Английская Википедия:Darlene Gillespie
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Infobox person
Darlene Faye Gillespie (born April 8, 1941) is a Canadian-American former child actress, most remembered as a singer and dancer on the original The Mickey Mouse Club television series from 1955 to 1959. After her career in entertainment ended, she became a nurse.
Early Life
Шаблон:BLP sources section Gillespie was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Her Irish father and French Canadian mother were a former vaudeville dance team. When Darlene was two years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, where she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September 1956 at the age of fifteen.
Her sister Gina Gillespie was a child actress in television and films who eventually became a lawyer.
At age ten, Gillespie started singing lessons with Glen Raikes, and took dance lessons with Шаблон:Interlanguage link, founder of the American Folk Ballet Company.
Career
1955–1958: Disney
Gillespie auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club in March 1955, was hired, and appeared on the program for all three seasons of its original run. She was the leading female singer and starred in the serial Corky and White Shadow (1956) during the first season.[1]
During the second season of the show, Gillespie shared a Talent Round-Up Day with her three sisters, and was also given her own special show called An Evening with Darlene.[2] However by the second season, Mouseketeer Annette Funicello became a rising star and shifted the viewer's attention from Gillespie.
In the third season, she appeared in the serial The New Adventures of Spin and Marty (1957) with Tim Considine and David Stollery as Annette's friend.[3]
The serial Annette (1958) was meant to star Gillespie in a co-leading role, originally titled Annette and Darlene. However, for reasons unknown, Gillespie was recast and replaced by Judy Nugent as Annette's friend Jet.[2] Her career with Disney was known to be sabotaged by her father and herself.
In 1957, Gillespie was cast as Dorothy Gale in a musical number from the proposed live-action Disney film The Rainbow Road to Oz on an episode of the Disneyland television series in September 1957. The movie was never made.
After The Mickey Mouse Club stopped filming in 1958, her short acting career neared its end. Her last television appearance was as Beth Brian in the 1962 episode "The Star" of the NBC family drama series National Velvet starring Lori Martin as a budding thoroughbred rider.
Music
Gillespie made many recordings under various Disney labels, including an album of 1950s rock and roll standards, Darlene of the Teens (1957). She sang the songs "Valentine Greetings" and "My Pa", a song that she sang in Corky and White Shadow, from the album "Happy Birthday and Other Holiday Songs".
She recorded albums for Disney animated films, in which she sang and narrated stories such as Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty.
In 1973, attempting to revive her singing career, she formed her own record company, Alva Records, and released a 45 rpm record of country songs under the name Darlene Valentine.[2]
Rivalry
When Annette Funicello became a singing and acting star, Darlene became very jealous as a youth and an adult. She did not want to be in the same room as Funicello at Mouseketeer reunions.
In the late 1980s, Gillespie began a legal battle against Disney and the Screen Actors Guid for royalties and residual payments for record sales and reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club. Gillespie had previously sustained a back injury from a fall that ended her medical career as a nurse. This legal battle strained her relationship with her former Mouseketeers castmates.[2]
She was banned from participating in the 40th anniversary Mickey Mouse Club documentary because of her criticisms of Disney and Funicello.
Arrests
In 1997, she was charged with petty theft for helping her then-fiancé Jerry Fraschilla shoplift four women's shirts. She was found guilty and sentenced to three days in jail and three years' probation. Gillespie, then 56 years old, denied the charges and filed preliminary papers to appeal. The disposition is unclear.[4]
In December 1998, she was convicted in federal court of aiding her third husband, Fraschilla, to purchase securities using a check-kiting scheme.[5] She was sentenced to two years in prison,[6] but was released after serving only three months.
In 2005, she and her husband were indicted on federal charges of filing multiple fraudulent claims in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. The charges have since been dropped. Fraschilla died in 2008.[7]
Discography
Disney
- Walt Disney's Corky and White Shadow (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1955)
- Mouskemusicals (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1956)
- Four Songs From Walt Disney's Cinderella (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1957)
- Walt Disney's Perri (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1957)
- Darlene Of The Teens (Disneyland, 1957)
- Walt Disney's Story Of Alice In Wonderland (Disneyland, 1958)
- Four Songs From Walt Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1958)
- Songs From Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty (Official Mickey Mouse Club, 1959)
Solo
- I Loved, I Laughed, I Cried / Ring The Bell, Beat The Drum (Coral, 1960)
- April Is The Month Of Loving / Grass Grows Round My Feet (Alva, 1973) - "Darlene Valentine"
- Touch And Go / Both Feet On The Ground (Alva, 1974) - "Darlene Valentine"
References
External links
- Английская Википедия
- 1941 births
- Living people
- Actresses from Montreal
- 20th-century American women singers
- 20th-century American actresses
- Anglophone Quebec people
- Mouseketeers
- Canadian emigrants to the United States
- American television actresses
- Naturalized citizens of the United States
- Singers from Montreal
- American nurses
- American women nurses
- American people convicted of theft
- American people convicted of fraud
- 20th-century American singers
- Canadian people of Irish descent
- Canadian people of French descent
- American female dancers
- Страницы, где используется шаблон "Навигационная таблица/Телепорт"
- Страницы с телепортом
- Википедия
- Статья из Википедии
- Статья из Английской Википедии
