The Light in the Forest Is Love: Cold War Masculinity and the Disney Adventure Boys

On Wednesday afternoons in the fall of 1956, millions of baby-boomer children tuned in to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club and watched two fifteen-year-old best friends, Spin and Marty, take time out from their usual summer camp pursuits of swimming, hiking, and riding horses to flirt with, brag to, and compete for the attention of Annette Funicello, a girl from across the lake. Disney Adventure Boys Become Girl-Crazy In the first season of Disney's Mickey Mouse Club (1955-56), the live-action serial Spin and Marty sends Marty Markham (fourteen-year-old David Stollery), a rich mama's boy, to the Triple R Ranch summer camp, where he brawl-bonds with all-American jock Spin Evans (fourteen-year-old Tim Considine). [...]by now, Spin and Marty were an institution, overflowing their Mickey Mouse Club base with coloring books, records, toys, two tie-in novels (in addition to the original Marty Markham), and a Dell comic book series (1956-1960).