Pop History Moment: "The Mickey Mouse Club" Debuts

It was on this day in 1955 that The Mickey Mouse Club made its television debut on ABC; although the brainchild of Walt Disney, it was Bill Walsh who steered the series in its early years, assisted by Hal Adelquist.  Hosted by Jimmie Dodd (who also wrote the show's iconic theme song, Mickey Mouse March) the show would go on to feature dozens of talented teenagers as Mouseketeers, including Tommy Cole, Darlene Gillespie, Bobby Burgess, Doreen Tracey, Cubby O'Brien, Karen Pendleton, Lonnie Burr, Sharon Baird, and especially Annette Funicello.

In one form or another, the show would run until March 1996, and more than achieved its initial purpose - which was to raise funds for the building of Disneyland.

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Now Showing - "The Wise Little Hen" starring Donald Duck

On this day in 1934 Walt Disney's irascible Donald Duck (voiced by Clarence Nash) made his cartoon debut in a Silly Symphony entitled The Wise Little Hen, based on the fairytale The Little Red Hen; it costarred Florence Gill as the Hen herself and Pinto Colvig* as Donald's sidekick Peter Pig, whose debut this also was.

Animation duties were handled by Art Babbitt, Dick Huemer, Dick Lundy, and the legendary Ward Kimball, one of Disney's Nine Old Men. There remains some debate as to who the director was, though; it was either Bert Gillett or Wilfred Jackson.

*More famous as the voice of Goofy.
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Disney's "Casey At The Bat" Featuring Jerry Colonna

When Ernest Lawrence Thayer's poem Casey at the Bat was first published (under the pseudonym Phin) by the San Francisco Examiner on this day in 1888, surely not even the poet himself could have foreseen the enduring firestorm of popularity his work would generate. In fact, it would be years before he would even break his silence regarding its authorship, so unwilling was he to be associated with doggerel despite its mass appeal.

Almost the moment it appeared, the poem became a phenomenon... Stage actor DeWolf Hopper (future husband of gossip maven Hedda Hopper) was the first to gather acclaim for his recitations of it in vaudeville, a tradition kept alive by Jackie Gleason on television four generations later; the poem has also spawned sequels and parodies galore ranging in tone from the manic iconoclasm of MAD Magazine to the gentle social satire of Garrison Keillor.

Disney released this animated version, narrated by Jerry Colonna, as part of its 1946 film Make Mine Music.
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Disney's Silly Symphony: "The Three Little Pigs"

On this day in 1933 Walt Disney (via United Artists) released this little cartoon - actually a cleverly disguised parable of defiance in the face of mass angst brought on by the Great Depression - as part of its Silly Symphonies series; Three Little Pigs also introduced the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, composed by Frank Churchill, which became something of an anthem for the times. The film was highly popular, running in some theaters for months, and went on to win an Academy Award in 1934 in the category Best Short Subject: Cartoons.

Notable for depicting the way the menaced pigs help each other during a time of financial crisis (especially as it relates to the challenges faced in regards to housing), it's this very tendency which the Pop Culture Institute fears has been bred out of people following thirty years' indoctrination by a neoconservative agenda. Still, the message is apt, even today, when a return to cooperation might be just the thing to help people out of the morass caused by competition.

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Meet Disney's Newest Princess

And her name's Maddy!

And the story's set in New Orleans!

Oh yeah, and she's black!



[S O U R C E]
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