Cheryl Holdridge was born June 20, 1944 as Cheryl Lynn Phelps, in New
Orleans, Louisiana, USA. She passed away on January 5th, 2009, at the age
of 64, after a 2 year battle with lung cancer.
An original member of the Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers along with
Annette Funicello. Her surname came from her adoptive father, Herbert
Holdridge, a retired Brigadier General. After studying dance, she
performed first at the age of nine in The Nutcracker, in Los Angeles. Her
first screen appearance, although uncredited, as she was just an extra,
was in the 1956 movie, Carousel, with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones.
In 1956, her fate was changed forever, when Walt Disney accepted her into
the Mickey Mouse Club as one of the primary Mouseketeers. She later
appeared in episodes of the popular kids program, Leave it to Beaver, and
then in other popular shows of the time, The Adventures of Ozzy and
Harriet, My Three Sons, Bewitched, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. She never
received a break-out role (although cast in an unsold pilot based on the
Archie Comics). She later made appearances in Mickey Mouse Club fan
celebrations and continued to make minor television appearances.
Cheryl married twice, but had no children, and frequently was a supporter
of environmental causes.
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