ANNETTE (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Annette Joanne
Funicello (born October 22, 1942) is an American singer and actress.
She was Walt Disney's most popular cast member of The Mickey Mouse
Club, and went on to appear in a series of beach party films.
Born in Utica, New York to Italian-Americans Joseph and Virginia
Funicello, she took dancing and music lessons as a child to try to
overcome shyness. Her family moved to Southern California when she
was four years old.
In 1955, the 12-year-old was discovered by Walt Disney as she
performed as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake at a dance recital in
Burbank, California. On the basis of this appearance, Disney cast
her as one of the original "Mouseketeers". She was the last to be
selected, and the only one picked by Walt Disney. She soon proved to
be very popular. 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 of the Mouseketeers' sketches and
dance routines, Funicello starred or co-starred in a number of
serials on The Mickey Mouse Club. These included Adventure in
Dairyland, her own self-titled serial, 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. It was in a hayride scene in the
Annette serial that she performed the song that was to launch her
singing career. The studio received so much fan mail about "How Will
I Know My Love," written by the Sherman Brothers, that Walt Disney
decided to issue it as a single, and to give Funicello, somewhat
unwillingly, a recording contract.
After the Mickey Mouse Club she remained under contract with Disney
for a time, with television roles in Zorro, Elfego Baca and The
Horsemasters. 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, Annette 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. Walt Disney was reportedly a fan of 1950s pop star Teresa
Brewer and tried to pattern Annette'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.
After maturing, she moved on from Disney and became a teen idol,
starring in a series of "Beach Party" movies with Frankie Avalon for
American International Pictures. These included Beach Party, Muscle
Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild
Bikini and Pajama Party.
When she was cast in her first beach movie, Walt Disney reportedly
requested that she only wear modest bathing suits and keep her navel
hidden. However, Annette 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 showed 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 so iconic as "beach picture" stars that they
were re-united in 1987 for the Paramount film Back to the Beach,
parodying their own surf-and-sand films of two decades earlier. They
then toured the country as a singing act. In 1979, Funicello began
starring in a series of television commercials for Skippy peanut
butter.
Funicello was married to her first husband, Jack Gilardi, from 1965
until 1981. They had three children together, Gina (b. 1966), Jack,
Jr. (b. 1970) and Jason (b. 1974). In 1986, she married California
harness racing horse breeder/trainer Glen Holt. Annette and Glen
were frequently seen at Los Alamitos Race Course and at Fairplex in
Pomona in the 1980s and 1990s attending harness horse races. In
1987, Annette 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 family.
Funicello announced in 1992 that she suffers 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. That same year, she was inducted
as a Disney Legend. In 1993, she opened the Annette Funicello Fund
for Neurological Disorders at the California Community Foundation.
She dictated her memoirs in 1994, filmed a series of introductions
to videotapes of the Mickey Mouse Club, and the following year took
part in a TV biography of her life based on her memoir. She then
withdrew from public life, though in 1997 she was the guest of honor
at a party celebrating her "Angel in Show Business" award.
In recent years, Funicello has been struggling against the ravages
of multiple sclerosis; her courage and high spirits in the face of
intense pain and decreasing mobility have been inspirational, as
well as beneficial in helping to raise funds for further research of
degenerative diseases.
Today Annette is sixty eight and under 24 hour care, but our images
of Annette still consist of the young and radiant brunette singing
on the beach. As Annette once said, "I think to this day, people
kind of expect to see Frankie and me at the beach, wandering around
in the sand. Some things just get frozen in time."
(Info edited mainly from Wikipedia)
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