The New Mickey Mouse Club

One of my more exciting and truly satisfying professional work life adventures had to be the time I spent at the Disney Studios in Burbank, California contributing to the creative efforts in bringing back one of the all-time and beloved classics of children’s television, The New Mickey Mouse Club. A small team of us had spent a couple of years in preparation which paid off big-time when the Studio heads gave us the green light to make it happen. What a truly exciting time!

          

      And, what a warm and wonderful sendoff I received from my boss and my fabulous colleagues at Disneyland. Bob Jani, the VP of the Entertainment Division (and one of my favorite bosses of all time), sent out a company-wide announcement…

         And one of the art directors made a “Mickey” poster for me that was signed by a whole bunch of terrific people who wished me well in my new adventure.

     And, my fabulous executive assistant, Betty Byers, organized a going-away party with all the trimmings. Great fun with some really terrific people.

                My partner and fellow co-producer was a highly creative man who had befriended me a few years earlier when I first came to the Studio, the extremely talented Ed Ropolo.

     We were an interesting match in that he was among the “old guard” at the Studio and I was the brash young new kid. We had a terrific way of working together and bouncing ideas off one another until we arrived at the very best solution for whatever was in front of us.

                Job One. Find the new Mouseketeers. We started that process by hiring one of the absolute best casting directors in Hollywood who knew children really, really well. Virginia Martindale was a real pro at what she did and, as a huge bonus, was an absolutely delightful person.

              Remember Bob King? The head of Studio Publicity was another vital member of our team and he put out the word that we were up and running and looking for a new group of kids.

                Holy Moly! Overnight we were drowning in applications, tapes, headshots, pleading letters and even a chocolate cake that came in the mail…all from kids and moms who wanted us to cast them, or their child, in the new show. We immediately designed a process for screening everything that came in and started what would be a rapid selection process because the announcement was out there that the show would go on the air in January.

                We began by auditioning in our “backyard” of Los Angeles then planned a nation-wide road trip that would take us to multiple cities all in search for both the main cast of Mouseketeers as well as really talented child performers who would appear weekly each Friday on the “Showtime” segment.

                To give you a good overview of what we were doing, I thought it might be helping for you to read two very interesting articles that appeared in several national newspapers and that do a wonderful job of telling our story.  

Kids Hold Their Heads Up High for Mickey Mouse Auditions

By Clark Secrest

The Denver Post April 19, 1976

“Hi kids! I’m Mike Wuergler! I’m the co-producer of the New Mickey Mouse Club Show! This is Virginia Martindale; she’s our casting director. How are you kids today? Have a seat over there, honey.

“Okay, gang, its performance time. We’re gonna be your audience. This (pointing to a parquet dance floor) is your performing stage. Is everybody ready to have some fun FUN?”

“YEEEAAH!”

“Okay! Virginia Sue, you’re first. Let’s hear it, honey!”

Wuergler and his entourage from the Disney Studios in Hollywood were in Denver Saturday to audition the Rocky Mountain area’s most talented small-fry for the New Mickey Mouse Club T.V. show, which will begin playing next January on stations throughout the nation.

In Denver – one of eight cities where auditions are being held – 505 acts had asked to audition; only 55 were chosen. Of the 55, only a tiny fraction will be selected to appear as guest talent on the five-day-a-week series.

These are tomorrow’s Annettes, Karens, Bobbys and Cubbys, perhaps.

Wuergler is a kindly gent. Walt Disney’s people are supposed to like kids, to be sure, but you get the impression that Wuergler and Ms. Martindale really do.

Lisa Fatone, 11, is first to do her stuff. Lisa is a dancer, and you don’t see many dancers with casts on a leg.

“I LOVE it!” exclaims the effervescent Wuergler. “Isn’t that SOMETHING! Cast or not, the show must go on!”

Next is Yvonne Granger, 10. She belts our “Hello Dolly!” like an old-time trouper.

