was getting more than 6,000 fan letters a week, and was known by just her first name in a manner that later defined celebrities like Cher, Madonna and Prince. She was the last of the 24 original Mouseketeers chosen for “The Mickey Mouse Club,” the immensely popular children’s television show that began in 1955, when fewer than two-thirds of households had television sets. Young audiences appreciated her sweet, forthright appeal, and parents saw her as the perfect daughter. Funicello described herself as “the queen of teen,” and millions around her age agreed. Her death, from complications of the disease, was announced on the Disney Web site.Īs an adult Ms. Annette Funicello, who won America’s heart as a 12-year-old in Mickey Mouse ears, captivated adolescent baby boomers in slightly spicy beach movies and later championed people with multiple sclerosis, a disease she had for more than 25 years, died on Monday in Bakersfield, Calif.
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