Mickey Mouse Club - Saturday January 11, 1930

[Barbaraann]

The first Mickey Mouse Club was thought up by a man named Harry W. Woodin. He was the Fox Dome Theatre manager in Ocean Park, California. He organized a Mickey Mouse theatre club for children. Saturday afternoon matinees were set aside for the children. Mickey Mouse cartoons were shown. Membership cards, buttons, contests, birthday celebrations and other activities were promised and Mickey Mouse Clubs soon sprouted up in hundreds of other theatres.

The first Mickey Mouse Club gathering was on January 11, 1930. at the Fox Dome Theatre at exactly noon.

It became an immediate success. By 1932, there were 800 such Mickey Mouse Clubs. Membership was in the millions. More than the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts together.

Meetings began with the reciting of the creed:

I will be a square shooter in my home, in school, on the playgrounds, where-ever I may be.
I will be truthful and honarable and strive, always to make myself a better and more useful little citizen.
I will respect my elders and help the aged, the helpless and children smaller than myself.
In short, I will be a good American!

I found this interesting little tidbit in The Little Big Book of Disney.

Only Mickey Mouse Club that I knew about was on television some almost 25 years later.

[NeverNeverland]

Very interesting! I had no idea.