The Mickey Mouse Club Informations

The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and returned in 2017 to social media. Created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised for four seasons, from 1955 to 1959, by ABC. This original run featured a regular but ever-changing cast of mostly teen performers. ABC broadcast reruns weekday afternoons during the 1958–1959 season, airing right after American Bandstand. The show was revived three times after its initial 1955–1959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication as The New Mickey Mouse Club, then from 1989 to 1996 as The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (also known to fans as MMC from 1993 to 1996) airing exclusively on cable television's The Disney Channel, and again in 2017 with the moniker Club Mickey Mouse airing exclusively on internet social media.

Mickey Mouse himself appeared in every show, not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release, but also in the opening, interstitial, and closing segments made especially for the show. In both the vintage cartoons and new animated segments, Mickey was voiced by his creator Walt Disney. (Disney had previously voiced the character theatrically from 1928 to 1947 before being replaced by sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald.)

The first official theater-based Mickey Mouse Club began on January 11, 1930, at the Fox Dome Theater in Ocean Park, California, with 60 theaters hosting clubs by March 31. The Club released its first issue of the Official Bulletin of the Mickey Mouse Club on April 15, 1930. By 1932, the club had 1 million members, and in 1933 its first British club opened at Darlington’s Arcade Cinema. In 1935, Disney began to phase out the club.

The Mickey Mouse Club was hosted by Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the Head Mouseketeer, who provided leadership both on and off the screen. In addition to his other contributions, he often provided short segments encouraging young viewers to make the right moral choices. These little homilies became known as "Doddisms".Roy Williams, a staff artist at Disney, also appeared in the show as the Big Mouseketeer. Roy suggested the Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears worn by the cast members, which he helped create, along with Chuck Keehne, Hal Adelquist, and Bill Walsh.

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, who were kept under contract for the entire run of the show (1955–1959), and included:

Other Mouseketeers who were Red Team members but not on the show for all three seasons included:

The remaining Mouseketeers, consisting of the White or Blue Teams, were Don Agrati (later known as Don Grady when starring as "Robbie" on the long-running sitcom My Three Sons), Sherry Alberoni, Billie Jean Beanblossom, Eileen Diamond, Dickie Dodd (not related to Jimmie Dodd), Mary Espinosa, Bonnie Lynn Fields, Judy Harriet, Linda Hughes, Dallas Johann, John Lee Johann, Bonni Lou Kern, Charlie Laney, Larry Larsen, Paul Petersen, Lynn Ready, Mickey Rooney Jr., Tim Rooney, Mary Sartori, Bronson Scott, Margene Storey, Ronnie Steiner, and Mark Sutherland. Larry Larsen, on only for the 1956–57 season, was the oldest Mouseketeer, being born in 1939, and Bronson Scott, on only the 1955–56 season, was the youngest Mouseketeer, being born in July 1947. Among the thousands who auditioned but did not make the cut were future vocalist/songwriter Paul Williams and future actress Candice Bergen.

The 39 Mouseketeers and the seasons in which they were featured (with the team color they belonged to listed for each season):

Notes: Cole and Day were originally Blue Team members, but were drafted to the Red Team later in the first season.

Johann, Petersen, and the Rooney brothers were all fired early in the first season. Dallas' brother John Lee replaced him, while Dodd and Steiner were hired as replacements for the Rooney brothers.

For the show's fourth season, only a small amount of new footage was filmed and was intermixed with material from previous seasons. It is believed[according to whom?] that only six of the Mouseketeers— Funicello, Gillespie, Tracey, Burgess, Pendleton, and O'Brien— were called back for the filming of new material, while Cole and Baird were merely used for some publicity material.

Other notable non-Mouseketeer performers appeared in various dramatic segments:

These non-Mouseketeers primarily appeared in numerous original serials filmed for the series, only some of which have appeared in reruns. Certain Mouseketeers were also featured in some of the serials, particularly Annette Funicello and Darlene Gillespie.

Major serials included:

The opening theme, "The Mickey Mouse March", was written by the show's primary adult host, Jimmie Dodd. It was also reprised at the end of each episode, with the slower "it's-time-to-say-goodbye" verse. A shorter version of the opening title was used later in the series, in syndication, and on Disney Channel reruns. Dodd also wrote many other songs used in individual segments throughout the series.

Each day of the week had a special show theme, which was reflected in the various segments. The themes were:

The series ran on ABC Television for an hour each weekday in the 1955–1956 and 1956–1957 seasons (from 5:00 to 6:00 pm ET), and only a half-hour weekdays (5:30 to 6:00 pm ET) in 1957–1958, the final season to feature new programming. Although the show returned for the 1958–1959 season (5:30 to 6:00 pm ET), these programs were repeats from the first two seasons, recut into a half-hour format. The Mickey Mouse Club was featured on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Walt Disney's Adventure Time, featuring reruns of The Mickey Mouse Club serials and several re-edited segments from Disneyland and Walt Disney Presents, appeared on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Although the show remained popular, ABC decided to cancel the show after its fourth season, as Disney and the ABC network could not come to terms for renewal. The cancellation in September 1959 was attributed to several factors: the Disney studios did not realize high-profit margins from merchandise sales, the sponsors were uninterested in educational programming for children, and many commercials were needed to pay for the show. After canceling The Mickey Mouse Club, ABC also refused to let Disney air the show on another network. Walt Disney filed a lawsuit against ABC, and won the damages in a settlement; however, he had to agree that both the Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro could not be aired on any major network. This left Walt Disney Presents (initially titled Disneyland, later retitled the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color when it moved to NBC) as the only Disney series left on prime time until 1972 when The Mouse Factory went on the air. The prohibition against major U.S. broadcast network play of the original Mickey Mouse Club (or any later version) became moot when Disney acquired ABC in 1996. Although it would not air on ABC again, Disney would run it on the Disney Channel's "Vault Disney" block 1998-2002.

Although the series had been discontinued in the United States, many members of the cast assembled for highly successful tours of Australia in 1959 and 1960. The television series was very successful in Australia and was still running on Australian television. The cast surprised Australian audiences, as by then they had physically matured and in some cases, bore little resemblance to the young cast with whom Australians were so familiar. Mainstream television did not reach Australia until 1956, so the series screened well into the 1960s when the back catalog expired.

In response to continuing audience demand, the original Mickey Mouse Club went into edited syndicated half-hour reruns that enjoyed wide distribution starting in the fall of 1962, achieving strong ratings especially during its first three seasons in syndicated release. (Because of its popularity in some markets, a few stations continued to carry it into 1968 before the series was finally withdrawn from syndication.) Some new features were added such as Fun with Science or "Professor Wonderful" (with scientist Julius Sumner Miller) and Marvelous Marvin in the 1964–1965 season; Jimmie Dodd appeared in several of these new segments before his death in November 1964. Many markets stretched the program back to an hour's daily run time during the 1960s rerun cycle by adding locally produced and hosted portions involving educational subjects and live audience participation of local children, in a manner not unlike Romper Room.

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