By
Dennis McLellan
11:05
AM PDT, April 8, 2013
Annette
Funicello, the dark-haired darling of "The Mickey Mouse Club" in the 1950s who
further cemented her status as a pop-culture icon in the `60s by teaming with
Frankie Avalon in a popular series of "beach" movies, died Monday. She was
70.
Funicello,
who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987 and became a spokeswoman for
treatment of the chronic, often debilitating disease of the central nervous
system, died at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, Walt Disney Co.
spokesman Howard Green said.
Funicello
and her husband, Glen Holt, had moved away from the Los Angeles area after a
2011 fire gutted their home in Encino.
Funicello
was a 12-year-old dance-school student when Walt Disney saw her performing the
lead role in "Swan Lake" at her dance school's year-end recital at the Starlight
Bowl in Burbank in the spring of 1955.
She
joined a group of other talented young performers hired to become Mousketeers on
"The Mickey Mouse Club," the children's variety show that debuted on ABC in
October 1955 and quickly became a daily late-afternoon ritual for millions of
young Americans.
Like
her fellow female Mousketeers, Annette wore a blue pleated skirt, a white,
short-sleeved turtle-neck sweater with her name emblazoned in block letters
across her chest and a mouse-eared beanie.
But
there was something special about the Mouseketeer with the curly black hair that
unexpectedly turned her into the ensemble cast's biggest star.
Funicello
made her acting debut on "The Mickey Mouse Club" serial "Adventure in
Dairyland." She also appeared in two of the popular "Spin and Marty" serials
about a Western dude ranch for boys, with Tim Considine and David Stollery in
the title roles. And in 1958, Disney showcased his prized Mousketeer in her own
"Annette" serial.
Mr.
Disney, as Funicello always called her boss, also licensed Annette lunch boxes,
Colorforms dolls, coloring books, comic books and even mystery novels featuring
her in fictionalized adventures.
After
"The Mickey Mouse Club" ended production in 1958 and went into reruns, the
15-year-old Funicello was the only Mouseketeer to remain under exclusive
contract to the Disney studio.
She
made her feature-film debut in "The Shaggy Dog," a 1959 comedy starring Fred
MacMurray. It was the first of four Disney feature films she appeared in over
the next six years, including "Babes in Toyland," "The Misadventures of Merlin
Jones" and "The Monkey's Uncle."
Funicello
launched her recording career in 1958 with a waltz-tempo ballad, "How Will I
Know My Love?," which she originally sang on the "Annette" serial.
In
early 1959, her single "Tall Paul" became a top-10 hit. It was followed by other
singles such as "O Dio Mio" and "Pineapple Princess." She also recorded more
than a dozen albums, including "Hawaiiannette," "Italiannette," and "Dance
Annette."
Funicello,
who was the first to concede she was not much of a singer, credited producer
Salvador "Tutti" Camarata and the songwriting Sherman brothers, Richard and
Robert, for coming up with the successful idea of double-tracking her voice and
adding echo.
"I
never liked singing," she told the Chicago Tribune years later. "I was always so
frightened. But the echo chambers and double tracking gave me confidence and
made my voice stronger. And it was time for a new sound. Soon, people started
copying 'the Annette sound.'"
The
fan magazines, meanwhile, chronicled her tooling around in her 1957 Thunderbird,
customized by the legendary George Barris, with purple tuck-and-roll upholstery,
three-inch deep purple shag carpet and 40 coats of glossy purple paint — a
Christmas present from her parents.
There
also were fan magazine "date layouts" with Fabian and stories on her "romance"
with fellow teen idol Paul Anka who, Funicello later said, wrote "Put Your Head
on My Shoulder" and other songs on the piano in the Funicello family's living
room in Encino.
But
for all the Hollywood glitz and glamour, Funicello remained the same reserved
and relatively sheltered young woman her friends called Annie. Extremely close
to her tight-knit family, she continued living at home until she was
married.
"Nowadays
when writers profile me for magazines, they write something to the effect that
back in those days I 'represented' wholesomeness. In fact, though, I
lived it, and it wasn't an act," she wrote in her 1994 autobiography, "A Dream
Is a Wish Your Heart Makes," on which a 1995 TV movie was based.
Born
on Oct. 22, 1942, in Utica, N.Y., she was the first of three Funicello children.
In 1946, her auto mechanic father sold his business and the family moved to
California, where they settled in the San Fernando Valley.
