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English actress From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doreen Isabelle Tracey (April 13, 1943 – January 10, 2018) was a British-born American performer who appeared on the original Mickey Mouse Club television show from 1955 to 1959.
Doreen Tracey | |
|---|---|
Tracey in Mickey Mouse Club (1957) | |
| Born | Doreen Isabelle Tracey April 3, 1943 |
| Died | January 10, 2018 (aged 74) |
| Nationality | British–American |
| Occupation(s) | Actress, performer |
| Years active | 1953–2018 |
| Spouse |
Robert Washburn
(m. 1961; div. 1962) |
| Children | 1 |
Tracey was born in St Pancras, London, England.[1] Her parents, Sidney Tracey and Bessie Hay, were an American vaudeville dance team that performed for Allied soldiers during World War II.[2] Her father's original name was Murray Katzelnick. He emigrated to the United States from Russia with his Jewish parents as an infant.[2]
When Doreen was four, her family returned to the United States, where her father first ran a nightclub, then opened a dance studio in Hollywood, California.[3] She learned to dance and sing at an early age, courtesy of the many instructors and performers who worked out at her father's studio.[4] Her first professional work was an uncredited singing and dancing bit in the musical film The Farmer Takes a Wife (1953).[4] At age twelve she auditioned for the Disney's Mickey Mouse Club and was hired. She appeared for all three seasons of the show's original run.[1]
In 1956, Tracey was featured in the Disney western Westward Ho, the Wagons!, and in the third season of the Mickey Mouse Club, had a role in the serial Annette.[4] She was cast as Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, in a musical number from the proposed live-action Disney film The Rainbow Road to Oz on an episode of the Disneyland television show in September 1957.[3] The movie was never made, and when the Mickey Mouse Club was cancelled in 1958, Tracey switched to singing live at concerts and teen nightclubs.[5]
Tracey appeared on several television programs, including the episode "April Fool" (April 1, 1959), of ABC's The Donna Reed Show, with James Darren in a guest-starring role as well.[5] She ended her career as a performer by touring American military bases in South Vietnam and Thailand and performing lead vocals for a rock group called "Doreen and the Invaders".[6]
Tracey later worked as a publicist at Warner Bros. Records where she promoted acts including Frank Zappa and the Doobie Brothers. For awhile, she was also an amateur weightlifter.[4] Tracey twice posed nude for the sex magazine Gallery in 1976 and 1979; as a result, she was excluded from Mouseketeer reunions and official Disney functions for several years thereafter. She later reconciled with Disney and expressed regret at having posed for the photos.[6] In 2001, an excerpt from her unpublished memoir originally cowritten with celebrity biographer Jeff Lenburg, Confessions of a Mouseketeer, was published in the NPR anthology I Thought My Father Was God.[6]
Tracey married Robert Washburn and had a son, but the marriage ended in divorce.[2] In 2018, after having cancer for two years, Tracey died of pneumonia at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, California at the age of 74.[3]
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