“All RIIIIIIGHT! Let’s hear it for Yvonne,” cheers Wuergler.

As the morning goes by at the Denver Hilton, you notice that some kids look quite frightened. Only one or two are blasé. And then there are the eternal sparklers who just KNOW they have it made. There are those with the professional trademark of smiling and looking Wuergler and Ms. Martindale straight in the eyes.

The youngsters are well-behaved, polite. Small adults, you think to yourself. Unconsciously, you find yourself rooting for the less-talented. A little blond tap dancer is the most tentative. “How did you do?” her anxious mother inquires later in the hallway. “I did TERRIBLE!” says the little blond girl, and her tears start to fall.

Through it all, Wuergler and Ms. Martindale jot notes in the margins of their notepads. They are the only audience; parents and mentors and excluded, and must fret it out in adjacent room.

Two tiny singers. “TERRRRRRRRIFFFFFIC!” cheers Wuergler.

An acrobatic dancer. The record-player arm skips on her accompanying phonograph record.

Wuergler fixes the record. “Okay, Lynne…TA DAAAA! Let’s go!”

Wuergler watches intently, and makes some more notes.

“Okay, Bret, ol’ buddy. Get your bells up here and let’s listen.” Bret Imig is a bell ringer – he rings bells and makes a tune out of it.

“Hey, okay!” urges Wuergler. “Terrific! Isn’t this fun, gettin’ entertained by each other?! I love it!” The kids are at ease.

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandeeeeee…..” belts out a little girl, missing most of the notes. No matter.

Next door, parents and mentors are in a restrained turmoil. They can’t see the performers, but some are crowded around a small crack in the sliding door, trying to peek. The parents sit and smoke and drink coffee and sweat. They pace nervously.

Back in the audition room, Linda Sue Arnold, 8, is twirling her baton. (“I’m a twiller” she had written on her proposal to the Disney people, “I’ve been twilling for three years.”)

“DY-NO-MITE!” enthuses Wuergler and Linda Sue looks very happy. Disney folks are supposed to generate happiness, aren’t they?

One performer, dancer Diane Lynn Martinez, 12, catches Wuergler’s special attention. 

During a break, he asks her to do her act again; then improvise another dance routine. Then he asks her to sing with accompanist Doug McLemore. “Something upbeat, ah-1-2-3-4. Now, do a backstep and toe-touch,” instructs Wuergler. Diane doesn’t know it, but she is being tentatively considered for the coveted part of an actual Mouseketeer – there are only nine of them so be selected.

Out in the hall, more tiny performers are lining up for the next 45-minute session. They look worried, but not as worried as their parents. “We need a glass of WATER! Where’s the WATER?” one frenzied mother asks.

The new kids file in, painted and dolled up in their dancing pinafores and tap shoes.

“Hi kids! I’m Mike Wuergler…”

    In a hallway corner, a little blond girl cries.

A Big Job on a “Mickey Mouse” Operation

For Disney Producers Mike Wuergler and Ed Ropolo

By Bob Garner

          Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y  M-O-U-S-E!...or IS he?

  

        Relaxed on a couch in an office at Walt Disney Productions in Burbank, glibly rapping and occasionally glancing at a Mickey Mouse clock on the wall, are co-producers Mike Wuergler and Ed Ropolo, the REAL bellwethers and developers of the New Mickey Mouse Club and its new Mouseketeers. They’ve brought Mickey back with an all new show.

          Wuergler and Ropolo, along with their creative staff, put it all together and make it work. They’re responsible for that new fantasy in our lives…that visual coherence of song and dance, drama, comedy, adventure, video tape, film, and animation, hosted by twelve super personalities and talents, the new Mouseketeers.

