from 2011
BOBBY BURGESS
talks about his start in show business and the "Mickey Mouse Club"
(Part 1)

by Scott Wolf

Bobby Burgess began his professional career as a Mouseketeer on the original "Mickey Mouse Club" when he was just 14 years old. Soon after shedding his mouse ears, life was the bubbles when he joined the cast of "The Lawrence Welk Show," and for the next 21 years he would where he would dance to the "champagne music" and into the hearts of audiences every week.

Ever since I began Mouse Clubhouse, I wanted to interview Bobby. As a fan of both the "Mickey Mouse Club" and "The Lawrence Welk Show," I was eager to learn his story, but also because of his Disneyland history. After all, he and the Mouseketeers were introduced on television during the live grand opening of the park, and he would perform there periodically throughout the years, even long after the "Mickey Mouse Club" had ended.

It gives me great joy to bring you this interview with a person that so many of you welcomed into your living rooms week after week, Bobby Burgess.  

Scott Wolf: When did you first find yourself interested in wanting to be an entertainer?

Bobby Burgess: When I was like four years old I would dance around to the music on the radio. Neither my two sisters nor my brother would do that. My mother and dad kept watching so they gave me tap dancing lessons. I started taking tap dancing and I really like it. Anybody would come to my house, I would say, “Want to see my new step?” and I’d go into it, “Oh, I’ll put on my tap shoes!”

Then, at the dance studio I met this little girl named Judy. We were Bobby and Judy from age five to age eight and then we broke up. Then on the “Mickey Mouse Club” they put me with Sharon so we were Bobby and Sharon. Of course, then when I got my job on the “Lawrence Welk Show” I was Bobby and Barbara, and then I was Bobby and Cissy and to this day I’m still Bobby and Elaine. I’ve done a lot of partnering work and all.

So I was taking tap and then I thought, “Well, I better do some jazz,” and then I took ballet, and about age twelve I started taking ball room. About age 13 I got sent out to Disney and then age 14 we started filming, and that was the beginning of my professional career.

SW: Had you worked in television before that?

BB: I did 75 amateur television shows. In those days they had a thing called, like “Your Town’s Talent,” and “Hollywood Opportunity,” and I would win all kinds of stuff. I won an aquarium one time, and to this day I have aquariums. Now I have a salt aquarium and another aquarium. And I won bicycles and I won a washing machine and watches.

SW: What did you do in the amateur shows?

BB: I would mostly tap dance, and really fast, that was my gimmick. Sometimes I would even play the accordion and tap dance at the same time. I played the accordion for two years and that’s where I first met Myron Floren, when I was in the sixth grade, never knowing I was going to marry his daughter when I was 29 and she was 19.

In the early ‘50s I won one of the amateur shows, and an agent saw me. She was the mother of the girl who played the daughter on “Our Miss Brooks,” Gloria McMillan. Her name was Hazel McMillan. She saw me and called the studio and said, “I can get this boy some work.” The first thing she sent me out on was a commercial on “Ozzie and Harriet” and I got it. It really encouraged her.

SW: What was the commercial for?

BB: It was for Listerine toothpaste, and Ozzie directed it, and I went to school with Ricky (Nelson) – he was in the ninth grade and I was in the eighth. I come to find out after I bought my house in the Hollywood Hills that he was my neighbor! Now it’s Justin Timberlake.

SW: How old were you when you did that commercial?

BB: I was really young, I was probably 12.

So she sent me on all these calls and she finally sent me out to read for “Spin and Marty,” the cowboy series (that would be on the "Mickey Mouse Club"), because they were auditioning all these boys. They said, “Do you sing and dance?” and I said, “That’s mainly what I do. I have my tap shoes in the car.” They said, “There’s auditions at 2:00, come to the soundstage and bring your music and your tap shoes.” So I tap danced and then they said, “Can you sing?” and I said, “Oh, sure!” I just said that even though I never had done that before. I knew part of the words to “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” and I made up the rest, and it was fine. They just wanted to hear if I can carry a tune. I think what got me my job was I did a barefoot jazz dance to “Rock Around the Clock” which was the number one hit song at that time.

