Cheryl Holdridge

Career

Cheryl Holdridge got her start early, making her professional debut at nine years old dancing in the New York City Ballet's Los Angeles production of The Nutcracker. Her first time on camera was as an uncredited extra in the 1956 movie Carousel. That same spring, she tried out for Walt Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club and landed a spot for its second season. Once the show wrapped, she went back to Van Nuys High School and finished up at Grant High School, graduating with the winter class of 1961.

In 1959, she appeared in two episodes of Leave It to Beaver as Gloria Cusick, and later took on a recurring part as Wally Cleaver's girlfriend, Julie Foster. She brought that character back for two guest spots on The New Leave It to Beaver in 1985 and 1987. Starting in 1960, she popped up on more than twenty TV shows, including The Rifleman, Wagon Train, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Bachelor Father, My Three Sons, The Eleventh Hour, Bewitched, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

She was offered the role of Elly May on The Beverly Hillbillies, but her studio wouldn't let her out of her contract to take it. She also lost the lead in Gidget Goes to Rome to Cindy Carol because she was considered too mature, and she screen-tested for a part in Spencer's Mountain that ultimately went to Mimsy Farmer. Holdridge stepped away from acting in 1964 to marry race car driver Lance Reventlow. Universal Studios offered her a movie contract, but she turned it down after Reventlow proposed, explaining that she had to pick between her career and her personal life, and that while he didn't want her to quit, being tied to a studio wouldn't feel right.

In 1967, there were reports she planned to write a book about Barbara Hutton and Reventlow, but that project never came together. After her third husband passed away, she made a cameo in the 2000 film The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. In 2005, she attended Disneyland for the 50th anniversary of both the park and The Mickey Mouse Club. She also appeared in documentary specials about Cary Grant (2005) and Barbara Hutton (2006), and gave an interview for a Disney DVD feature.

Personal life

In 1960, Holdridge toured Australia with fellow former Mouseketeers and met singer Lucky Starr, then 19, while she was 15. Starr said he fell for her, and after they split they stayed in touch through letters. Before her first wedding, she was linked to Elvis Presley, Tony Dow, Ricky Nelson, Tim Considine, Fabian Forte, Bobby Rydell, Don Grady, Tommy Kirk, and Michael Anderson Jr. She married sportsman and heir Lance Reventlow on November 8, 1964.

Reventlow, the only child of Barbara Hutton, inherited the Woolworth fortune. Holdridge quit acting after getting engaged, saying that was simply what women did back then—marry and stay home. The marriage grew distant; they saw each other only sometimes, and she considered divorce. At a 1971 event, she refused to be called Mrs. Lance Reventlow, explaining they were close friends who just didn’t live together.

Reventlow died in a small plane crash in Aspen, Colorado, in 1972, leaving Holdridge roughly $50 million. Between marriages, she reportedly dated producers Robert Cohn and Andrew Wald, plus author Michael Crichton. In 1974, she wed Albert James "Jim" Skarda, who ran an Aspen car rental business. Skarda was later indicted as the leader of an international drug ring; in 1983, he put up $100,000 to import marijuana from Colombia.

Holdridge used their Aspen home to cover his $500,000 bond. They divorced in 1988. She kept a second home in Aspen and spent half the year there from the late 1960s through the mid-1990s.

Did You Know?

• Her stepbrother was diplomat John H. Holdridge, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore and Indonesia.
• She watched an installment of Poor Little Rich Girl with producer Lester Persky at his Bel Air home.