Now Its Time to Say Goodbye
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| Thank you to whoever made this touching graphic that has been flying around Facebook all day! |
I remember watching the Mickey Mouse Club when I was a little girl. I
remember each of the Mouseketeers coming out and calling out their names for
roll call. Annette was always the one that made me smile. Like many boys and
girls of the late 1950s and 60s watching the original Mouseketeers original
airings and then (those like me) watching the reruns they all became like
friend/family. Annette’s smile made her stand out. As I grew Annette was head
of me showing how to be positive and wholesome. She set a standard for
generations of children.
When I heard Annette was diagnosed with MS I was saddened as many fans
were. I have been in awe of her strength of character and determination to stay
positive. She reached out and encouraged people to think of others less
fortunate and help them. She did it not to find pity for herself but to help
many others besides herself. She shined a light on the horrible illness that evidentially
took her from her family, friends and fans way too soon.
If you wish to honor her memory go to her site and see how you can donate
to help find a cure for neurological disorders. Click the link below:
Annette Joanne
Funicello (October
22, 1942 – April 8, 2013) was an American actress and singer.
Beginning her professional career as a child
performer at the age of twelve,
Funicello rose to prominence as one of the most popular
"Mouseketeers" on the original Mickey
Mouse Club. As a teenager,
she transitioned to a successful career as a singer with the pop singles
"O Dio Mio," "Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess",
as well as establishing herself as a film actress, popularizing the successful
"Beach Party" genre alongside co-star Frankie Avalon during the mid-1960s.
In 1992, Funicello
announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis. She died from complications of the disease on April 8, 2013
Early life
Annette Joanne Funicello was born in Utica,
New York, to Italian Americans Virginia Jeanne (née Albano) and
Joseph Funicello. Her family moved to Southern California when she was
four years old.[5]
Career
The
Mickey Mouse Club
Annette took dancing and music lessons as a child
to overcome 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. She proved to be very popular and by the end of the first season
of Mickey Mouse Club, she was receiving 6,000 letters a month,
according to her Disney Legends biography.
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, Walt
Disney Presents: Annette (which co-starred Richard Deacon), and
the second and third Spin and Marty serials – The
Further Adventures of Spin and Marty and The New Adventures of
Spin and Marty.
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. By then, MGM's The Wizard of Oz had already 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
popularity of the MGM film on television. Disney ultimately replaced this film
project with a new adaptation of Babes in Toyland (1961).
In a hayride scene 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), that Walt Disney issued it as a
single, and gave Funicello (somewhat unwillingly) a recording contract.
Singing
and acting
After the Mickey Mouse Club, she
remained under contract with Disney for a time, with television roles in Zorro, Elfego
Baca, and The Horsemasters. For Zorro she
played Anita Campillo in a three-episode storyline about a teen-aged girl who
arrives in Los Angeles to visit a father who does not seem to exist. This role
was reportedly a birthday present from Walt Disney, and the first of two
different characters played opposite Guy Williams as Zorro. Annette
also co-starred in Disney-produced movies such as The Shaggy Dog, Babes
in Toyland, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and The
Monkey's Uncle.
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. Annette also
recorded "It's Really Love" in 1959, a reworking of an earlier Paul
Anka song called "Toot Sweet"; Anka reworked the song for a
third time in 1962 as "Johnny's Theme" and it opened The
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on television for the next three
decades. Paul Anka was noted to have a crush on her, however, Walt Disney
overprotected Annette, which broke Paul's heart. This resulted in his song
"Puppy Love", which was inspired by his hopeless romantic crush on
Annette.
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
in 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.
Beach
icon and spokeswoman
Funicello moved on from Disney to become a teen
idol, starring in a series of "Beach Party" movies with Frankie
Avalon for American International Pictures. These included Beach
Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini
Beach (1964), Pajama Party (1964), Beach
Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).
The wholesome image earned in these films gained her a reference in the Grease song
"Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee."
When she was cast in her first beach
movie, Walt Disney requested that she only wear modest bathing suits and keep her navel covered.
