Background
Darlene Faye Gillespie was born in Montreal, Canada. Her parents were Herbert Laurence Gillespie and Rean Tibeau, a former dance team under the name Aldare & Tibeau, who were originally from Saskatchewan. In October 1942 they took Darlene and her older sister Patricia to Los Angeles. There Larry found work at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, while Rean made a movie at Republic in 1945. Rean adopted the name Dorothy, and continued to have children: Larrian (child TV actress, now a retired doctor and well-known diet author), Gina (also a child film and TV actress, now an attorney), Larry Jr (now a famous jazz musician), and another boy.
At age ten Darlene was singing a solo in her church choir when her mother noticed many in the congregation had tears in their eyes. She decided that Darlene should have formal lessons, and took her to Glen Raikes, who would teach Darlene and her sisters for the next seven years.
Darlene had taken a few dance lessons around age five, but had then left it alone until she turned eleven. Her mother then enrolled her in Burch Mann's Alhambra studio. Darlene's dance lessons were funded by an avocado nursery Larry had, in which the whole family worked. Burch, who had been asked by the producers to help find kids, sent Darlene, Bonni Lou Kern, Mary Espinosa, and some others to the Mickey Mouse Club auditions. Darlene was hired on her first try, as much for singing Davy Crockett as for her dancing.
Performance
Darlene's was a precocious talent, one that peaked with her first year on the show. She appealed more to adults than to kids, but contrary to expectations, up to one-third of the audience turned out to be parents and other grown-ups. Her wide grin was nearly as famous as Bobby's, and with her braids and freckles she looked much younger than fourteen. Her dancing, like her singing, was top-notch, and she became the lead performer on the Red Team for all three filming seasons. The studio drove all the kids hard, and especially Darlene; that first season they worked her constantly. Serial director William Beaudine Sr chose her to star in Corky and White Shadow, mainly because of her immature look.
In June 1955, while the other kids were in the studio, Darlene was on location at Big Bear Lake, learning to ride a horse, and acting with a cast of mainly grown-ups. As soon as the serial ended, she returned to the studio for filming Mouseketeer segments, then worked for two months in the Disneyland Circus, then started pre-production on Westward Ho, the Wagons!, while also cutting the first of many recordings for Disney.
Not surprisingly, Darlene's health suffered. She came down with pneumonia, and was bed-ridden for six weeks. The film role was lost to her friend
Doreen Tracey, a long-time horseback rider. This first career set-back had an impact on Darlene. Though she shrugged it off in interviews, she now was more sparing with her wide open grin. As the second season started filming, she also was aware that she was no longer the favored child. Both Burch Mann, who had choreographed all the first season production numbers, and director
Dik Darley, a firm Darlene partisan, were gone. Darlene still led most of the in-studio production numbers, but the serial roles went to
Annette. Darlene also shared a Talent Round-Up Day with her sisters, and did some celebrity impersonations in
An Evening With Darlene.
As the third season filming started, Darlene's career seemed to be rebounding. She recorded an album for the Disney label in April 1957 called
Darlene of the Teens. That summer, she was told she would appear in two serials: the third installment of
Spin and Marty and one to be called
Margaret. Also, in August 1957, the live-action film
The Rainbow Road to Oz, in which Darlene was to play the role of Dorothy, was announced. She and the other Mouseketeers did several quick numbers from this project on an episode of
Disneyland called the "Fourth Anniversary Show" in September 1957.
Darlene starred in the
New Adventures of Spin and Marty, but in October 1957 the other serial, which had been
renamed
Annette and Darlene, was retitled again to just
Annette, and made with
Judy Nugent instead of Darlene. This prompted some vitrolic letters by Darlene's fans that did her more harm
than good. A
columnist friendly to the studio accused the letter-writers of
being part of an organised campaign, the unspoken assumption that it was instigated by Darlene. The studio explained the casting change
by saying Darlene needed to rehearse for the upcoming movie, but by February 1958 it was clear the film project had been cancelled.
Instead Darlene was kept busy doing recordings for Disney until her Mouseketeer contract option expired in May 1958.
Aftermath
Darlene was apparently still bound under her recording contract to Disney, until possibly as late as January 1959, when the songs she recorded
for Sleeping Beauty were released on an LP. This contract had tied up her most valuable performing asset, her voice, lessening her
value to any other production company that might be interested in hiring her. She signed a new recording contract with Decca in July 1959,
releasing two 45's on its Coral label in 1959-60. The first, now quite rare, had two rock songs Cobbler, Cobbler / Boom Patty Boom,
the second had a ballad and a polka: I Loved, I Laughed, I Cried / Ring the Bell, Beat the Drum, the latter with her younger sisters as backup.
Darlene graduated from the Catholic girls high school, Providence, in Burbank, in June 1959, and spent the next several years as a
soloist with the First California Ballet company based in Pasadena. She didn't go on the Australia tours organized by
Jimmie Dodd, nor did she do personal appearences for Disney on an ad hoc basis like the other
Mouseketeers. She occasionally acted as legal guardian for sister Gina on the set of her series The Plainsman, and worked up a musical comedy nightclub act with both younger sisters.
In 1962 she had a minor career resurgence starting with some Ford car commercials in which she played Alice in Wonderland. She acted
in some Hollywood area stage productions, and did guest appearances on a couple of TV shows (National Velvet, Dr. Kildare).
During this time she also attended
Valley Junior College, and, like her older sister, eventually became a nurse. Working at Valley Presbyterian Hospital's emergency room
for several years led her to develop a protective surface cynicism. She disliked being called "Nurse Mouse" by her co-workers,
and resented well-intentioned queries on why she never became a big star.
On August 3, 1968, Darlene married then thirty-year old Phillip D. Gammon from Illinois. Later that fall she appeared with eleven other former Mouseketeers
on the Wonderful World of Color for a special episode celebrating Mickey Mouse's 40th birthday. In the early seventies Phil Gammon tried to restart
Darlene's singing career by forming a record company called Alva. She recorded a number of country songs under the name Darlene Valentine, which
were released on 45 rpms starting in 1973: April Is The Month For Loving / Grass Grows Round My Feet (Alva 111) and
Touch And Go / Both Feet On The Ground (Alva 113). The label proved successful with other singers, and was eventually sold
to Sony which used it for many years. Darlene and Phillip had two children together, but were divorced by 1983. On July 31st of that year
Darlene married Donald MacDavid, who was seven years older.
Into every life there comes, at some point, a malign influence that must be resisted or overcome. For some, it is an internal demon;
for others, like Darlene, it walked on two legs. Sometime around 1990 Darlene hooked up with Jerry Fraschilla, who led her into
committing a string of criminal actions. They were both charged with shoplifting from a Ventura County, California, department store
in 1996. A year later, the couple was indicted for a check-kiting scheme dating back to 1992. Fraschilla pled guilty and served 18 months.
He and Darlene were married in January 1998. Darlene was convicted in December 1998, and in March 1999 sentenced to two years.
In November 2005 the couple was again indicted on federal charges, this time for fraudulently submitting multiple claims in the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. That complaint was evidently resolved without major penalty to Darlene, who is now a widow, Jerry Fraschilla having passed away from cancer on November 1, 2008 in Oxnard, California.
