Baird appeared in her first film,
Bloodhounds of Broadway, in 1950. At age nine she began regular appearances on
The Colgate Comedy Hour television show with
Eddie Cantor. She did episodes of several different television shows, and an unbilled song-and-dance number with
Dean Martin in
Artists and Models (1955) (which also featured fellow Mouseketeer
Nancy Abbate), just before being selected for the
Mickey Mouse Club. Contrary to the impression given by
Disney publicity, many of the
Mickey Mouse Club cast had some prior experience in films and television. Baird was among the most experienced of these professionals, and performed with the show's "Red Team", or first-string unit, for all three seasons of original programming (1955–1958). Her specialty was tap, but she did other forms of dancing, as well as singing and acting on the show. After filming completed in 1958, Baird finished high school at
Hollywood Professional School, then attended
Los Angeles Valley College where she made the
National Honor Society and was president of her class. She briefly interrupted her education in May 1959 for a short performing tour of Australia with the Mouseketeers, then graduated from college in 1963 with degrees in mathematics and secretarial science. In 1964, Baird married singer Dalton Lee Thomas, and, with a male friend of his, worked up a nightclub act called "Two Cats and a Mouse", which faded out, along with the marriage, by 1969. During the 1970s she worked extensively as a live "puppet" for
Sid and Marty Krofft, among others, doing children's shows such as
H.R. Pufnstuf,
The Bugaloos,
New Zoo Revue,
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and
Land of the Lost. She did
rotoscoping work for
Ralph Bakshi's late seventies film
The Lord of the Rings. She was the live-action model for the part of
Frodo Baggins, for which she did not receive screen credit. In 1980, Baird, along with the other Mouseketeers, did a television special for
The Wonderful World of Disney, reprising her "tap dancing while jumping rope" routine. She then joined a smaller number of her colleagues in performing live shows at
Disneyland on weekends for several years during the early 1980s. ==Later life==