The Mickey Mouse Club

"M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E." Before the theme song's memorable spelling became an audio icon, before the series even aired, the Mickey Mouse Club was the most anticipated children's programming ever. The Mickey Mouse Club is a classic variety show from the 1950s. The children's program features the famous Mouseketeers, led by Jimmie and Roy, who entertain with song and dance numbers. The show also highlights educational newsreels about children around the world, as well as animated cartoons, often with Mickey Mouse himself. This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.

The main cast members were called Mouseketeers, and they performed in a variety of musical and dance numbers, as well as some informational segments. The most popular of the Mouseketeers constituted the so-called Red Team, which was kept under contract for the entire run of the show (1955–1959). Its members included:

James Wesley Dodd was an American actor, singer and songwriter best known as the master of ceremonies for the popular 1950s Walt Disney television series The Mickey Mouse Club, as well as the writer of its well-known theme song "The Mickey Mouse Club March."

Always quick with a smile and a song, Jimmie Dodd was the unforgettable host of the Mickey Mouse Club. With his trusty “Mousegetar” in hand, the singer, songwriter, musician, dancer, and actor was a friend to children across the nation. He often transferred his infectious spirit through Doddisms, delightful instruction on the principles of good living, which he shared on each show to “help us all be better Mouseketeers.”

Joseph Roy Williams was born July 30, 1907 in Colville, Washington.

Roy Williams was a Disney animator and story idea guy who specialized in gags and pranks. He was also a skilled sketch artist, and often made live appearances at Disney events and at Disneyland to draw for guests. Though not an actor, Walt Disney himself decided Roy should be an “adult Mouseketeer” on The Mickey Mouse Club, where he would be called the Big Mooseketeer.

Made a Disney Legend posthumously in 1992, Roy made many amazing contributions to the legacy of Disney, from his story work on the animated shorts to designing over 100 Disney military insignias during World War II (including one for the Flying Tigers) and from coming up with the concept of the Mouse Ears caps for Disneyland to his appearances on the Mickey Mouse Club television show that helped inspire young artists.

Sharon Baird is an American actress, voice actress, singer, dancer and puppeteer who is best known for having been a Mouseketeer.

Baird appeared in her first film, Bloodhounds of Broadway, in 1950. At age nine she began regular appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour television show with Eddie Cantor. She did episodes of several different television shows, and an unbilled song-and-dance number with Dean Martin in Artists and Models (1955) (which also featured fellow mouseketeer Nancy Abbate), just before being selected for the Mickey Mouse Club.

Baird as a Mouseketeer circa 1956. Contrary to the impression given by Disney publicity, many of the Mickey Mouse Club cast had some prior experience in films and television. Baird was among the most experienced of these professionals, and performed with the show's "Red Team", or first-string unit, for all three seasons of original programming (1955–1958). Her specialty was tap, but she did other forms of dancing, as well as singing and acting on the show.

Robert Wilkie Burgess (born May 19, 1941) is an American dancer and singer. He was one of the original Mouseketeers. Later, he was a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show.

Growing up in Southern California, Burgess started performing at age five, which included dancing, singing and playing the accordion. At the age of 13, in 1955, he was selected as one of the original Mouseketeers by Walt Disney to appear on his new ABC television series, The Mickey Mouse Club, giving young Burgess his first taste of celebrity. He also guest starred on The Donna Reed Show as a suitor of Mary Stone (Shelley Fabares). Burgess attended Southern California Military Academy in Long Beach for his elementary and junior high school. By the time Burgess turned 11, he had appeared in at least 75 television programs.

Lonnie Burr (born May 31, 1943) is an American actor, entertainer and writer best known as one of nine of the original thirty-nine Mouseketeers who remained under a seven-year contract for the complete filming (1955–1959) of Walt Disney’s children’s television show the Mickey Mouse Club. The Mickey Mouse Club was the first national TV show to star children who appeared primarily as themselves as well as acting as characters in scenes and musical numbers. The original show aired in syndication in the 1960s, reran again in 1975, then on the Disney Channel in the 1980s through the early 2000s.

After appearing on the show, Burr's entertainment career included work as a character actor, dancer, singer, and choreographer. His career as a writer included being a book author, playwright, lyricist, journalist, critic and poet. Throughout adulthood, he continued to honor his Disney experience. As he was quoted in an interview, "Whether I someday scale the Matterhorn or win my Pulitzer, I shall always be known as Mouseketeer Lonnie; that is the way the obituary will begin. I have come to learn that is a marvelous association."

Tommy Cole (born December 20, 1941) is an American make-up artist, actor, and singer who appeared as a Mouseketeer on the Mickey Mouse Club television series.

Cole's singing ability earned him a transfer to The Mickey Mouse Club's first-string Red Team midway through the 1955–56 season. He remained with the show for its final two seasons (1956–1958) of original programming and, after filming stopped, attended Hollywood Professional School and went on live-performance tours with other Mouseketeers to Australia in 1959 and 1960. For the next several years Tommy Cole's career was based on live-singing at teenage clubs, public events, and as an opening act for other performers. He attended Pasadena City College, did a hitch in the Air Force, and had guest star parts on a few television shows. By 1964, he had realized that his days as a performer were ending, and so looked around for some other way to stay in show business.

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. 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.

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.

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.

She had a crush on, dated, had a first kiss with, and went steady 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".

Darlene Faye Gillespie (born April 8, 1941) is a Canadian-American former child actress, most remembered as a singer and dancer on the original The Mickey Mouse Club television series from 1955 to 1959. After her career in entertainment ended, she became a nurse.

Gillespie auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club in March 1955, was hired, and appeared on the program for all three seasons of its original run. She was the leading female singer and starred in the serial Corky and White Shadow (1956) during the first season.

Carl "Cubby" Patrick O'Brien (born July 14, 1946), better known by his nickname Cubby, is an American drummer and former child actor. He is known as one of the original Mouseketeers on the weekday ABC television program The Mickey Mouse Club from 1955 to 1958.

O'Brien, like Annette Funicello, was personally selected to audition for The Mickey Mouse Club by Walt Disney, in the spring of 1955. Disney was alerted to him by a staff member who caught his live performance at a charity gala.

Though he had little prior singing or dancing experience, O'Brien was placed on The Mickey Mouse Club's first-string "Red Team" right from the start. He quickly picked up enough dance skills to perform in musical numbers, though his solo performances remained centered around his drums. He remained with the show for all three seasons (1955–1958) of original programming. When filming ended, he went on live-performance tours with other Mouseketeers to Australia in 1959 and 1960.

Karen Anita Pendleton (August 1, 1946 – October 6, 2019) was an original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer on the ABC television series from 1955 to 1959. She was one of only nine Mouseketeers who were on the show during its entire original run.

Pendleton was recruited to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club when Disney producers visited a Los Angeles dance studio seeking young talent. She toured Australia in 1959 and 1960 with a number of other Mouseketeers and Jimmie Dodd. She was often coupled with Carl "Cubby" O'Brien in the television series and in live performances, as they were the youngest members of the cast.