, this weekend. He notes this just about every year, it seems.
The Mickey Mouse Club
The title card used 19551959
Presented by: Jimmie Dodd (19551958)
Theme music composer:
Jimmie Dodd
Original release: October 3, 1955 August 10, 2018
The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and returned to social media in 2017. Created by the late Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised for four seasons, from 1955 to 1959, by ABC. This original run featured a regular, but ever-changing cast of mostly teen performers. ABC broadcast reruns weekday afternoons during the 19581959 season, airing right after
American Bandstand. The show was revived three times after its initial 19551959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication as
The New Mickey Mouse Club, then from 1989 to 1996 as
The All-New Mickey Mouse Club (also known to fans as
MMC from 1993 to 1996) airing exclusively on cable television's The Disney Channel, and again in 2017 with the moniker
Club Mickey Mouse airing exclusively on internet social media. It ended in 2018.
The character of Mickey Mouse appeared in every show, not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release, but also in the opening, interstitial, and closing segments made especially for the show. In both the vintage cartoons and new animated segments, Mickey was voiced by his creator Walt Disney (Disney had previously voiced the character theatrically from 1928 to 1947 before being replaced by sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald).
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19551959 show
Members
Mickey Mouse Club was formed
The Mickey Mouse Club was hosted by
Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the Head Mouseketeer, who provided leadership both on and off the screen. In addition to his other contributions, he often provided short segments which encouraged younger viewers to make the right moral choices. These little homilies became known as "Doddisms". Roy Williams, a staff artist at Disney, also appeared in the show as the Big Mouseketeer. Williams suggested that the Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears should be worn by the show's cast members. He helped create these ears, along with Chuck Keehne, Hal Adelquist, and Bill Walsh.
The main cast members were called Mouseketeers, and they performed in a variety of musical and dance numbers, as well as some informational segments. The most popular of the Mouseketeers constituted the so-called Red Team, which was kept under contract for the entire run of the show (19551959), and its members included:
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