They went through a thousand kids for the “Mickey Mouse Club” and they chose 24 the first year. They had three teams. I called it the “Mickey Mouse Club production line.” One group was going to school, one was filming and one was rehearsing. We were constantly moving.

Twelve of us were in the red team, which was the “roll call” kids, and the ones that did Fun With Music and Talent Roundup. The other kids pretty much were with “Flying Dumbo” on Wednesday Anything Can Happen Day and the circus act and the guest star.

SW: How many Mouseketeers were there over the years?

BB: There were 39 of us through the years. Four of us had passed away, including Cheryl, which was one of our “roll call” kids.

On all four years of “roll call” there were only two boys, me and Cubby and only five girls: Annette, Sharon, Karen, Doreen and Darlene. That’s it – seven. Tommy wasn’t on the first year, Lonnie wasn’t on the last year, but they were on the other years.

SW: So there was the red team, and two other colors?

BB: The white team and the blue team and sometimes we’d get to cross over and get to do something with the acrobats and Circus Day, but mostly we were working the song and dance stuff, which was the most fun, and we could have the most glory and say our names and all that. It was really fun.

SW: The first time you were on television as a Mouseketeer was on Disneyland’s opening?

BB: Right, nobody knew who we were. (Host) Art Linkletter said, “We have the dancing children, I think they’re going to be called the Mouseketeers.” That was July and we didn’t come on until October. We came dancing out of the “Mickey Mouse Club Theatre” which everybody loved because it was the only air conditioned place in the whole park.

It was kind of hard to dance because it was not a real smooth surface, and hot! Sharon and I had to jitterbug and some of them had horses in the Talent Roundup, and the Talent Roundup costumes were like, “Whoa!” The next year they modified them and changed them to a different material, but it was so hot that day. Then we continued out, through the castle and then we were in a big parade, so that was really fun.

SW: Did you get to walk around the park for fun that day?

BB: Hardly. They kept us pretty busy and rehearsing and all.

SW: So you've watched the park grow since opening day.

BB: I’ve watched every ride go up at that park, there from the ‘50s, and watched some come down. In fact, I proposed to my wife on the bucket ride (Skyway) from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland at night, when the lights were twinkling and they were playing “When You Wish Upon a Star” and stuff and she couldn’t escape. I popped the question when we went through the Matterhorn.

SW: Had you filmed any of the "Mickey Mouse Club" shows by the time you first performed at Disneyland?

BB: Yes. We had filmed some. We started in July, it was one of the first things we did, but then our show again didn’t come on until October, so nobody knew who we were.

SW: Did you all know each other by the time you performed at the park?

BB: Yes. I remember at our 25th, we all said, “Can you imagine, 25 years since we started it? Can you imagine at the 50th?” We went, “Nobody will call us. We’ll look so terrible.” And they still keep calling us. 54 years later and they’re still calling us. We did the D23 expo and stuff.

SW: Do you remember anything about when the series finally aired?

BB: When it came on it was this big hit. People ask me, “Why was it so successful?” Well, it had the Disney touch because (Walt) watched all of our rushes and things, but there wasn’t a lot of competition back then. You had “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” and I think “Captain Kangaroo” and “Howdy Doody” and that’s it.

SW: It was also unusual in those days to have kids as the cast members, wasn’t it?

BB: Yes, and we were the first show that had a cartoon. There were no cartoons on. When you see our cartoons, they were in black and white, some of them were really old. I mean, the ‘20s and ‘30s. Mickey was still doing funny things, he hardly looks like himself.

They had four segments, they had a Newsreel, we had a story, like “Spin and Marty,” and then they had the Mouseketeers and the cartoon. They let us crossover, they let us introduce the cartoons, “(Singing) Time to twist our Mousekedial, to the right and the left with a great big smile.” Meeska, mooska, mouseketeer, you know that one, right?

SW: Of course.

BB: Soon, some of us got to introduce even the serials and stuff, so we were all kind of integrated in there. Then we’d cross over and do the Disneyland show with Walt himself.

We did a really great kind-of pilot thing for a movie but it never went. He bought all the (“Wizard of Oz” author) Frank Baum books, so we did the “Rainbow Road to Oz,” and it was a special. It was so much fun! It was like the fourth year, it was the very end and we were thinking, “Wow, this is going to be the next thing!” Jimmie was this great lion, and Doreen was a patchwork girl. Annette, was Glinda, the beautiful girl and Darlene was Dorothy.

