Career
Sharon Baird appeared in her first film, Bloodhounds of Broadway, in 1950. At age nine she began regular appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour television show with Eddie Cantor. She did episodes of several different television shows, and an unbilled song and dance number with Dean Martin in Artists and Models (1955), just before being selected for the Mickey Mouse Club.
Contrary to the impression given by Disney publicity, many of the Mickey Mouse Club cast had some prior experience in films and television. Sharon Baird was among the most experienced of these professionals, and performed with the show's "Red Team", or first-string unit, for all three seasons of original programming (1955–1958). Her specialty was tap, but she did other forms of dancing, as well as singing and acting on the show.
After filming completed in 1958, Sharon finished high school at Hollywood Professional School, then attended Los Angeles Valley College where she made the National Honor Society and was president of her class. She briefly interrupted her education in May 1959 for a short performing tour of Australia with the Mouseketeers, then graduated from college in 1963 with degrees in mathematics and secretarial science.
In 1964 Sharon Baird married singer Dalton Lee Thomas, and with a male friend of his, worked up a nightclub act called "Two Cats and a Mouse", which faded out, along with the marriage, by 1969. During the 1970s she worked extensively as a live "puppet" for Sid and Marty Krofft among others, doing children's shows such as New Zoo Revue, H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and Land of the Lost.
Sharon Baird did rotoscoping work for Ralph Bakshi's late seventies film The Lord of the Rings. She was the live-action model for the part of Frodo Baggins, for which she did not receive screen credit.
In 1980, Sharon, along with the other Mouseketeers, did a television special for The Wonderful World of Disney, reprising her famous tap-dancing while jumping-rope routine. She then joined a smaller number of her colleagues in performing live shows at Disneyland on weekends for several years during the early 1980s.
Read more about this topic: Sharon Baird
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)