Darlene Gillespie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Darlene Gillespie
Darlene Gillespie on The Mickey Mouse Club
Born	April 8, 1941 Montreal, Canada
Other name(s)	Darlene Valentine

Darlene Faye Gillespie was born April 8, 1941, in Montreal, Canada. She is best known for having been a singer and dancer on the original Mickey Mouse Club television show from 1955 to 1958. 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, California, where she became a naturalized US citizen in September 1956.

At age ten Darlene started singing lessons with Glen Raikes, and at age eleven, dance lessons with Burch Mann, founder of the American Folk Ballet company. She auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club in March 1955, was hired, and appeared on the show for all three seasons of its original run. She was the shows leading female singer, and starred in the serial Corky and White Shadow during the first season. In the third season, she appeared in the serial The New Adventures of Spin and Marty. She was cast as Dorothy in a musical number from the proposed live-action Disney film, Rainbow Road to Oz, on an episode of the Disneyland television show in September 1957. The movie was never made, and after Mickey Mouse Club stopped filming in 1958, her short career in television was over.

While still with Disney, she made many recordings under the various Disney labels, including an album of fifties rock and roll standards called Darlene of the Teens (1957). She also recorded albums of songs from Disney animated films, such as Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty. In 1975, she released a 45 rpm record of country songs under the name Darlene Valentine.

In December 1998, she was convicted in Federal Court of aiding her third husband, Jerry Fraschilla, to purchase securities using a check-kiting scheme [1]. She was sentenced to two years in prison[2], 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[3].