NEW YORK — Annette Funicello, who became a child star as a cute-as-a-button Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s, then teamed up with Frankie Avalon on a string of '60s fun-in-the-sun movies with names like Beach Party Bingo and Bikini Beach, died Monday. She was 70.
She died at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, Calif., of complications from multiple sclerosis, the Walt Disney Co. said.
The pretty, dark-haired Funicello was just 13 when she gained fame on Walt Disney's television kiddie "club," an amalgam of stories, songs and dance routines that ran from 1955 to 1959. She appeared in mouse ears, a pleated skirt and a sweater emblazoned with her name.
Cast after Disney saw her at a dance recital, she soon began receiving 8,000 fan letters a month, 10 times more than any of the 23 other young performers.
When The Mickey Mouse Club ended, Annette (as she was often billed) was the only club member to remain under contract to the studio.
She also became a recording star, singing on 15 albums and hit singles such as "Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess."
Outgrowing the kid roles by the early '60s, Annette teamed with Avalon in a series of movies for American-International, the first film company to exploit the burgeoning teen market. The 1965 "Beach Blanket Bingo," for example, featured subplots involving a mermaid, a motorcycle gang and a skydiving school run by Don Rickles, and comic touches by silent film star Buster Keaton.
Those titles included Beach Blanket Bingo, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.
Funicello was born Oct. 22, 1942, in Utica, N.Y., and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 4. She began taking dance lessons the following year and won a beauty contest at 9. Then came the discovery by Disney in 1955.
In 1965, Funicello married her agent, Jack Gilardi, and they had three children, Gina, Jack and Jason. The couple divorced 18 years later, and in 1986 she married Glen Holt, a harness racehorse trainer. After her film career ended, she devoted herself to her family.