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Reaching back into the dark mists of time, when I was a kid..I’ve always wished that The (original) Mickey Mouse Club stayed on the air.

The show was not canceled, as the ratings were still very good, but Walt Disney decided to drop it, after three years. Apparently too many lawyers in the soup between Disney and ABC..and there were constant rumors of rivalries on set between Annette Funicello and Darlene Gillespie, their families and their fans..Walt had better things to do than deal with the lawyers and the kids. He was pretty much invested in ZORRO at the time, he wanted ZORRO to be the primary focus of the Disney Tv studios..

And, yeah..it’s true.. around 1958, Darlene, Annette, Doreen, Tommy, Lonnie were teenagers then, getting too old to continue to be Mouseketeers on this great kids show..

Kids all across America loved the original Mickey Mouse Club, all of the Mousketeers were wonderfully talented, singing and dancing..I remember that all of us boys loved Annette, (but others of us had huge crushes on Darlene..) Lots of great memories~

The Mickey Mouse Club was broadcast on ABC from October of 1955, and continued on for the next three years..there’s no real reason (all things considered) why it could not have gone on for longer, simply get new, younger kids to replace the older teenagers.

The show itself was then syndicated in 1963..it continued to be shown around the world for years.. TV stations in Australia aired it for 12 years straight! Kids in Russia learned English from watching the show!~

of course, Disney tried to revive the show in the ‘70s..but that first revival was not successful..it really only lasted for maybe 6 months... then, Disney revived it again in the 1990s, (1989-1994) with greater success.. it featured kids who became big stars as they grew up.. Brittany Spears, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell, Christina Aguilera and others..

But..no matter what others may say about these later revivals, The original Mickey Mouse Club is the most fondly remembered version of the show..it was shown on the Disney Channel up till 2004, I think.. and, yeah.. if they ever resurrect it for a new generation, my bet is that the younger kids would still watch it, even if it is in glorious black and white. This Disney production was a tremendous kids show, one of the best ever made~!

Disney made about 330 episodes of the show..about 266 hours of original programming.. a good many of those episodes have never been shown on tv since the ‘50s..

But, I sure wish they were shown again.. and I could be a kid again..watching the Mouseketeers dance and sing! Wouldn’t that be wonderful! :>)