ShareThisSAN FRANCISCO - On Monday afternoon, Oct. 3, 1955, a generation of American kids raced home from school, plopped down on their living-room floors and waited for their black-and-white TV sets to warm up so they could watch a new show. It wasn't the first kids' show on TV, but they knew this one would be different.
It isn't an exaggeration to say that "The Mickey Mouse Club" forever altered American pop culture. Walt Disney already had the cartoons and animated films and had opened a big amusement park in Anaheim, Calif., only a few months earlier. But the addition of TV to the corporate vision put a lock on the hearts and minds of American kids that holds fast to this day.
For a couple of hundred folks who visited the Walt Disney Family Museum here over the weekend, time hasn't stood still, but it hasn't faded from memory either.
Bobby Burgess, Carl "Cubby" O'Brien and Sharon Baird were among the small group of "kids next door" who became the first teenage idols of the TV generation. They may be a bit older these days -- Bobby and his wife of 40 years, Kristie, just became grandparents of twins -- but they remember their time on the original "Mickey Mouse Club" as if it were yesterday.
There were actually 39 Mouseketeers from the first incarnation of the show, from 1955-58. The host was bit actor Jimmie Dodd, who wrote many of the songs, including the show's theme song. He was assisted by the show's "Mooseketeer," a burly animator named Roy Williams, who came up with the idea of hats for the kids fitted with Mickey Mouse ears.
Bobby Burgess, among the show's standouts because of his dancing skills, swoon-worthy head of thick hair and constant grin, never really liked wearing "the ears," as he and the others still call the hats.
"We had high pompadours in the '50s," he told the Family Museum audience. "And the ears always messed up your hair."
Saturday's program was moderated by New York writer Lorraine Santoli, a former Disney studio publicist who wrote "The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book" (Hyperion, $9.95 paperback) and who traveled cross-country by train to attend Saturday's event.
The Mouseketeers themselves became, as Sharon Baird put it, "like a second family," and still keep in touch with each other. As kids, Baird and Annette Funicello were best friends and remain in close contact today. Inevitably, the audience wanted to know how Funicello was doing and Baird, who'd seen her in September, was happy to report that her friend, who has multiple sclerosis, remains "as beautiful as ever on the inside and the outside."
Saturday's program included video of the show's opening, still photos of the kids and a clip from the time Cubby O'Brien played drums on the show along with his dad, Haskell O'Brien, and older brother Warren. Cubby had started out in the show's Talent Roundup portion but was quickly elevated to the front of almost every group shot you'll ever see of the Mouseketeers, once the show's directors realized he'd pair well with Karen Pendleton.
"People always want to know if Karen and I got married," he told the audience. "And I always answer, 'Yes, but not to each other.' "
While some of their cast-mates have had their ups and downs, most of the Mouseketeers have avoided the kind of scandal that seems to dog many pop stars today.
The reason, Burgess said, was that even the kids who had some show-business experience weren't professional "Hollywood kids."
"My dad was a meat cutter," he said, adding that he grew up in Long Beach, Calif., where his family remained even after he'd become famous on the show.
"And I had chores to do every night," Baird added.
All remained active in show business. Burgess was not only a regular on "The Lawrence Welk Show" for 21 seasons, but is also now hosting the just-renewed reruns that show up in syndication on PBS. He also teaches ballroom dancing at Burgess Cotillion, which he and his wife have operated in Long Beach for nearly 25 years.
O'Brien, who now lives in Washington state, remains an in-demand professional drummer. Over the years, he's worked with the Carpenters, Andy Williams, Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters, and, for two seasons, was with "The Lawrence Welk Show." He's about to go on tour with Peters after she ends her Broadway run in "A Little Night Music."
Baird worked in children's TV for years. Her small stature made her perfect for wearing animal costumes in shows by Sid and Marty Krofft, among others, and she was an onstage assistant to the melon-smashing comic Gallagher for a while. Today she is semiretired and lives in Reno, Nev., where she does nails at a salon.
They were no longer kids when Walt Disney died in 1966, but it still felt like a death in the family. Baird was working in Elko, Nev., with her ex-husband and another man in a revue called "Two Cats and a Mouse." When she heard the news about Disney's death, she "cried for hours," she said.
Burgess had had a chance reunion with his mentor only a few months earlier. He happened to be hiking near Devils Postpile National Monument, in California's Eastern Sierra, when coming toward him on the trail was an older man with his head characteristically looking downward.
"Mr. Disney?" Burgess said.
The man looked up at him and said, "Mouseketeer Bobby."
(E-mail David Wiegand at dwiegand(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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