However, she wore a pink two-piece in Beach Party, a white
two-piece fishnet suit in the second film (Muscle Beach Party) and a
blue and white bikini in the third (Bikini Beach). All three swimsuits
bared her navel, particularly in Bikini Beach, where it is visible
extensively during close up shots in a sequence early in the film when she
meets Frankie Avalon's "Potato Bug" character outside his tent.
She and Avalon became iconic as "beach
picture" stars and were re-united in 1987 for the Paramount film Back
to the Beach, parodying their own surf-and-sand films two decades earlier.
They toured the country as a singing act.
In 1979 Funicello began starring in a series
of television commercials for Skippy peanut butter.
Her autobiography, dictated to Patricia
Romanowski and published in 1994, was A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart
Makes: My Story. The title was taken from a song from the Disney
movie Cinderella. A made-for-TV movie based on the book, A
Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story, was made in
1995. In the final scene, the actress portraying Funicello (Eva LaRue), using a
wheelchair, turns away from the camera — turning back, it is Funicello
herself, who delivered a message to a group of children. During this period,
she produced a line of teddy bears for the Annette Funicello Collectible Bear
Company. The last collection in the series was made in 2004. She also had
her own fragrance called "Cello, by Annette".
On her 50th birthday in 1992, she was
inducted as a Disney Legend.
Personal life
Funicello's best friend was actress and
singer Shelley Fabares. She and Fabares had been
friends since they were young teenagers in a catechism class, and Fabares was a
bridesmaid at Funicello's first wedding. She was also very close to fellow
Mouseketeers Lonnie Burr (she later claimed in an
autobiography that he was her first boyfriend during the first season of the
Mickey Mouse Club), Sharon Baird, Doreen Tracey, Cheryl
Holdridge, her "Disney" co-star, Tommy Kirk, and her
"Beach" movies co-star, Frankie Avalon.
Marriages
and children
Funicello was married to her first husband, jack
Gilardi, from 1965 until 1981. They had three children: Gina (b. 1966), Jack,
Jr. (b. 1970), and Jason (b. 1974). In 1986, she married California harness
racing horse breeder/trainer Glen Hold. The couple were frequently seen at Los
Alamitos Race Course and Fairplex in Pomona in the 1980s and 1990s attending
harness horse races.
In March 2011, her Encino, California home
caught fire. She suffered smoke inhalation, but was otherwise unharmed.
After the fire, Funicello and Holt then began
living full time at the modest ranch that they purchased decades earlier,
located just south of Shafter, California (north of Bakersfield).
That remained her primary residence until her death.
Illness and death
In 1987, Funicello reunited with Frankie Avalon for
a series of promotional concerts to promote their film Back to the
Beach. She began to suffer from dizzy spells, but
kept her failing health from her friends and family. In 1992, Funicello
announced that she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. She
had kept her condition a secret for many years, but felt it necessary to go
public to combat rumors that her impaired ability to walk was the result
of alcoholism. In 1993, she opened the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological
Disorders at the California Community Foundation.
On October 6, 2012, the CTV flagship
current affairs program W5 profiled Funicello as an update on her
after she had spent fifteen years out of the public eye. The profile revealed
that her disease had severely damaged her nervous system; Funicello had lost
the ability to walk in 2004, the ability to speak in 2009, and, at the time of
the profile, required round-the-clock care to survive. In the profile, Holt and
Fabares discussed Funicello's current state, as well as the numerous medical
interventions and treatments attempted to improve her condition.
On April 8, 2013, Funicello died at Mercy Southwest
Hospital in Bakersfield, California, at the age of 70, from complications
due to her multiple sclerosis. Commenting on her death, Bob Iger,
Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said,
Annette was and
always will be a cherished member of the Disney family, synonymous with the
word Mousketeer, and a true Disney Legend. She will forever hold a place in our
hearts as one of Walt Disney's brightest stars, delighting an entire generation
of baby boomers with her jubilant personality and endless talent. Annette was
well known for being as beautiful inside as she was on the outside, and she
faced her physical challenges with dignity, bravery and grace. All of us at
Disney join with family, friends, and fans around the world in celebrating her
extraordinary life.
