A Rat Race: Keeping up with the Mousketeers
What really struck me when reading Jennifer Armstrong’s thoroughly delightful Why? Because We Still Like You: An Oral History of the Mickey Mouse Club is just how hard it was to be a Mousketeer. Armstrong interviewed past cast members, everyone from Cubby O’Brien to Sharon Baird to Karen Pendleton (Annette Funicello can no longer give interviews), culled through documents from the show and old photos, and pulled information from newspapers, archives, and other books, including autobiographies of cast members and The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book. She weaves her many sources of information together to make a cohesive, engaging, and lively portrait of the Mickey Mouse Club show, from its first inception through its hugely popular television run and on into its various revivals, both here in the United States and abroad.
First conceived by Walt Disney as a marketing tool to promote his newly-opened Disneyland, The Mickey Mouse Club was anything but a Mickey Mouse operation: it was a full-steam ahead, highly managed, detail-oriented corporate strategem designed to carry the entire Disney Brand to the next level. What that meant for the Mousketeers themselves was hard work, from the initial arduous audition process through the all-consuming role of being the face of Disneyland, at all times: fresh, talented, clean, and energetic. Kids were let go if their image no longer worked for Disney — the cast was culled regularly — and new talent was brought in. The experience was a tough one but one that seemed to prepare many of the Mousketeers for long, though not as glorified, careers in entertainment. For others of the cast, the toll taken was too high: some of them suffered years of insecurity, always looking to once again find the limelight and adoration they knew for such a brief period in their lives. And still others found satisfaction in fields as diverse as psychology and car engineering. But none of them can ever forget just how very much American liked — no, loved — the Mousketeers, for a few glorious years.
