October 3 - The Mickey Mouse Club

On this day, in 1955, The Mickey Mouse Club debuted on ABC. As the Disney Studio’s second regular television series, The Mickey Mouse Club would spend the next four years coming into folks living rooms on a daily basis, becoming a cultural icon in the process. So much about this show is embedded in our collective consciousness. If I start singing “M-I-C” most people will either sing back “K-E-Y” or “See you real soon,” even if they’ve never actually seen an episode of the show. The thousands of mouse ears that are sold every day in parks all around the world. When something goes wrong or weird and someone says “it must be anything-can-happen day.” The legacy of those five hours a week has a staying power that any other show that’s ever aired would kill to have.

While Walt, of course, kept a finger in the soup that was becoming a juggernaut, Disneyland was taking up most of his time and energy. It was Bill Walsh, as producer, who really brought everything together. Bill hired both children and adults to be a part of the fun, conceived of rotating theme days, decided there would be alternating animated bits and live action serials and even worked with one of the show’s adult regulars, Roy Williams, to develop the instantly recognizable head gear for the cast.

The show was hosted each day by Jimmy Dodd, also known as the Head Mousketeer. Jimmy wrote the show’s theme song as well as many of the songs he performed during the show. Thousands of kids learned how to spell encyclopedia thanks to Jimmy.  He would often do short segments, known as Doddisms, exhorting kids to have high moral standards. Jimmy led the cast off camera as well. He frequently had barbecues at his home and really made all the kids feel like part of his family.

The main bulk of the cast, or Mouseketeers, consisted of kids. Over the run of the show, 39 different kids were part of the cast, divided into three separate teams. The Red team was the most popular kids, most of whom were around for the entire run of the show. Those are the names every knows, well at least their first names: Annette Funicello, Bobby Burgess, Cubby O’Brien, Darlene Gillespie, Karen Pendleton, Doreen Tracy, Sharon Baird, and Tommy Cole. Every episode would have most of these guys on it. The rest of the kids were either on the white team or the blue team. They didn’t get as much air time and rotated in and out a lot more than the red team.

Every day of the week had a designated theme and the segments for that day would usually revolve around it. The themes were:
Monday – Fun with Music Day
Tuesday – Guest Star Day
Wednesday – Anything Can Happen Day
Thursday – Circus Day
Friday – Talent Round-Up Day

The show also had a rotating cadre of serials it would show. For many of the serials, actors who weren’t part of the regular show, like Tim Considine or Tommy Kirk, would participate. Viewers of the show might remember Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Adventure in Dairyland and spots featuring Jiminy Cricket among others. Many of the serials from the show would be aired by themselves for decades on the Disney Channel or even edited into shorts that many kids saw in school.

For the first two seasons of the Mickey Mouse Club, the show was immensely popular and ran for an hour each day. In season three, the show was still immensely popular but was shortened to 30 minutes.  In season four, the show remained popular but Disney and ABC couldn’t come to a financial agreement about its continuation. Most of season four consisted of parts from seasons one and two edited down into half hour shows. Very little new material was filmed. After cancelling the show, ABC wouldn’t let it air on any other network. Walt ended up suing ABC and won a settlement. He pretty much agreed, though, that the show wouldn’t be revived. It was expensive to produce and the studio wasn’t making much profit off merchandise. Which doesn’t mean the fun ended.

Over the next few years, many of the Mouseketeers traveled to Australia for a live show tour. Australia was a few years behind the US in seeing first run shows, so The Mickey Mouse Club didn’t end there until well into the sixties. Starting in 1962, the studio relented to fan demand and repackaged the show into half hours for syndication. Even in re-runs, it was again wildly popular for at least three years and would run in some markets for five until finally petering out. It would begin syndicated runs again in the mid-seventies and would air daily for the first six years the Disney Channel existed, 1983-89.

The show was rebooted three separate times.  In January of 1977, The New Mickey Mouse Club debuted, featuring a disco theme song and a more diverse cast of Mouseketeers. Even though the cast appeared during the Super Bowl Half Time Show, this version was discontinued by July of the same year. The second revival happened in 1989 and was a hit for seven seasons. This version aired on the Disney Channel, once again five days a week, and was called The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (although fans usually just referred to it as MMC).  A lot of things changed in the updated version. The ears were out; jackets were in. The dramatic serials were replaced with sketch comedy. The new format worked for a new generation and once again everyone knows who some of the new Mouseketeers were even if they never saw a show: Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, to name a few. The third reboot is called Club Mickey Mouse and is only happening online.

It's now been 63 years since The Mickey Mouse Club first hit the airwaves and it's still going on. Will the latest version be as big as the original? Probably not. Success seems to skip a generation on this one. Does that mean we won't see a newer all-new version sometime in the future? You can bet your ears we will.

Also on this day, in American history: First Motor Powered Vacuum