Though
painfully shy — she'd hide behind her mother's skirt every time the doorbell
rang — Annette began taking dance lessons (tap, ballet, modern and even hula)
when she was in kindergarten.
Concerned
about her extreme shyness after she became a young star, she once asked Disney
if she might see a psychologist.
"Annette,"
she recalled Disney firmly yet gently telling her, "you have a certain charisma
that people respond to. I think your being a little bit shy is part of your
appeal. Going to see a psychologist would change that. Why do you want to change
that?"
Disney
also offered his advice when Funicello proposed changing her name to Annette
Turner. Disney, she recalled in a 1987 Los Angeles Times interview, told her,
"You have a beautiful Italian name, and once people learn how to pronounce it
they won't forget it."
Funicello
received a big career boost when Disney agreed to loan her out to American
International Pictures to make "Beach Party," the song-filled, low-budget 1963
comedy in which she was first teamed on the big screen with Avalon.
Though
he deemed the script "good clean fun," Funicello recalled in her book, Disney
took her aside one day to tell her he had "a special little request."
"I
see in here that all the other girls are going to be running around in bikinis,
which is fine," he said. "But Annette, I want you to be different. You are
different. I would simply like to request that you not expose your navel in
the film."
Funicello,
who wore a bikini around her own pool at home but never in public, wrote that
she replied that she'd be happy to comply with Disney's "no navel" request. Long
after she left the Disney studio, she spurned efforts to change her wholesome
image.
"I've
been offered roles as a hooker, as a druggie, all kinds of sleazy things," she
told the St. Petersburg Times in 1990. "No, thank you. I always had Walt Disney
in the back of my mind, whatever I did. I really considered him a second
father."
Guys
adored Funicello, Avalon told the Los Angeles Times in 1995, because she was the
"untouchable girl next door that every male wanted to touch but knew she was
untouchable. Every girl related to her and wanted to be that kind of a girl she
portrayed on the screen. She was very feminine, very sweet and very
vulnerable."
In
the wake of the success of "Beach Party," Funicello and Avalon co-starred in
"Muscle Beach Party," "Bikini Beach," and "Beach Blanket Bingo."
But
for all her success in Hollywood, Funicello later wrote in her book, "by my
teens I had decided to quit show business as soon as I married. Even as early as
sixteen, I was telling interviewers that I wanted to have nine children, and I
meant it."
In
January 1965, 22-year-old Funicello married her agent, Jack Gilardi, who was 12
years her senior.
On
the morning of the wedding, Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" cartoon strip marked the
occasion by showing Snoopy howling, "I can't stand it! This is terrible! How
depressing ... ANNETTE FUNICELLO HAS GROWN UP!"
While
making "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" with Dwayne Hickman a few months after the
wedding, she was already in the early months of pregnancy with the first of her
three children.
Choosing
marriage and motherhood over her career, Funicello went on to make only
occasional film and TV appearances over the next few decades, along with a
memorable string of commercials for Skippy peanut butter.
Funicello
and Gilardi's marriage ended in divorce in 1982. In 1986, she married Holt, an
old Funicello family friend who bred racehorses.
The
following year, she came out of semi-retirement to reunite with Avalon for "Back
to the Beach," a comedy that poked fun at the "beach party" genre they had
popularized. While shooting the movie, Funicello experienced the first inkling
that something was physically wrong.
"We'd
be shooting a scene on the sand," she later told People magazine, "and when I'd
try to get up, I couldn't balance. Shortly after that, I noticed that my
eyesight was getting worse."
A
neurological exam in 1987 confirmed that she had multiple sclerosis, although
she did not publicly announce that she had MS until 1992.
After
disclosing her illness, Funicello formed a fund in her name to benefit research
for neurological disease and became a national ambassador for the New York-based
Multiple Sclerosis Society.
In
1993, she received her star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame. By then, she needed a walker to get around, but she
reportedly still radiated the same childlike innocence as when she was America's
mouse-eared sweetheart.
When
she appeared at the Walk of Fame ceremony, she later told the Chicago Tribune,
"I thought, 'I wish Mr. Disney was here.' I get real choked up when I think
about it. Mickey Mouse was by my side, though. He's always there — he's a part
of my life. That really is something not everyone can call their claim to
fame."
Besides
Holt, Funicello's survivors include three children from her first marriage,
Gina, Jack Jr. and Jason, and three grandchildren.
McLellan
is a former Times staff writer.
