ANNETTE FUNICELLO; FLAPPER FLIP?

Poor Annette. Rarely (if ever) has such a sweet, winsome and charming personality been saddled with so much drecky material. If yesterday’s ‘Rock-A-Cha’ wasn’t bad enough, try today’s ‘Rock-A-Charleston’ (AKA ‘Flapper Flip’), a beyond-embarrassing novelty number combining the worst of the 1920s with the worst of the late 50s/early 60s dance styles. The problem here is that Annette was still under the watchful eye of her ‘creator’ Walt Disney, who was clearly having trouble letting Annette grow up. She turned 18 sometime in the year this was shot and began her legal attempts to get out of her Disney contract, signed when she was a pre-teen without the aid of legal counsel. Once she was able to wriggle free from ‘Mousechwitz’ she had Frankie Avalon and two-piece bathing outfits waiting for her on the other side. But until then, her game nature and good-girl side had to willingly perform numbers like the above atrocity. Which, to be honest, is actually a lot of fun to watch, though not for the reasons Uncle Walt must have thought.

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