Disney: former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello dead at 70

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wfgodot

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Annette Funicello dead at age 70 (Houston Chronicle)
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The former Mickey Mouse Club star, who became a national treasure in America thanks to a string of 1960s cult beach movies, including Beach Blanket Bingo and Muscle Beach Party, passed away at a Bakersfield, California hospital.

Funicello battled multiple sclerosis during her final years and reports suggest she slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness.
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Click to expand...
more at the link
 
Rip, :(

You know what's sad? Comments underneath the story (can't recall which outlet) saying, "Who??????"
 
Well, she was one of my favorites, always. R.I.P. Annette.
 
Remembering a more wholesome era in American entertainment...........

Rest in Peace Annette
 
RIP Annette. Got tears in my eyes. She was my favorite. I was a little kid watching the Mickey Mouse Club with Annette. And then the beach movies.......

M
I
C - see ya real soon

K
E
Y - Why? Because we LIKE you!


M
O
U
S
E

Days long gone - great memories.
 
Loved the beach blanket movies - favorite fodder as a lad of eight.
 
R.I.P. Annette. I had a teacher in high school who was a distant cousin of hers and looked amazingly like her!
 
RIP Annette, loved your movies though didn't see you much on Micky Mouse. your movies were part of my growing up. remember many saturday afternoon watching you and Frankie! still watch them when they come on.
 
Ah - growing up at the movies. I watched the Mouseketeers but Annette's early years may have been only on re-run. (We only got two channels.) But my first couple little girlfriends definitely were Annettes, via her movies. (And the next few drawn from the still-wholesome, though-friskier Elvis movie-girlfriend types. But after that: set the controls for the hearts of the James Bond girls!)

New York Times obit: Annette Funicello, Mouseketeer, Dies at 70
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She was the last of the 24 original Mouseketeers chosen for “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which began in 1955, when fewer than two-thirds of households had television sets. Walt Disney personally discovered her at a ballet performance.

Before long, she was getting over 6,000 fan letters a week, and was known by just her first name in a manner that later defined celebrities like Cher, Madonna and Prince.

Sometimes called “America’s girl next door,” she nonetheless managed to be at the center of the action during rock ’n’ roll’s exuberant emergence. She was the youngest member of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour, which included LaVern Baker, the Drifters, Bobby Rydell, the Coasters and Paul Anka. Mr. Anka, her boyfriend, wrote “Puppy Love” for her in her parents’ living room.
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Click to expand...
much more at the link
 
I am saddened to hear this. RIP
 
Softail said:
She only did that after she got slammed. The girl has no common sense. She only knows what she is told to say. :banghead:
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To use a polite Latin phrase, Brit seems non compos mentis these days.
 
She was a standout in the first episode of the Mickey Mouse Club that I saw in 1955 when I was 9. We had just gotten our first TV earlier that year.

It was the thing to tune in every day as she increasingly began to burst out of he training bra.

R.I.P. Annette and thanks!
 
I am saddened to see of Annette's passing, but I do understand her later years were not so comfortable. But she had a great outlook and I applaud her for that.

I recall when I was in grammar school rushing home so we wouldn't miss a minute of Mickey Mouse Club and the Mouskateers. We loved them. Then when I was in high school, one of my classmates was a cousin of Annette's. She would talk about her fondly.

RIP Annette.
:rose:

fran
 
Annette Funicello's family: She fought until the end
The Bakersfield Californian
Monday, Apr 08 2013 10:27 AM
By JENNIFER SELF, Californian lifestyles editor

"Surrounded by her family and longtime friend and actress Shelley Fabares, Funicello lost her battle at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield on Monday. She had lived with MS for at least 26 years, the last two of which were spent in the Shafter home she and her husband, Glen Holt, bought decades ago. The couple moved to Kern County permanently after a 2011 fire destroyed their Encino home."

"Late last year, Holt allowed full access to a Canadian film crew to document the toll multiple sclerosis had taken on his wife, McDuffie said. The segment offers an unflinching — at times, brutal — look at Funicello’s physical deterioration.

“They were thinking the American news media was going to pick it up or that it would get rebroadcast here, but it never happened,” McDuffie said. “They sent reporters out to Bakersfield and they stayed with my grandparents for a day or two. This is the only glimpse into how far her MS had progressed.”"

More...

I saw a snippet this morning on TV that must have been from the documentary. It was unbearably sad.
 
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