Saturdays with the Stars: Annette Funicello

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  Last month, we talked about Debbie Reynolds, who started at MGM but saw much of her initial fame come from the breakup of her picturesque marriage (and had to spend decades afterward reclaiming her rightful place as a big star of the Golden Age in the public imagination).  This month, we're going to take a turn toward television, with an actress who got her start as a successful child performer, but who as an adult struggled initially to find her footing, despite a public eager to see her succeed, and eventually became one of the first Disney stars to strike out in a more "mature" role after her fame (which would become the model in some aspects for future performers like Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, & Miley Cyrus).  This month's star is Annette Funicello.

Funicello moved to California from Utica, NY, at the age of four, and quickly showed a penchant for dancing & music.  A local dance recital caught the eye of Walt Disney, where he cast her in a television series that he wanted to launch around his iconic mouse Mickey, entitled The Mickey Mouse Club.  She proved to be the breakout star of the show, and she was still getting thousands of fan letters a week when the show ended in 1959.  Still under contract to Disney, she made a series of successful films for the studio including The Shaggy Dog and Babes in Toyland, many of which she was severely underpaid for given the original parameters of her contract (she tried to get out of her contract as she knew she was being undervalued, but the courts at the time refused).

But it was after Disney where Funicello found some of her most lasting fame, and we're going to talk about that this month.  The actress would go on to become a teen idol in the early 1960's with the "Beach Party" movies opposite Frankie Avalon, playing a girl who (to Disney's chagrin) showed off her navel in a two-piece bathing suit.  She would go on to an unusual career, one including a stint in a series of sports films, an endorsement brand deal, and becoming the face of a disease that would eventually claim her life (but her public conversation about it brought awareness to an until-then little-discussed illness).