Sharon Baird (Aug 16, 1943)
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The Professional
"If there were any justice in show business, which there isn't, Sharon Baird would be a star." --Jerry Bowles
A Red Team member from day one to the last show, Sharon was a true professional, by attitude as much as experience. The best female tap dancer on the show, she maintained a positive outlook despite less camera time in the later seasons.
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Background
Born in Seattle, Sharon started dance lessons at age three. By five, she was performing on local stages with professional acts. At age seven, she won the Little Miss Washington beauty contest.
| Her mother Nikki took her to California to compete in the national contest, and fell in love with the climate. Sharon's father Eldon, a skilled worker in the aircraft construction industry, could easily find work there, so they moved to Los Angeles, where Sharon studied dancing with Louis da Pron. Sharon's small stature and baby-face features made it easy for her to seem much younger than she really was. |
The Colgate Comedy Hour |
Artists and Models |
She had a small part in the film Bloodhounds of Broadway, and beginning December 23, 1951, appeared monthly on the The Colgate Comedy Hour, whenever Eddie Cantor hosted. On November 13, 1954, she appeared on The Donald O'Connor Show. She sang and danced (YouTube Video) with Dean Martin in Artists and Models (1955), where she met future Mouseketeer Nancy Abbate.
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It was at a Capital Records recording session for this movie that Sharon was spotted and recruited by
Jimmie Dodd. Sharon, like
Lonnie Burr and unlike other Mouseketeers, was given a private audition and then signed. Her younger brother
Jimmy Baird also had a career as a child actor in films and television.
Performance
With a large first-season cast of uneven quality and little experience, the Mickey Mouse Club needed Sharon's easy-going professionalism to hold the early skits together. Relaxed and natural on-camera, Sharon seemed to sing and dance in just about every musical number filmed the first year, except for ballet pieces. In fast sets she was often paired with Lonnie Burr or Bobby Burgess, the only two male dancers who could keep up with her, but had no lack of younger boys to partner in slower numbers. Darlene Gillespie and Judy Harriet were the standout singers the first-season, but in comic songs Sharon could hold her own with them, scoring points for liveliness and charm.
Though she was a major player in the first season, where her dancing excelled, with the second and third seasons she was slowly eclipsed by the physical growth and increasing skill level of the rest of the cast. As the Mouseketeers grew into their teens, the skits began shifting to emphasize couples. Sharon was still called upon for specialty solos, but was often left sitting in the background for boy-girl dances.
A highlight of her third season was the specialty number
Dry Gulch Cowboy, in which she sang and danced solo. The
Annette serial the same year gave her a rare chance to act, and paired her with short actor Rudy Lee as her reluctant beau. She also had a small part in the
Disneyland 4th Anniversary episode.
Aftermath
Sharon was among the handful of Mouseketeers whom Jimmie Dodd took to Australia in late spring of 1959. Upon return to the states, she had a two-month engagement at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, performing with Donald O'Connor and his long-time partner Sid Miller. Diminutive even by Mouseketeer standards (she topped out at about 4'10"), Sharon came to maturity as the variety show format she excelled in was dying out. Though a good actress, her stature and tap-dancing image may have closed casting doors to her. Never one to complain, she taught dancing and majored in math and secretarial science at Valley College, where she made the National Honor Society and served as Student President.
In September 1964 she married singer Dalton Lee Thomas. They teamed up with another guy in a nightclub act called "Two Cats and a Mouse". The marriage and the act ended amiably five years later, and Sharon continued to work as a secretary in between odd gigs as a dancer.
She did find a show business niche for herself from 1969 up through the eighties, donning character costumes and dancing for a number of children's shows, including H.R.Pufnstuf, The New Zoo Revue, and the cult favorite Land of the Lost. Sharon also worked extensively with Ralph Bakshi for his animated features on The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of Frodo in the rotoscoping process that allowed the animators to create the films, and, according to some sources, voiced the character as well.
Sharon has been a mainstay of the Disney Mouseketeer reunion shows, both the live versions at Disneyland and elsewhere, and the television special in 1980. At the fiftieth anniversary ceremony in 2005, she even did a swinging dance number with Bobby Burgess, showing good form for a woman in her sixties. A longtime neighbor of Annette in Los Angeles, she moved to Reno in the early nineties, but still returns regularly to visit her ailing friend.
In December 2007, 20th Century Fox released Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952) on DVD, and included a recent interview with Sharon in the special features section, called Dancing As Fast As She Can: A Conversation with Sharon Baird.
