Lonnie Burr (born May 31, 1943) is an American actor, entertainer and writer best known as one of nine of the original thirty-nine Mouseketeers who remained under a seven-year contract for the complete filming (1955–1959) of Walt Disney’s children’s television show the Mickey Mouse Club.
His parents, Howard Ambrose Babin and Dorothy Doloris Burr, were a night club and vaudeville dance team that toured from 1934 to 1941 as "Dot and Dash".
After years of radio and voice-over work, Lonnie became the pre-recorded voice of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the 21st century giving visitors general information, opening and closing times and providing safety and emergency instructions.
In 1955 Lonnie signed a seven-year contract with Walt Disney Studios as one of twenty-four original Mouseketeers hired for the first season of The Mickey Mouse Club from the thousands of children who auditioned.
As one of only four boys, of thirty-nine total kids, who remained under contract for the run of the series, Lonnie was a member of the "Red Team", the group that comprised the show's first string unit.
He transitioned from child TV star to adult character actor, deliberately taking roles in which he could vary his appearance and attitude to the extent that in the 1980s Robert Osborne, then columnist for The Hollywood Reporter and later TCM host, named him "a master of disguises."
In Actors' Equity professional summer stock on both coasts, Lonnie co-starred as Spats Palazzo in Sugar with the late Arte Johnson, Marcellus in The Music Man with Peter Marshall, with Ginger Rogers in Coco, and with Elke Sommer in Irma La Douce.
As a promotion for the original Mickey Mouse Club’s return to television in the mid-1970s, Lonnie and other Mouseketeers appeared on Tomorrow, Tom Snyder’s national late night talk show from New York.
Lonnie and three other Mouseketeers also visited Queens to appear at a Shea Stadium New York Mets game with Mickey Mouse, who was scheduled to throw out the first baseball.
Lonnie was the Disney spokesperson on local TV talk and news shows, children’s hospitals, schools, and in public meetings with city mayors and other officials.
Lonnie’s films since his Ph.D. semester include Live a Little, Love a Little (Elvis), Sweet Charity, The Hospital, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Copacabana, Pink Lightning, Hook, Lionheart, The Silence of the Hams (Italian: 'Il Silenzio dei Prosciutti'), Newsies, Mr. Saturday Night, Illicit Behavior, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and Lots of Luck with Annette Funicello.
While Lonnie and Annette had been in contact during the years after the Mickey Mouse Club, Lots of Luck marked the first and only adult acting appearance by two original Mouseketeers.
In fact, Lonnie and Annette had been boyfriend-girlfriend on the first year of the Mickey Mouse Club, and had "gone steady" at a party for a few hours until her father found out and immediately made her give the ring back.
He has been a guest on more than 100 national and local talk shows from the 1960s into the 21st century promoting the Mickey Mouse Club for Disney and his own books, criticism, poetry and plays.