ANNETTE FUNICELLO Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

Biography » actors and actresses » annette funicello

ANNETTE FUNICELLO

Name: Annette Joanne Funicello                                                   
Born: 22 October 1942 Utica, New York, U.S.                                       
                                                                                 
Annette Joanne Funicello (born October 22, 1942) is an American singer and       
actress. She was Walt Disney's most popular Mouseketeer, and went on to appear   
in a series of beach movies.                                                     
                                                                                 
Born in Utica, New York to an Italian-American family, she took dancing and       
music lessons as a child to try to overcome shyness. Her family had 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 of them to be selected, and the only one picked by Walt Disney. She 
soon proved to be quite 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.