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Maclean's, 12/13/93

The songs are hardly tearjerkers--Luau Cha-Cha-Cha and Bikini Beach Party among them. But when Annette Funicello first heard Annette, the new Disney remix of 47 of her hit tunes from the 1950s and 1960s, her ``eyes welled up with tears--it was like yesterday.'' Those emotions are understandable. From her four years--beginning in 1955--as a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club to stardom opposite Frankie Avalon in a string of campy 1960s beach movies, Annette Funicello personified teenage America. At 51, and although she admits to sounding ``like Mary Poppins,'' she says that she has only good memories of her teens. ``I was having fun,'' Funicello adds. ``And to think that I got paid for it besides, well, that was just a plus.'' Still, life for America's girl next door has been no day at the beach. Last year, she revealed that she has multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease. But Funicello, who can walk with the aid of a cane, is fighting back. She recently completed her autobiography, A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes, due for release in the spring. And from her home in California, she is touring across the United States to promote a new line of perfume, called Cello. A share of sales goes to the Annette Funicello Research Fund for neurological diseases. ``People say, `Aren't you upset that you've got MS?' But my life has been so wonderful, I would never complain,'' she adds. ``I know that there is a reason for what I have, and I think it's to help others.''

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