MOUSEKETEER BONNIE FIELDS DEAD

NationalEnquirer.com

BONNIE LYNN FIELDS, Disney MOUSEKETEER has died at 68.

Bonnie, a heavy smoker earlier in her life, was diagnosed with throat cancer two years ago.

The South Carolina native was 12 when she was offered a slot on "The Mickey Mouse Club," a Disney anthology which launched the careers of Annette Funicello and others.

"Bonnie had a ballet line through everything she did. She was a lithe ballerina type. And she was light," Mouseketeer Lonnnie Burr recalled.

As a Mouseketeer, Bonnie followed an intense schedule which, she told the Indiana newspaper in 2006, consisted of "three hours of school, one hour of recreation, one hour for lunch and four hours on the set."

 The cast's activities were strictly monitored by a man she called "the stopwatch guy," later 1970s Disney kingpin Ron Miller.

After leaving the "Mickey Mouse Club," Fields performed in live shows at Disneyland and appeared in the TV serials "The New Adventures of Spin and Marty" starring Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk and "Annette," which featured the ever-popular Annnette Funicello.

She also appeared in a New York City Ballet production of the "Nutcracker Suite" at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and performed on Broadway in the mid-1960s in "Kelly" and "Half a Sixpence" and had small parts in the films "Sweet Charity," "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Funny Girl."

In 1980 she returned to Disneyland to take part in Mouseketeer reunion shows with Burr, Cubby O'Brien, Tommy Cole and Sharon Baird.