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.