          The interview moves down Dopey Drive and Minnie Avenue. An aura of perfection and virtue seem to ooze out of the huge beige walls of the Mouse Club soundstage 4 (the same soundstage used to produce the original show). Bubbly personalities of the “new mice” (as they are referred to around the Disney lot) seem to shackle with the enthusiasm of the stage crew, a condition almost utopian for producing the show. Behind the scenes, it’s actually like what the “Disney image” implies. Call it Disney magic, mystique, or programmed goodness, but the vitality, enthusiasm, warmth, and love are REAL on the Mickey Mouse Club set. Here, where the Mouseketeers are priming for a production number of “The Pooh Polka”, featuring the star bear himself, it’s as REAL as hard work, intelligently-geared creativity, firmness, patience and love…a recipe employed by Ropolo and Wuergler for making a family-type atmosphere that reflects in the faces of the cast and crew.

          Gleaming with parent-like pride, describing the show and its new generation of Mouseketeers, Mike Wuergler and Ed Ropolo, affable and genuinely gracious, display warm feelings and care for the subject that is their livelihood. “It’s a happy set. I think they’re smiling because they really enjoy what they’re doing,” says Wuergler, pointing to both Mouseketeers and the stage crew. “These guys on the crew ‘grew up’ with the old Mickey Mouse Club and love working on the new show. I guess part of their childhood is being re-created here. And the kids…well, they identify with the recent (1975-1976) re-released T.V. syndication of the old club. There are long hours for us and its tough work, but really, we have a good time. The kids aren’t treated like a commodity around here. It’s a family.” In show business, known for cruelty, the niceness here is for real and that in itself seems almost unreal. It made you feel good to be around it all.

         The New Mickey Mouse Club was prompted by the overwhelming success of Walt Disney’s original black and white Mouse Club which first aired on television twenty-two years ago, followed by two successful syndications. “The climate was right for a new one,” claims co-producer Ed Ropolo. High ratings and sustained public interest in the recent syndication of the old show was a preeminent factor in the formulation of a Mickey Mouse Club for today. “One of our own! We needed a Mouse Club of our own!” Wuergler grinned after an enthusiastic interruption.

          Mike Wuergler and Ed Ropolo, whose entertainment backgrounds are multitudinous, sold the new concept for the New Mickey Mouse Club after months of careful research and planning. Two presentations were made, a preliminary and a final one. “We had a lot of creative head-knocking and tossing about of concepts, ideas and ‘what-ifs’,” Wuergler reflects. “Then we developed a concept based on the old format, but with an up-to-date, contemporary approach. Disney executive producer, Ron Miller and studio president, Card Walker, gave us our stripes and here we are…producing the show that we’d hoped to sell!” Wuergler, former manager of special events for Disneyland’s entertainment division and Ropolo, former director of Walt Disney Production’s creative services, sometimes worked together on their past jobs. They had been toying with the idea of a new Mickey Mouse Club for quite some time. “Our hearts and souls were in it,” recalls Ropolo almost sentimentally. “There was an unrealistic deadline to meet from the time the studio said ‘go’ to the time we had to have the new Mouse Club on the air. The logistics were tremendous. We had to hire our staff (writers, directors, choreographers, etc.) as soon as possible and, of course, our biggest job was selecting the Mouseketeers – a task accomplished by Mike and our casting director, Virginia Martindale.”

          When asked how they were able to choose the new Mouseketeers, Wuergler shook his head, “It wasn’t easy, but each of the twelve, selected out of 6,000 children screened in a nation-wide search, generated a certain quality and spark – that ‘certain something’, charisma…the indefinable air that makes people notice you. It’s a sparkle, an attitude, an obvious zest for what you’re doing. These kids made you happy just watching them audition.” Wuergler knows what to look for. He probably could have been a Mouseketeer himself, being a multi-talented performer since age six. His professional background includes everything from singing and acting to technical directing and stage managing.

          “Also,” added Ropolo, “each one chosen in unique. We want to be able to bring out the individuality and special talent of each new Mouseketeer.”

          “We passed over some kids that’ll probably be big stars someday,” said Wuergler animatedly, “but we looked for charm, an ability to make you happy. We looked for energetic personalities first, not the well-seasoned professional entertainer.”