I’ve stayed in touch with Darlene (Gillespie). To me, Darlene was the real talent of that group. Everybody was talented or they wouldn’t have been on. But Darlene sang, I was a big fan of her singing voice, she was a comedienne, she danced, and when she left the “Mickey Mouse Club” she became a ballerina.

When we did one of our reunion shows at Disneyland, five a day, I think it was the 25th. I was jitterbugging with Sharon (Baird) in the show. She got a job playing Rat Boy, a Mouseketeer playing Rat Boy (the title role in the film of the same name), at Warner Bros. So I needed a partner, and they called Darlene. She came in and boom! And I was doing hard lifts and everything else with Sharon. We were doing the wraparound, whoever thought Darlene could do that? Then she went on to become a surgical nurse.

SW: I have a really horrible quality home video of one of those reunion shows.

BB: Was Paul Williams in it?

SW: You mean the composer?

BB: Yes, he emceed it. You know, he wanted to be a Mouseketeer and didn’t make it. He went to my high school in Long Beach Poly High. You know who else wanted to be a Mouseketeer? Liza Minnelli! She’s come up to some of us and said, “My dream growing up was to be an original Mouseketeer!”

SW: So there could have been Minnelli and Funicello.

BB: I think at that time Italian was in. Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Annette Funicello. They thought, “We’ve got to change her name,” but Walt said no, no, no! “The name is great. It’s unusual.” Annette always said, “I wasn’t a good singer, and I wasn’t an especially good dancer,” but she had this charisma. She had this sex appeal that just came across. She was a good actress, very natural.

SW: She was great in the "Annette" serial.

BB: You know, I used to date Roberta Shore, who played the bad girl (in the "Annette" serial), but was this really clean cut Mormon girl.

SW: I've seen her on a lot of other shows. “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Father Knows Best...”

BB: “The Viriginian” was her next big step. But she was such a good actress, didn’t you think?

SW: Definitely. Did you ever appear in any of the serials?

BB: Never did, and there’s a real famous picture of Walt Disney with all of us and Spin and Marty and Moochie. I’m not in it. Walt hardly has his picture with us at all. So here’s this famous picture. When you look at the picture, there’s a hole right there. I was on the floor and they said, “Bobby, you’ve got to rehearse because you’re on this afternoon, so come on out!” So right when they’re ready to take it they pull me out and I missed the famous picture.

SW: How did your life change after the show premiered?

BB: It goes back to the old story about how Walt Disney would take his producers around to the different schools and say, “That’s who I want to be a Mouseketeer.” He, of course, wanted the natural kids but we had to know how to sing and dance. My mom and dad never wanted us to move to Hollywood or Burbank, so we stayed in Long Beach. Every day, even on Western Avenue, we’d drive back and forth, and mom couldn’t do it then dad would do it. If dad couldn’t do, it was aunt. Because aunt would sit there all day in this theater. They had to be our welfare workers and chaperones and stuff.

As far as that goes, I never did change. I stayed with my brothers and sisters. We were a real close family and had my friends in Long Beach, and went to a public school as much as I could, but pretty soon I had to go to the Disney Studio school, half of eighth to eleventh, I think that was about it. It was such a good education, I went back to Poly High School in Long Beach and graduated in the upper two percent in my class.

SW: Was this after the show ended?

BB: Yes, after the show, but my named had changed to Mickey. I’d walk down the hall, it would be “Hi, Mickey.” So…

I went to Long Beach State College and got in a fraternity and tried to get back to normal, and when I was 19 I got on the (Lawrence) Welk show. I continued being in the fraternity and I made lifelong friends.

When I was playing up at Harrah’s club with the “Lawrence Welk Show,” for 17 years, every year like 12 couples would come up there. They’d come to the late show and have a few drinks and just scream for me, and they knew everybody’s name. Lawrence Welk at the beginning would be, “When are those boys going to come? They’re such a ‘wunnerful’ audience.” I said, “Mr. Welk, three days at the late show and they’ll be there,” then bang! It would be the best audience. That was fun.

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