Happy Birthday, Annette!

[merlinjones]

We miss you now more than ever!

[Eagleman]

Annette...big part of my life........when I was little........
she is miss
Not just a

Mouseketeer
also recall her in many Beach Movies as well.

[Bubu]

Yes! Happy Birthday Annette! As a very strange teenager I started a "Annette Funicello for President" campaign and made banners that a friend and I would put on benches at bus stops in LA (yeah...I was weird). She was an American Icon from humble roots, with her dad running a filling station in the Valley. Later in life, I spent the day with Annette, husband Glen, and daughter Gina at Disneyland at the Captain EO premiere. I have the most adorable story: So...a LOT of celebrities were limo'd in for this premiere...a LOT. So, as I'm standing there with Ms. Funicello, very in awe and very nervous...I get a tap on the shoulder. I turn around and it is a VERY nervous Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing from Dallas). First of all...the man is a BIG STUDLY HANDSOME MAN. Holy crap. This does not translate completely onto the TV screen. Totally swoon worthy, and the girls, boys and everyone was staring and swooning. He was stuttering and so nervous, so I'm thinking well, he might have some speech impediment or something, we must have patience...but no...he asked me..."ummm..uhhh...can you...uhh...introduce me to Annette? I can't go up to her myself, I'm too nervous..uh...please can you?" My co-workers were staring at me thinking...what on God's green earth is Patrick Duffy talking to me for?!!!! I swear, he turned into this little teenager with a huge crush on a Mousketeer. So I introduced him. He thanked me like I just gave him 20 more years on his life. Awesome moment. Annette was so gracious, and let him take a video of her. And yes...Annette does refer to Walt Disney as "Mr. Disney", and shared so many memories as we walked down Main Street showing me (and Gina) places she "played" as a kid.

[Eagleman]

Funicello proved to be very popular and by the end of the first season of

The Mickey Mouse Club

, she was receiving 6,000 letters a month,
according to her

Disney Legends biography - more than any other Mouseketeer!