          “That’s not to say the new Mouseketeers aren’t extremely talented; they are, but each in his or her own unique way,” explains Ropolo.

          During the massive nation-wide search for the “New Mice”, Mike and Virginia covered ten major U.S. cities. But before they even left Los Angeles, the news got out about a new Mickey Mouse Club beginning and Disney Studio doors were being pounded by young hopefuls and their mothers; about 600 children were interviewed and auditioned at the studio. They came from as far away as Illinois and Texas. One rather apathetic young man, still in his soccer uniform, was literally pushed in the studio gates by his mom. “He was prepared with tap shoes and all his apparel, but his heart just wasn’t in it.” Wuergler remembers, “He went through the motions, did what his mother wanted and jumped back into his soccer uniform to return to his first love.”

          In answer to the question of what happened to him, Ropolo replied that he was obviously not chosen. He was one of several children who inherited his parent’s frustration in a desire for an entertainment career – referring to pushy parents – nothing new to child talent auditions.

          Casting director Virginia Martindale, expressed how some parents treated their children in the dressing rooms at audition locations around the country. Some parents asked their kids to lie about their ages, while others scolded little prissy blond ladies about taking their curlers out too soon. “Most people,” she says, “thanked us for the opportunity to audition in their hometown for a major Hollywood studio.”

          The search for the “special talents” for the Showtime segments of the New Mickey Mouse Club, is an ongoing process. “There is so much young talent out there,” says Ed Ropolo, “and we’ve already got top acts lined up to perform at Disneyland where we shoot the Showtime segments. We find talent all over the U.S. to be on the show – from banjo pickers to ventriloquists.”

          But the twelve new Mouseketeers have been chosen and are alive and well – working on the lot in Burbank. They bridge every ethnic background ensuring the broadest possible audience and, at the same time, create a feeling of personal association between the viewer and themselves. “They fill the shoes and ears of the original Mouseketeers,” Wuergler explains, “and they’re true individuals. The kids host the show themselves. There was just no way to replace Jimmie or Roy. They were one of a kind!” Both Ed and Mike agree, “If the T.V. audience loves them as much as we do, we’ll have a hit.” There’s a story behind each one of these bright young people and you’ll no doubt be hearing it from your own children as they get to know the new kids on the block. There’s a brand new generation with new friends to be made.

          The new Mouseketeers are a “chosen few”. They’re polite, well-mannered, definitely beyond their peers and contemporaries talent-wise, yet they’re not too polished. They ARE kids…having their giggles hushed sometimes on the set, finding time for a good laugh with a buzzer-shaker or a squirt gun. “Has anybody seen the doughnuts on the set? The youngest Mouse has probably eaten them all again!” They’re a good combination of talents and personalities – getting along well, even socializing during days off. There are disagreements now and then, but nothing serious. None of this was left to chance. It was the result of Mike Wuergler, Ed Ropolo and Virginia Martindale’s expert knowledge of child performers.

          “They don’t try to out-shine each other,” Wuergler refers to the ‘New Mice’. “They actually give each other pointers and help each other on the set without attracting attention to their efforts.” They don’t fish for gold stars.

          What do the old Mouseketeers think? “Their opinions mean a lot,” Ropolo comments. “You bet!” assures Wuergler. “They’re the old pros.”

          Former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, who was a guest of the new club, loves the show and the kids. “I’m pleasantly surprised by them. They all get along so well…there’s no jealousy. I only regret that they don’t have the opportunity to meet Mr. Disney. That was a great honor for me.” Darlene and Cubby, who also did guest shots on the show, hold affection for the “New Mice” that filled their ears.

          “A lot is required of those kids,” Ropolo explains. “They’re required not only to sing and dance, but to also sail boats, fly planes (one show actually features two of the Mouseketeers flying glider planes themselves), go through outward-bound wilderness courses, and fly hot-air balloons. It’s a fantastic experience for them…to learn about these things and actually do them. When they and the crew go on location, the children viewing feel like they’re right with them.”

