The death of actress and singer Annette Funicello was announced today after she succumbed to complications from the multiple sclerosis that had blighted her life in her last decades. Many Baby Boomers will recall watching her on the Mickey Mouse Club where she was a Mouseketeer in the late fifties, personally selected by Walt Disney himself, and she appeared in many of their productions including films such as The Shaggy Dog and the Misadventures of Merlin Jones, both big hits for the studio.
But it would be AIP's Beach Party and its many spin-offs which made her a cult star, where she would often be wholesomely romanced by Frankie Avalon in teen hits like Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Pajama Party (with her other regular leading man Tommy Kirk), Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. By the time Fireball 500 and Thunder Alley came around, she had been a star for around ten years and a role in the Monkees' Head looked to more grown up movies, but it was a flop which only later became a cult must-see. After that, she mostly stuck with television until she became too ill to work, but her last film was Back to the Beach in 1987, a nostalgic return to the movies that made her a sixties icon.
