- Industry
Annette Funicello
Summer is here. Time for naps in the shade, cool drinks, a dip in the water and, if we are lucky, a trip to the cinema theater to see a beach movie. In the 1960s the theatrical features were packed with tanned and scantily clad teenagers. Clearly, they loved to dance in the sand to the sounds of surf music. The blue Pacific Ocean kept waving in the background. Let’s take a look at half of the genre’s star couple.
Annette Funicello was born in 1942 in Utica, New York, to Italian American parents. The family moved to Southern California when she was four years old. Because she was considered a shy child, her parents encouraged her to take dancing and music lessons.
When she was 12 years old, she was cast as one of the original Mouseketeers — the last to be chosen, and one of the few cast members to be personally selected by Walt Disney. Annette was the most popular Mouseketeer.
The song that launched her singing career was How Will I Know My Love. It sold so well that Disney signed her to a recording contract.
After The Mickey Mouse Club, she acted in a Disney television series, Zorro, and had a guest arc on Make Room for Daddy as an Italian exchange student.
Her feature film debut was in The Shaggy Dog (1959), with Fred MacMurray. That turned out to be a big box office success. She had several pop record hits, including “Tall Paul,” “First Name Initial,” “O Dio Mio,” and “Train of Love”, and “It’s Really Love”, written by Paul Anka.
Annette had a crush on Anka. It was mutual – so much so that he wrote the hit “Puppy Love” about her. But Walt Disney didn’t approve of the whole romantic arrangement. She always trusted Walt and looked at him as a second father. The relationship between the two singers never came to pass.
Annette starred in Disney’s Babes in Toyland (1961) and guest starred on episodes of Wagon Train, Burke’s Law and The Greatest Show on Earth.
Moving on from Disney in 1963, she became a teen idol, starring in a series of Beach Party movies with Frankie Avalon for American International Pictures. These were so popular that several follow-ups were produced — Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964). In Pajama Party (1964), she played opposite Tommy Kirk instead of Avalon.
Funicello was again paired up with Avalon for Beach Blanket Bingo (1965). Taking a different tack, the beach formula was used on a couple of stock car movies: Fireball 500 (1966), with Avalon and Fabian Forte; and Thunder Alley (1967), playing opposite Fabian, which was her last lead in a feature film for two decades.
Annette married a talent agent and concentrated on raising her three children during the 1970s, taking about three years off after each birth. She made guest appearances on TV shows like Love, American StyleFantasy IslandThe Love Boat. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she wed Glen Holt, a rancher and horse breeder, which brought her great happiness.
She was reunited with Frankie Avalon in Back to the Beach (1987), the story of a mid-western couple visiting their grown-up kids in Malibu. We see Annette, the daughter, trying to hide that she’s sharing her new life with a beach bum. The parents are equally horrified when they realize that their son, now part of some dark punk movement, has joined the local surf toughs.
In a review published in 1987, film critic Roger Ebert said: “It was the funniest, quirkiest musical comedy since Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would make their best beach party movie 25 years after the others?”. Ebert added: “This may be the most entertaining comedy on its summer schedule, a quirky little gem filled with good music, a lot of laughs, and proof that Annette still knows how to make a polka-dot dress seem ageless.”
Shortly after filming ended, Annette was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She hid her condition from family and friends, only disclosing her diagnosis in 1992 to counter rumors that her disability was the result of alcoholism.
A year-long Back to the Beach concert tour was planned for Annette and Frankie. Unfortunately, she had to pull out early due to M.S., which is a progressive illness for which there is no cure.
Annette’s autobiography, “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story” was published in 1994.
In 1993, she founded the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Disorders at the California Community Foundation. She lost the ability to walk in 2004 and lost the ability to speak in 2009, requiring a feeding tube and round-the-clock care. She died in April of 2013, at age 70.
Annette was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1992 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1993. She was America’s Sweetheart in the early days of television. She’ll remain a treasured icon for her generation and the epitome of the girl next door.