          Mouseketeers are on the set at 9:00 AM. School is three hours a day in a special school at the studio. Good grades are a must and they learn the same subjects as other students their ages. The money they make is Screen Actors’ Guild scale pay. They’re paid daily because of a complicated shooting schedule, and the parent or parents of each child must legally invest 25% of the income for the child’s future. Mouseketeers from out-of-town have a parent or legal guardian who stays with them when they work in California.

          “The kids have recreation,” says Wuergler. “Basketball, checkers…we even show them our classic cartoons and features. And, of course, they’re simply awed at learning some of the secrets behind the production of some of their Disney favorites.”

          Some of the big-name stars working on the Disney lot really make their heads turn. Someday, most of the Mouseketeers will probably have that same effect on their successors. “The kids don’t believe their publicity yet,” jokes one of their teachers, Dick Wicklund. “They’re really just kids.”

          Kids, yes, but gifted ones who are the core, the heart of the New Mickey Mouse Club which has a format similar to its predecessor, but is colorful, new and concomitant – a show that belongs to our age of skateboards, Frisbees and moon-walks. “It’s entertaining – that’s our number one purpose; the education is in there subtly,” says Ropolo.

          Radio and television personality, Gary Owens, whose talents have been associated with Disney Productions in the past, expresses a serious side of his character in revealing his respect for Ed Ropolo and Mike Wuergler and what they’re doing. “The New Mickey Mouse Club is a marriage of entertainment and education s only Disney could do it. And the Mouseketeers they chose…I’ve had some of them on my KMPC radio show, giving news and weather reports, and playing records. They’re very special…a vast barrel of knowledge in those little heads.”

          “We wanted to re-create the feeling of the old Mouse Club, but adapt the new show to modern times,” Ropolo states, reflecting on the show’s early beginnings. “Now, the video tape gives it the fresh, live look…a “Laugh-In” style and pace approach that will hold the interest of youngsters accustomed to the video slickness of ‘Donny and Marie,’ ‘Sonny and Cher’ and Saturday morning kids shows. Some of the goofs are left in; the kids are believable.”

          The new Mouse Club features different themes for each day and timeless Disney cartoons (some of which have never been seen on television before) and new adventure serials (remember “Spin and Marty” on the old show?) starring outside actors. It’s a club of the seventies – more sophisticated and up-beat and even the traditional mouse ears have undergone a subtle change.

          As for the future…”We want to make our kids in the audience happy and be on the air a long time,” says Mike Wuergler.

          Who will be the next Annette, Cubby or Darlene? “I think all twelve of our new Mouseketeers will have their own fans and do well on their own,” surmises Ed Ropolo proudly. “Maybe we’ll have some big offers made to the Mouseketeers (he laughed) like a new series called ‘Mickey’s Angels’!”

          Mike Wuergler and Ed Ropolo are now seeing the rewards of their sixteen-hour days. Their genuine love for children, awareness of what’s happening today, and efforts to hold up the integrity of the Disney image, are evident in the finished product. And so…the pre-school to teenage set can “come along and sing a song and join the jamboree!” If we adults give them viewing room, that is.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
     We went on the air as scheduled in January of 1977. One of the most gratifying accomplishments was that we were rated the Number 1 children's television show in the nation.

     It was a creative heaven for me as I was able to contribute in some wonderful ways, one of which was helping to write the music for the show.

 I also became of member of the Writer's Guild when I got to script a show or two...

And I know you will get a real kick outa this...during the show's second year run, I actually got a residual check for having written an episode of the show. I never cashed the check because I wanted the evidence of having been paid as a television writer. (Look carefully at the amount....)

     
     Yes, this was truly a highlight in my professional life and I will forever be able to say that, once upon a time a long time ago, I was a Disney Television Producer.