Shirley Jones

At 90 years old, Shirley Jones has this physical status:

Shirley Mae Jones (born March 31, 1934) is an American actress and singer.

She has appeared in a number of well-known musical films, including Oklahoma!, in her six decades of show business. (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962).

In Elmer Gantry (1960), she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute.

In the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970–74), Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.

Early life

Jones was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Methodist parents Marjorie (née Williams), a homemaker, and Paul Jones, the Jones Brewing Company's owners. Jones' paternal grandfather comes from Wales. Shirley Temple, a child actress, was named after her.

Jones claims that many people mistook her middle name after vaudeville and film hero Mae West, but she was actually named after her aunt. West, who was attending the Twin Coaches supper club in Rostraver around 1954, was the first celebrity Jones to visit.

The family then relocated to Smithton, Pennsylvania, which was located in a tiny nearby town. Jones began singing in the Methodist Church Choir at the age of six and learned voice lessons from Ralph Lewando. She was involved in school plays when she first attended South Huntingdon High School in Ruffs Dale, Pennsylvania.

In 1952, Jones defeated Miss Pittsburgh in the Miss Pittsburgh contest.

Personal life

Jones married actor and singer Jack Cassidy on August 5, 1956. Shaun, Patrick, and Ryan were three sons of the family. David Cassidy was Jack's uncle from his first marriage to actress Evelyn Ward, and she became her stepson. In 1975, Jones divorced Cassidy. Marty Ingels, a British actor and comedian, married her on November 13, 1977. Shirley & Marty: An Unlikely Love Story Jones and Ingels wrote an autobiography based on their friendship. Through a series of personalities and divorces (she filed, then withdrawn, a divorce petition in 2002), the couple remained married until Ingels' death on October 21, 2015 from a massive stroke. Jones said, "He often made me crazy, but there isn't a day I won't miss him and love him to my core."

Jones, a co-star Gordon MacRae and his ex-wife Sheila, were friends, and he was named godfather to her first son, Shaun. She confessed to having a crush on MacRae and was smitten when she worked opposite him in Oklahoma! She claims it was she who persuaded MacRae to play Billy Bigelow in Carousel, where they met together for the second time. Frank Sinatra had been cast but had to be shot twice, once in CinemaScope 55 (a wider-than-usual, 5-track stereo system) and once in 35-mm CinemaScope. Sinatra felt that he should have been paid twice because he was shooting two films simultaneously. They found a way to film the scene on 55-mm film and then transfer it to 35-mm three weeks after he left.

Jones had refused Jack Cassidy's apology, and she learned that her ex-husband's penthouse apartment was on fire on December 11, 1976. The fire started on his cigarette when he fell asleep on the couch, and firefighters discovered Cassidy's body inside the flooded apartment the following morning. In a 1983 newspaper interview, Jack "wanted to come back (to me) right up to the day he died." "I knew I wanted him later," I realized later." That's the scary part. As much as I love Marty and have a wonderful friendship, I'd say this with Marty -- "I'd say this with him" —but I'm not sure if Jack was alive I'd be married to Marty. Jones, 20, was 20 years old when she first encountered Cassidy, eight years her senior, and she thinks she knew him as the most influential person in and the love of her life.

Jones is a PETA supporter.

Jones is the grandmother of ten: Caitlin, Jake, Juliet, Caleb, Lila, and Mairin Cassidy by son Shaun; Cole and Jack by son Patrick; and Meaghan by son Ryan Cassidy. In 2017, her grandson Jack was a contestant on the singing competition television show The Voice.

When Suzanne Crough died on April 27, 2015, she was devastated; Crough appeared on The Partridge Family as one of her television children. She had a very close friendship with the younger actress and became close friends long after the series was cancelled, and she and Crough and her children would receive cards and birthday gifts every week. Jones recalled Crough's death on Hollywood Life: a hom.

Jones previously spoke about David Cassidy's alcohol use and court issues, but she recently revealed her family's shared apprehensions:

David Cassidy died on November 21, 2017. Jones cried out in public on the day of his death: Jones wrote: "It's day after his death."

