Doreen Tracey - my 341st pick to be named a Disney Legend

Former Mousekteer Doreen Tracey is my 341st pick to be named a Disney Legend.

At age twelve she auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club and was hired. She appeared for all three seasons of the show's original run. In 1956, she was featured in the Disney western Westward Ho, the Wagons!, and in the third season of the Mickey Mouse Club, had a role in the serial Annette.She was cast as Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, in a musical number from the proposed live-action Disney film Rainbow Road to Oz on an episode of the Disneyland television show in September 1957. The movie was never made, and when the Mickey Mouse Club stopped filming in 1958.

Tracey maintained ties to Disney and show business throughout her life.


Lorraine Santoli, a former executive at Disney who wrote "The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book," said Tracey remained close to her Disney roots, maintaining long-time friendships with her fellow Mouseketeers.


Tracey strained her relationship with Disney by posing for a men's magazine in 1976 with nothing on except her mouse ears and later wearing nothing but an open trench coat in front of Disney Studios. Still, she often appeared at Mickey Mouse Club reunion shows at Disneyland and at Disney conventions, last celebrating the show's 60th anniversary in 2015.

Bobby Burgess - my 211th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Bobby Burgess was a singer and one of the Mouseketeers in Mickey Mouse Club. He is my 211th pick to be named a Disney Legend. With his trademark smile and crackling energy, Bobby was the most recognizable male Mouseketeer. A Red Team member for all three seasons, he was not only an accomplished and original dancer, but was a good actor and singer as well. He was one of the original Mouseketeers. Later, he was a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show.

Karen Pendleton - my 154th pick to be named a Disney Legend

Karen Pendleton (born August 1, 1946) was an original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer on ABC television from 1955-1958. She was one of only nine Mouseketeers who were on the show during its entire original run. Karen toured Australia in 1959 and 1960 with a number of other Mouseketeers and Jimmie Dodd. She was often coupled with Carl "Cubby" O'Brien in the television series and in live performances as they were the youngest members of the cast.

After the show's run, she left show business and finished school. She got married in 1970, had a daughter in 1973, but divorced in 1981. Following an automobile accident in 1983, in which she was paralyzed from the waist down, she returned to college and earned a Bachelor's degree in psychology. She worked at a shelter for battered women and served on the Board for the California Association of the Physically Handicapped.

She is my 154th choice to be named a Disney Legend.

Lonnie Burr - 76th pick as a Disney Legend

My 76th pick is former Mousketeer Lonnie Burr. The following was taken from his Wikipedia page and from the website The Original Mickey Mouse Club Show. In 1955 he was signed to a seven-year contract by Walt Disney Studios as one of twenty-four original Mouseketeers. He was made a member of the show's first string unit, the Red Team, and appeared in the show's Roll Call and Alma Mater segments daily for the first two seasons. (A facial injury suffered during rehearsal kept him off-camera during the filming of Roll Call and Alma Mater for the third season). While on the show Lonnie performed in skits and musical variety numbers, both as a soloist and with others. He was generally acknowledged to be one of the show's three top dancers and his slightly husky singing voice caused other Mouseketeers to nickname him "The Velvet Smog" for at twelve he also resembled "The Velvet Fog", singer Mel Tormé.

Lonnie was a smart, confident kid, and that persona projected to the audience. He was the only male Mouseketeer that kids at home considered cool. Annette also felt this way about him, and the two were an item (a real couple, not one of the studio arranged matches) for a brief time.

Lonnie has his own web site, on which visitors can learn about the details of his long pre- and post-MMC careers. He also has given more published interviews than anyone but Annette on the subject of the Mickey Mouse Club, in most of which he has been quite frank. You can read more in his 2009 memoir, Confessions of an Accidental Mouseketeer. This sometimes brutally candid work has engendered more than a bit of controversy since it was published.

Cubby O'Brien - my 62nd choice as a Disney Legend

Cubby O'Brien is my 62nd choice as a Disney Legend.

O'Brien, like Annette Funicello, was personally selected to audition for The Mickey Mouse Club by Walt Disney, in the spring of 1955. Disney had been alerted to him by a staff member, who caught his live performance at a charity gala.

Though he had little prior experience in singing or dancing, O'Brien was placed on The Mickey Mouse Club's first-string "Red Team" right from the start. He quickly picked up enough dance skills to perform in musical numbers, though his solo performances remained centered around his drums. He remained with the show for all three seasons (1955–1958) of original programming, and after filming stopped, went on live-performance tours with other Mouseketeers to Australia in 1959 and 1960.

Cubby was the only Mouseketeer allowed to play musical instruments on camera whether this had something to do with Walt casting him or not is unknown. Certainly Cubby never had the rumors of favoritism surrounding him like Annette did, possibly because his skill was obvious to all. In the show's first week, he got to play drums for Talent Round-Up day in a combo with his father Hack and brother Warren. From then on he was given many opportunities to play rhythm instruments, but his talent didn't end with music; he was a fine comedic actor, and learned enough dancing on the show to fake his way through the numbers. His singing was OK, though he wasn't called on for solos like Karen Pendleton.

Cubby appeared in the Disney film Westward Ho, the Wagons with Tommy Cole, Karen, and Doreen Tracey in 1956. The four Mouseketeers had barely any lines and very few scenes in this tepid Western. As the second season started, the Mouseketeer production numbers shifted more to emphasizing older teen couples. Cubby still appeared in comic bits, but he was more often solo than paired with Karen.

Darlene Gillespie - my 55th choice as a Disney Legend

Darlene Gillespie is my 55th choice as a Disney Legend, and my first Mouseketeer. One of the most popular Mousketeers in the original Mickey Mouse Club that ran from 1955 to 1958, Darlene Gillespie rivaled Annette Funicello for the most popular girl on the show. Plus my wife remembers her and looked up to her!

Darlene was the early favorite with the show's crew, who were convinced she'd be a star, but circumstances forestalled this. An amateur performer at fourteen, she was a good dancer, was blessed with an extraordinary voice, was in Roll Call and the lead performer on the Red Team for all three seasons on ABC.

Darlene did get several scenes in Annette's first serial Adventure in Dairyland and new director Sid Miller seemed nearly as impressed with her talents as first-year director Dik Darley had been. She remained the second most popular Mouseketeer in terms of fan mail after Annette, with whom she maintained a friendly working relationship throughout the season. The two girls were often paired for personal appearances and gradually came to stand out from the other :mice" in publicity releases and media coverage. Besides leading most of the musical numbers for the second year, Darlene also shared a Talent Round-Up Day with her three sisters and had a show to herself with singing and celebrity impersonations in An Evening With Darlene.

As soon as the serial ended, she worked for two months in the Disneyland Circus.

She was the leading female singer and starred in the serial Corky and White Shadow during the first season. In the third season, she appeared in the serial, The New Adventures of Spin and Marty, with Tim Considine and David Stollery.

Gillespie made many recordings under the various Disney labels, including an album of 1950s rock and roll standards called Darlene of the Teens (1957). She recorded albums from Disney animated films in which she not only sang but narrated the stories as well, such as Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty.

There is some scandal surrounding her - she was arrested in 2005 in bad check writing scheme. the charges were later dropped. Several current Disney legends do have some scandal attached to their name (Johnny Depp for example).