Sunday, November 16, 2008

Annette at Disneyland

Recently, a generous reader of this blog emailed a bunch of very fun publicity stills to me. He was anxious to share them with the rest of you, and was nice enough to let me do the sharing! Today I'm posting five photos featuring the lovely and charming Annette Funicello as she accompanied Princess Sophie of Greece around Disneyland. These are dated November 23, 1958.

This first picture shows Princess Sophie and Annette, as well as an unnamed chaperone posing in front of the castle. Annette is looking very pretty and grown-up (she had only just turned 16).


Here's an alternate shot with two motorcycle cops making sure that things don't get out of hand. There is nothing more dangerous than an enraged Mouseketeer!


The two girls share a laugh with an anonymous man (possibly a Disney PR guy?) while aboard the Jungle Cruise.


Here they are again, with plenty of looky-loos up at the station. Princess Sophia looks like a nice girl. In 1962 she married Juan Carlos of Spain, and in 1975 he ascended the throne. So she is now the Queen of Spain! Read all about her here if you are interested.


And finally, one last photo with everyone on the Main Street Surrey. I wonder if Queen Sophie has any memories of this trip to Disneyland? Did she and Annette remain friendly? I sure wish we could find out!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

These photos of Annette are such a treasure for us fans! Thanks you so much for sharing them. I've known Annette since 1961 and she has never mentioned Princess Sophia, so I doubt they remained friends. This was just another of many photo ops Annette did while working for Disney. I love that era of her life, when she was transitioning from Mouseketeer to young lady, Please pray for her as she is very ill with MS. I'm going to post a link to your blog in my Yahoo group for the Annette Fan Club. You should get a lot of hits!

Daveland said...

What a fantastic collection of photos of everyone’s favorite Mouseketeer. Thanks for sharing!

Nancy said...

these are great! thanks so much for posting them here and thanks to the anonymous contributor. Annette was a sort of hero/role model in my childhood

i have often wondered what sort of special arrangements are made when persons of such importance visit the park...perhaps back then they did these kind of visits on Monday or Tuesday when the park was closed

Anonymous said...

Thanks to the person sharing these pics, enjoyed em! :)