In Which We Crash “The Mickey Mouse Club”

March 28 was the birthday of Jimmie Dodd (1910-1964), a.k.a. Jimmie from The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959).

Don’t get any funny ideas! I’m about a decade too young to have watched this classic Boomer show in real time. However I did watch it. Much like I Love Lucy it was syndicated in the ’70s, I’ll assume to glom on to the ‘50s nostalgia boom stirred up by Happy Days. This is quite separate from the attempt at a disco era revival of the concept in 1977. I’m saying that in the mid ’70s, kids would come home from school and watch (and enjoy) 20 year old episodes of a black and white TV show from the days of Eisenhower. It’s not that we had particularly open minds and were actively curious about the old days (though that was certainly true of ME, haha!) but in the case of most kids, the overriding issue, which we old folks love to flog to death, was one of limited choices, the famous “mere three channels”. Whatever the cause, I don’t think it was a bad thing. People were more connected back when they were all exposed to the same programming. That’s sometimes overstated, but I think it’s generally true at a sort of base, background level.

And we had pathways into this show at the time…it wasn’t like it was just dropped into our lives by an alien spacecraft. We had already grown up watching The Wonderful World of Disney, which crossed over in many ways. And at least one of the original Mouseketeers, Annette Funicello, was a genuine celebrity on her own account, mostly as a star of teen beach party movies in the 1960s. Some of the other kids went on to other things too, which we’ll get to, but none to the extent of Funicello.

We’ve already done a post on Annette, and so we peg our Mickey Mouse Club post to Jimmie. Which seems wrong somehow. Because…we really hated Jimmie, but there are many reasons for making him the default Mouseketeer in spite of the glaring, apparent disqualification that he was — ick — a grown-up.

To be fair, we hated both of the grown-ups on the show. There was another one, Roy (Roy Williams), a middle-aged lummox who was the butt of a lot of humor. But we learn a half century later that there was a rationale for the involvement of both of these grown men. Williams was a Disney staff artist and he had actually designed those Mickey Mouse ear hats the kids wore. As for Jimmie, he actually wrote the show’s relentless, insidious theme song, the “Mickey Mouse March”! Dodd wrote over 400 songs during his life. I am amused to see lists of his obscure compositions that omit to mention that one, which is about as familiar to some of us as “Happy Birthday”.

In addition to being a songwriter, Dodd was also a singer, musician, and Hollywood bit player. A native of Cincinnati, he’d studied music there and at Vanderbilt in Nashville, before embarking on a career on radio in the early ’30s. He had played guitar with Louis Prima’s band in 1937, and had toured as an entertainer with the USO during World War Two. You can see him in an early movie short called Varsity Vanities (1940), along with Peggy Ryan, Martha Tilton, and Six Hits and a Miss. He has nearly 100 screen credits prior to The Mickey Mouse Club, including movies like Private Snuffy Smith (1942), My Favorite Blonde (1942), Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (1942), Night and Day (1946), Buck Privates Come Home (1947) with Abbott and Costello, Easter Parade (1948), Whiplash (1948), Quicksand (1950), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), The Lusty Men (1952), and The I Don’t Care Girl (1952, as Will Rogers). He was also in The Three Mesquiteers westerns.

Jimmie’s Mouse Guitar makes an interesting study in contrast with Lou Reed’s “Ostrich Guitar”. In fact, if you think about it, it’s amusing to contemplate just how uncool a guitar can be. Think of Colin Hanks’ character on Mad Men practicing for folk mass. Just when Carl Perkins and Elvis were turning it into one thing, Jimmie was turning it into another, with all these Biblically derived homilies and overt message-songs for kids. He was technically the M.C. of The Mickey Mouse Club, but as such he was irritating, all chipper, cheerful, and bouncy, with one of those toothy game show host all-American smiles. Even when I was ten I wanted to throw him off a moving train. (Gee, I hope I’m not spoiling his birthday for anybody). And this was long BEFORE guys like Jimmy Saville and The Dark Side of Kids TV brought up the question of whether grown men should be separated from children permanently. The question has never altered: what’s he DOING here? Get lost! This is a KIDS clubhouse!

Anyway, the kids on the show were the main draw, and we liked many of the kids. In addition to Annette, there were Darlene Gillespie (who also starred in Disney’s Wizard of Oz experiment and whose parents had been in vaudeville), Bobby Burgess, Cubby O’Brien, and Doreen Tracy, and numerous others. Sharon Baird had been on the Colgate Comedy Hour with Eddie Cantor and in Artists and Models with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and later went on to work with Gallagher and Sid and Marty Krofft. Johnny Crawford went on to greater fame as Mark, the kid on The Rifleman. Don Grady went on to play Robby on My Three Sons. A couple of Mickey Rooney’s kids were on the show as well. And, typical of its times, no kids of color, I’m afraid, which only makes the relentless cheer seem chilling in retrospect. “Club”, indeed.

I especially loved the serials that were featured on the show, such as The Hardy Boys with Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk, and the dude ranch yarn Spin and Marty with Considine and David Stollery. Maybe I liked these best because as dramatic narratives they were timeless? Whereas the rest of the proceedings were dated, a bit Goody Two-Shoes, even for me, and I assure you I kept my halo well polished in those days.

I’ve only learned in recent years about The Mickey Mouse Club‘s second, more successful revival (1989-1994). My youngest son was born the year after it went off the air, so I am precisely the correct age to have been completely unaware of its existence. I know about it now because its alum all went on to be much bigger stars than even the original Mickey Mouse Club kids. These include Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Keri Russell. As my wife never tires of saying on this topic: Disney doesn’t fuck around!

For more on the history of variety entertainment, including TV variety, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.