User Reviews

I had a very dysfunctional early childhood, bouncing from place to place after my birth, to an orphanage for a few years and finally to an adoption at around age eight. The ONLY show I remember that I faithfully watched once I got into my permanent home, was the Mickey Mouse Club. Yes, I too, had those funny looking Mickey-Mouse ears--in fact, I had an entire Mickey Mouse Club uniform which I remember donning proudly for the first Mardi-Gras in my new home. Even had my name across the chest, I loved it!

There are many from this younger and more cynical generation who will view the MMC with a jaded perception; but for those of us lucky enough to have come up through the 1950's and on into the 1960's-- that was what we plopped down in front of the television set each day to watch. Monday, if memory serves me right, was Fun With Music Day, Tuesday was "Guest-Star Day", Wednesday was "Anything Can Happen Day" Thursday was "Circus Day", and Friday was the best of all, in my opinion, "Talent Roundup Day". The show had a lot of song and dance stuff, but the singers and dancers--were kids: like the rest of us, or at least so we would dream.

The show always began with that incredible Mickey Mouse Club March, which just about every kid in America had memorized. "Whose the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E." Then came the Mickey Mouse short to introduce the show... his donning a straw hat and playing an upright Piano one day, his spinning a lasso and lariat on another... donning a cowboy hat and six shooters still another... just to introduce the show. The there was the introduction song and dance routine... I can remember almost all of them verbatim, so attached to this show I was. After would follow a hodge-podge of so many things: newsreels, (yes more than a few featuring the grand opening of Disneyland)--but many others--I seem to remember a couple of kids getting to tour the great nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, then whatever was the serial of the time (Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Corky and White Shadow, The Boys of the Western Sea, The Adventures of Clint and Mac, Annette, and there were others, which evade my waning memory, sigh!) But they were all marvelous, and all featured... kids. They were fun, wholesome,they focused on fair-play, decency, and just about everything that most societal norms of today would consider old- fashioned and unrealistic which is, in itself, a sad testimony to a decline of society, in my humble opinion.

You had Jiminy Cricket on many shorts from Encyclopedia (where so many of us learned how to spell e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a,) to "I'm no Fool"... which always taught great lessons in life. There would also be shorts in which we'd get insights into how things worked at Disney, from watching Roy draw so many cartoon characters on that large drawing tablet he used, to an episode in the day in the life of one of the mouseketeers. So many great memories.

Who could forget the eager anticipation for the cartoon, or the little jingle with the mousketeers that preceded it: "Now we twist our Mouskedial to the right and the left with a great big smile. This is the way we get to see, a mousecartoon for you and me: Meeska, Mooska, Mouseketeer, Mousecartoon time now is here"... the run up to the door that would creak open, a drawer would push out and the mouseketeer of the day would run up, pull out an index card and read: "Today's cartoon is..."

And then there was Jimmie Dodd. Much maligned by many for his corny ways--he was the life's blood of the show. He wrote the vast majority of ALL of the music for the show, including the wonderful Mickey-Mouse March. He was the father figure so many would later need. And from almost every kid who was an original on the show, he was, in real life, exactly what you saw on the TV show: a man of deep spiritual conviction, who tried his best to set a great example for kids, having a family and several children of his own. He was taken from us at far too young an age; but his impressions on me, and my own children, will last forever through us, and our progeny. I have NEVER forgotten the wise advice he gave when he sang about proverbs and told us the one: "I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." and closed off with, "and now, I'll be going my way..." You were great Jimmie!

I grew up with this show, my kids grew up watching reruns on VHS, and I only wish Disney would release the entire series--uncut full length on DVD. Now it's time to say good-bye, to all our company: M-i-c, (see you real soon) K-e-y (Why? Because we like you!) M-o-u-s-e.

Fade to credits!

Best show to watch. Dancing and singing. Talent days. Circus days. Mickey dressed as a cowboy, twirling a lasso. Spin and Marty. Annette Serial. Jimmie Dodd. Roy ____. Special guest star day. Such good memories. So what if the talent were shills for Disneyland? We did not know. We did not care. We were totally mesmerized by their entertainment skills. The boys and girls were household names. They worked hard. Tap dancing is my favorite, and they did it a lot. They would be dressed up for different themes. I think I remember a Hawaiian theme. Perhaps there was a hula. This show did not last long enough. There was/were other later incarnations of this show, but the original was spectacular. It will always last in my memories. Annette's passing has been heartbreaking, as was her illness.

Disney was a genius, IMO. He had to do many things to create and sustain his growing empire. He had early failures, as well as later successes. He took longstanding fairy tales and made them into famous animated films, such as Snow White and Cinderella. He won 26 Academy Award Oscars. He was a star on TV. He changed the concept of theme park entertainment. His parks today are well respected and widely attempted to be copied. He grew a Florida entertainment empire in an area formerly forlorn and forgotten -- I was there when Walt Disney World began. Today, there are a lot of other entertainment areas there, plus endless tourist attractions and hotels, etc.

It all started with a mouse. The mouse had friends named Minnie and Donald, plus the mouse had a pet dog named Pluto. Now, how could a mouse have a pet dog? This sounds ridiculous, but in Walt's mind and heart it all made sense. We are all the better for it ...... :)

15/10

. . . some smirking bozo apparently named Lenny chortles on both discs of The Chronological Donald, Volume 3, 2007, referring to "Easter Eggs" supposedly numbering 10 "hidden" on random "menu" pages of these circular pieces of plastic. In the prehistoric days before streaming, the Dizzy Mega Corporation got its jollies by tormenting victims of Obsessive\Compulsive Disorder--aka, O. C. D.--with time-wasting Herculean tasks such as untying this Gordian Knot. Though five of these Mickey Mouse Club opening variants are indeed on Disc 1, THERE ARE ONLY FOUR to be found on Disc 2! Furthermore, this task itself is thankless, as only 1.5 seconds of the final 8 seconds of a 161-second animation differ. Only totally hopeless Obsessive Compulsive's could view the SAME THING for half an hour for such a nonexistent "payoff." This would surely plant a fatal "ear worm" in many if not most of them! A user-friendly movie studio, such as Warner Bros., would definitely compress the 2:41 animation and 15 seconds of variant material into a three-minute bonus feature easily accessible in one click!