Click the link below
to go to the Disney D23 tribute page for Annette:
Discography
Numbers in parentheses indicated peak
position in Billboard charts.
Albums
Mono albums
·
Annette – Vista BV-3301 (1959)
·
Annette Sings Anka (#21) – Vista BV-3302 (1960)
·
Hawaiiannette (#38) – Vista BV-3303 (1960)
·
Italiannette – Vista BV-3304 (1960)
·
Dance Annette – Vista BV-3305 (1961)
·
The Story of My Teens – Vista BV-3312 (1962)
Stereo albums
·
Annette's Beach Party (#39) – Vista BV-3316
(Mono)/STER-3316 (Stereo) (July 1963)
·
Muscle Beach Party – Vista BV-3314/STER-3314 (April
1964)
·
Annette On Campus – Vista BV-3320/STER-3320 (1964)
·
Annette At Bikini Beach – Vista BV-3324/STER-3324 –
(September 1964)
·
Pajama Party – Vista BV-3325/STER-3325
(November 1964)
·
Something Borrowed Something Blue – Vista
BV-3328/STER-3328 (1964)
·
Annette Sings Golden Surfin' Hits – Vista
BV-3327/STER-3327 (July 1965)
·
Annette Funicello – Vista BV-4037 (1972)
·
Annette Funicello Country Album – Starview 4001
(1984)
·
Best of Annette – Rhino RNDF-206 (1984) (also
released as a picture disk on Rhino RNLP-702)
·
Annette: A Musical Reunion with America's Girl-Next-Door – Vista 60010
(1993)
·
A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes – Time/Warner
520564 (April 16, 1995)
·
The Best of Annette – Vista (August 14, 1991)
Singles
·
"How Will I Know My Love"/"Don't Jump To
Conclusions" – Disneyland 102 (1958)
·
"That Crazy Place In Outer Space"/"Gold Doubloons
and Pieces of Eight" – Disneyland 114 (1958)
·
"Tall Paul"
(#7)/"Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me" – Disneyland 118 (1959)
·
"Jo
Jo the Dog Faced Boy" (#73)/"Lonely Guitar" – Vista 336
(1959) (later pressings feature "Love Me Forever" as the B-side)
·
"Lonely
Guitar" (#50)/"Wild Willie" – Vista 339 (1959)
·
"Especially
For You"/"My Heart Became Of Age" – Vista 344 (1959)
·
"First
Name Initial" (#20)/"My Heart Became of Age" (#74) – Vista
349 (1959)
·
"O
Dio Mio" (#10)/"It Took Dreams" – Vista 354 (1960)
·
"Train
of Love" (#36)/"Tell Me Who's The Girl" – Vista 359 (1960)
·
"Pineapple
Princess" (#11)/"Luau Cha Cha
Cha" – Vista 362 (1960)
·
"Talk to Me Baby" (#92)/"I Love You
Baby" – Vista 369 (1960)
·
"Dream Boy" (#87)/"Please, Please
Signore" – Vista 374 (1961)
·
"Indian Giver"/"Mama, Mama Rosa (Where's The
Spumoni)" – Vista 375 (1961)
·
"Hawaiian Love Talk"/"Blue Muu Muu"
(#107) – Vista 384 (1961)
·
"Dreamin' About You" (#106)/"Strummin'
Song" – Vista 388 (1961)
·
"That Crazy Place From Outer Space"/"Seven Moons
(Of Batalyre) (By Danny Saval & Tom Tyron) – Vista 392 (1962)
·
"The Truth About Youth"/"I Can't Do The
Sum" – Vista 394 (1962)
·
"My Little Grass Shack"/"Hukilau" – Vista
400 (1962)
·
"He's My Ideal"/"Mr. Piano Man" – Vista 405
(1962)
·
"Bella Bella Florence"/"Canzone
d'Amoure" – Vista 407 (1962)
·
"Teenage Wedding"/"Walkin' and Talkin'" –
Vista 414 (1962)
·
"Treat Him Nicely"/"Promise Me Anything"
(#123) – Vista 427 (1963)
·
"Merlin Jones"/"The Scrambled Egghead" –
Vista 431 (1964)
Duets with Tommy Kirk
·
"Custom City"/"Rebel Rider" – Vista 432
(1964)
·
