When she was first hired for The Mickey Mouse Club, her response was, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to change my name now.” She was twelve when Walt Disney discovered her personally. And in the ’50s, it was pretty well standard for people to change last names that hinted at ethnicities other than Northern European. But Walt told her to keep it, that it made her unique and memorable. And then people pretty well just knew her as “Annette,” so the last name didn’t matter anyway.
Honestly, her contract with Disney was by the sound of it not great for her. She was apparently not represented by an agent or an attorney when she signed it, and it doesn’t seem to have had an end. When she did all those beach pictures, she was technically on loan from Disney, a fact Walt seems to have emphasized to her. Interesting to think what her career could have been if she could have worked for a studio that let her really develop her talent instead of just treating her like a teen idol.
She’s not talked about much for someone with so much pop culture weight. There is the discussion in Stand By Me about how “the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ are getting farther apart” on her sweater. There’s an Annette’s Diner at Disneyland Paris. But while Barbara Eden and her navel are still the topic of entire websites, people don’t seem to give the same level of focus to Annette with the ocean rear projected behind her. Perhaps it’s because her most notable work is still mostly not available for casual viewing.
Really, very little of her Disney career is available, now I come to think of it. Babes in Toyland, of course, which you might as well watch if you can. (Christmas and all that.) Presumably she’s on that week of The Mickey Mouse Club they have available on Disney+. And The Shaggy Dog. And that, from what I can tell, is it. Neither Merlin Jones movie; neither of the made-for-TV movies she did with Tommy Kirk. The beach movies, and the two hot rod movies, appear to all be on Amazon Prime, and she’s in the 1988 Peewee’s Playhouse Christmas Special on Netflix. So that’s something.
My mom was always a fan of hers; I actually saw Back to the Beach on the big screen, not a common statement for those of us who were ten at the time. (It was easier to take us than to get a babysitter, one assumes.) And Lots of Luck, a curious movie about how actually winning lots of contests isn’t always a good thing. I almost wish I’d saved her for Mom’s birthday next month. But she and my mom and Sally Field are all women of roughly the same age, and they all make me think of one another. Even if my mom, to my knowledge, has never gone surfing in her life.
Just as Annette did Skippy peanut butter commercials in the ’80s, I have my traditional request that you support my Patreon or Ko-fi!
