Career
Holdridge first performed professionally at the age of nine, when she landed a role in the New York City Ballet's version of The Nutcracker in Los Angeles. Her first screen appearance was as an uncredited extra in the 1956 film production of Carousel.
She auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club in the spring of 1956, was hired, and joined the club's "Red Team"--the most visible and popular of the Mouseketeers. Though a good dancer, her weak singing voice kept her in the background of most musical numbers performed by the Mouseketeers. A competent actress with a pleasant speaking voice, she was employed for two of the show's episodic serials: Boys of the Western Sea and Annette.
After the show's run ended, Cheryl returned to Van Nuys High School and graduated from Grant High School with the winter 1961 class. She was cast in two episodes of Leave It to Beaver in 1959 as 'Gloria Cusick'; she later played an occasional, recurring role as Wally Cleaver's girlfriend, Julie Foster.
In May 1960, Holdridge went on a live tour to Australia with other former Mouseketeers. While there, she became involved with Lucky Starr, an Australian singer. She was later linked in fan magazines and gossip columns with many other celebrities, including Elvis Presley.
From 1960, Holdridge made guest appearances on over twenty different shows, including The Rifleman, My Three Sons, Bewitched, Bringing Up Buddy and The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was cast in the lead role of Betty in an unsold television series pilot based on the Archie Comics.Holdridge left acting abruptly in 1964 to marry Lance Reventlow, her first husband.
After the death of her third husband, Holdridge made a cameo appearance in the 2000 feature film, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. In 2005 she appeared at Disneyland for 50th anniversary celebrations of both the opening of the park and The Mickey Mouse Club. She appeared in televised documentary specials about Cary Grant (2005) and Barbara Hutton (2006), and has also appeared in a special feature interview for a Disney DVD.
Read more about this topic: Cheryl Holdridge
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)