"Muscle Beach Party"/"I Dream About Frankie" –
Vista 433 (1964)
·
"Bikini Beach Party"/"The Clyde" – Vista
436 (1964)
·
"The Wah-Watusi"/"The Clyde" – Vista 437
(1964)
·
"Something Borrowed, Something Blue"/"How Will I
Know My Love" – Vista 438 (1965) (B-side is a new version of
Annette's first recording)
·
"The Monkey's Uncle"/"How Will I Know My
Love" – Vista 440 (1965) (A-side features Annette with The Beach Boys)
·
"Boy
To Love"/"No One Else Could Be Prouder" – Vista 442 (1965)
·
"No
Way To Go But Up"/"Crystal Ball" – Vista 450 (1966)
·
"What's
A Girl To Do"/"When You Get What You Want" – Tower 326
(1967) (Annette's name is misspelled on both sides as "Annettte")
·
"The
Computer Wore Tennis Shoes"/"Merlin Jones" – Vista 475
(1970)
·
"(Together
We Can Make A) Merry Christmas"/"The Night Before
Christmas" – Pacific Star 569 (1981)
Duets with
Frankie Avalon
·
"The
Promised Land"/"In Between and Out Of Love" – Starview 3001
(1983)
Filmography
·
The Shaggy Dog (1959)
·
Babes in Toyland (1961)
·
Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law (1962) (compilation of episodes from Wonderful
World of Color serial)
·
The Horsemasters (1962) (compilation of episodes from Wonderful World of
Color serial)
·
Beach Party (1963)
·
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)
·
Muscle Beach Party (1964)
·
Bikini Beach (1964)
·
Pajama Party (1964)
·
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
·
The Monkey's Uncle (1965)
·
Ski Party (1965)
(Cameo)
·
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)
·
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) (Cameo)
·
Fireball 500 (1966)
·
Thunder Alley (1967)
·
Head (1968)
·
Back to the Beach (1987)
·
Troop Beverly Hills (1989) (Cameo)
Television work
·
Mickey Mouse Club (1955–1959)
·
Zorro (1959; 1961)
·
The Danny Thomas Show (cast member in
1959)
·
The Horsemasters (1961)
·
Escapade in Florence (1962)
·
Wagon Train episode "The Sam Pulaski
Story" (1963)
·
"Rosetta", The Greatest Show on Earth (1964)
·
Easy Does It... Starring Frankie Avalon (1976) (Four-week summer
variety series)
·
Love, American Style segment "Love and the Tuba" (with Frankie Avalon, 1973)
·
Frankie and Annette: The Second Time Around (1978) (unsold pilot)
·
"Ghostbreaker"
episode Fantasy Island (1978)
·
The Mouseketeer Reunion (November 23, 1980)
·
Lots of Luck (1985;
made-for-TV movie)
·
Growing Pains episode
"The Seavers and the Cleavers" (guest star, 1985)
·
Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special (guest star, 1988)
·
Full House episode
"Joey Goes Hollywood" (guest star with Frankie Avalon, March 29,
1991)
·
A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story (1995; made-for-TV movie)
·
The Mickey Mouse Club Story (1995; documentary)
Book
·
Funicello, Annette and Patricia Romanowski. A Dream is a
Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story 1994, ISBN 0-7868-8092-9
·
The Annette Mysteries: Includes The Desert Inn
Mystery, The Mystery at Moonstone Bay, The Mystery at
Smugglers' Cove, and Sierra Summer
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