She was the Mouseketeer who roared, the one member of the original "Mickey Mouse Club" to achieve real stardom.

Annette Funicello, who died Monday at age 70 of complications of multiple sclerosis, called off her name, sang and danced in the 1950s TV series from Walt Disney Co. while growing up before the eyes of millions of adolescents who adored her.

Walt Disney Company/Reuters

Walt Disney's current chief executive, Bob Iger, called Ms. Funicello "a true Disney legend." She went on to have top-40 hits and star in Disney and beach-party movies.

Her hits were slight—"Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess" among them. Her Disney films were mostly kids' fare like "The Shaggy Dog." The beach party movies in which she starred with Frankie Avalon—"Beach Blanket Bingo" and "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" among them—showed plenty of skin, but were chaste.

"My big line was always, 'Not without a ring you don't,' " Ms. Funicello told the Los Angeles Times in 1987.

Yet the innocent and bubbly Ms. Funicello touched something in audiences that led them to shower her with fan mail as the most popular Mouseketeer, and decades later lured them to her nostalgic singing tours with Mr. Avalon.

Born in Utica, N.Y., of Italian heritage, Ms. Funicello as a child moved with her family to Southern California, where she took dance classes. Walt Disney himself recruited Ms. Funicello for the "Mickey Mouse Club" when she was 13 after watching her perform in "Swan Lake."

As Ms. Funicello matured into a young woman, the studio sent her on dates with Mr. Avalon, Bobby Darin and other stars. In a memoir, she disclosed a teenage romance with Paul Anka, who wrote the song "Puppy Love" for her.

In the mid-1960s, Ms. Funicello married her agent and retired to raise a family. But she returned a decade later in peanut-butter commercials that played off her wholesome domesticity: "It's hard to beat Skippy!"

Ms. Funicello and Mr. Avalon again teamed up for the 1987 movie "Back to the Beach." The two were cast as parents of rebellious teenagers in the star-studded parody. Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up.

Not long after the film wrapped, Ms. Funicello was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She became a national spokeswoman and fundraiser for the disease, which incapacitated her in recent years.

"I didn't go public for a long time," she told People in 1992, "because I believed people wanted to think that nothing bad ever happens to Annette. I didn't want them to panic."