Holdridge died Tuesday at her home in Santa Monica after a two-year battle with lung cancer, said Doreen Tracey, another former Mouseketeer.
Holdridge was 11 years old in the spring of 1956 when she auditioned and was hired for The Mickey Mouse Club, which had debuted on Oct. 3, 1955, with 24 talented youngsters who sang and danced and yet came across as the kids next door. Holdridge joined the Mouseketeers in the second season of the show, which ran until 1959.
She quickly became part of the core group that appeared on the famous Mouseketeer roll call at the start of each show, along with Tracey, Annette Funicello, Tommy Cole, Cubby O'Brien, Sharon Baird, Bobby Burgess, Karen Pendleton, Lonnie Burr and Darlene Gillespie.
During her Mouseketeer days, Holdridge appeared in some of the show's episodic serials, including “Boys of the Western Sea" and the “Annette" series. Unlike some of the other Mouseketeers, Holdridge didn't have trouble finding work in television as a young actress after hanging up her Mouse ears.
She went on to play Wally Cleaver's girlfriend, Julie Foster, for two seasons on Leave It to Beaver. And she had guest roles on shows such as The Rifleman, Bachelor Father, My Three Sons, Bewitched and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
“Our reputations as Disney players opened doors," Holdridge told the Chicago Tribune in 2001 during a Mouseketeer autograph session at a Disney memorabilia show in Bloomingdale, Ill., that drew a crowd of more than 1,000. “Directors knew we understood how to move on camera, how to hit our marks and say lines", said Doreen Tracey, another former Mouseketeer. “We went up for many of the same parts. We both did Ozzie and Harriet and Bachelor Father.'
Holdridge left the business in 1964 when she married Lance Reventlow, the son of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, “because that's what you did then. You married and stayed home." Reventlow died in a plane crash in 1972. In 1994, Holdridge married Manning Post, a prominent West Coast Democratic Party fundraiser and advisor, who died in 2000.
Holdridge was born Cheryl Lynn Phelps on June 20, 1944, in New Orleans and moved to Los Angeles when she was 2. Her mother, Julie Austin, was a former Ziegfeld Follies featured dancer and comedian and encouraged her to express herself through dance.
Tommy Cole said Thursday that “Cheryl was one of the loves of my life, especially because we were like family. Being one of the prettiest girls on the set, I always considered her Miss Sunshine," he recalled. “She'd walk into the room and this ray of sunshine would happen every time she smiled."
Cole was among the former Mouseketeers who visited with Holdridge on Monday night. And, he said, when he heard that she had died two hours after he left her side,
“a little bit of sunshine went out of my life."