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Career

She appeared in a biweekly casting call conducted by John Fearnley, casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein's various musicals. Jones had never heard of Rodgers and Hammerstein until that time. Fearnley was so impressed that he ran across the street to grab Richard Rodgers, who was rehearsing with an orchestra for a new musical. Oscar Hammerstein was then named at home by Rodgers. In Jones, the two showed a lot of promise. She was the first and only singer to be signed under personal agreement with the songwriters. She was first seen in a minor role in South Pacific. She began as a chorus girl and then an understudy for the lead role in Chicago's second Broadway show, Me and Juliet.

Jones captivated Rodgers and Hammerstein with her musically trained voice, and was named as the female leader in Oklahoma. In 1955, a film version was released. Carousel (1956), April Love (1957), and The Music Man (1962), which were often described as a wholesome, kind of person, were all followed quickly by other film musicals, including Carousel (1956), April Love (1957) and The Music Man (1962). However, she received a 1960 Academy Award for her performance in Elmer Gantry portraying a woman corrupted by Burt Lancaster's title character. Her character develops into a prostitute who meets her seducer years later and discovers his true identity. Richard Brooks had originally opposed her role in the film, but after seeing her first scene, she learned she would be nominated for an Oscar. In The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), she and Ron Howard (who had played her brother in The Music Man) were reunited. In Fluffy (1965), Jones played a lady who fell in love with the professor.

She has worked with some of Hollywood's most influential people, including Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and director John Ford.

Since turning down Carol Brady's role on The Brady Bunch, the producers' first choice for the lead role of Shirley Partridge in The Partridge Family, an ABC musical sitcom loosely based on the real-life musical family The Cowsills, was Florence Henderson. After the entire family painted its signature bus to travel, the series concentrated on a young widowed mother whose five children formed a pop rock band. She was confident that the combination of music and comedy would be a surefire hit.

Jones realized, however, that:

It became a hit in its first season and was broadcast in over 70 countries. Jones and her co-stars were pop culture television stars within months. Shirley Partridge's eldest son Keith was played by her real-life 20-year-old stepson David Cassidy, who was then an unknown actor at the time, became a teen idol. The show also produced a number of albums and singles by The Partridge Family, a tribute to David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. "I Love You" was the second woman to win an acting Oscar and also have a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart in the same year, making Jones the second person since Frank Sinatra and the first woman to win an acting Oscar and have a number one hit on the chart (Cherry and Barbra Streisand did not win her Oscar until 1987). In 1970, the Partridge Family received a NARM award for their hit "I Love You" and "I Think I Love You" was the best-selling single of the year. The Partridge Family was nominated for a Grammy in 1971 under the Best New Artist category.

It was one of six series cancelled this year (along with Room 222, The F.B.I., Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, and Here's Lucy) to make way for new shows by 1974.

Shirley Jones' relationship with David Cassidy's family began in the mid-to-late 1950s, when David was just six years old when he learned about his father's divorce from his mother Evelyn Ward. "We're divorced," David says as she co-stars on The Partridge Family, and let me introduce you to my new wife." When she first film, Oklahoma, he was ecstatic! (1955), it came out; and my dad took me to see it; I go, oh, I'm in complete surprise because I wanted to avoid her, but the first time I saw her, I understood her. She's a very warm, transparent, sweet human being. She couldn't have thawed it for me—the coldness and the ice—any more than she did." Shirley was stunned to learn that her real-life stepson would audition for Keith Partridge. "They introduced me to the lead actress [Shirley Jones] at the auditions because they had no idea."

So I said, 'What are you doing here?'

"What are you doing here?" she stared at me and asked, "What are you doing here?" "Well, I'm reading for the lead guy," I said.

I said, 'What are you doing here?'

She said, 'I'm the mother!'"

Cassidy spoke to him about his show-motherhood: "She wasn't my mother, and she was very open, and we can talk," Cassidy said, and they became close friends. She was a good role model for me, as you'll recall, she worked with people on the set and watched people revere her."

Cassidy appeared on many television shows with his stepmother, including A&E Biography, TV Land Confidential, and The Today Show, as one of the presenters of his stepmother's Intimate Portrait on Lifetime Television and the reality show pilot In Search of the Partridge Family, where he served as co-executive producer. The remainder of the cast members also commemorated The Partridge Family's 25th, 30th, and 35th anniversaries (although Cassidy was unable to attend the 25th anniversary in 1995 due to other commitments). In addition, Jack Cassidy's death in 1976 brought Jones and Cassidy closer, as Shirley's three children and stepson mourned their father.

Jones tried television for the second time in 1979, appearing in the NBC drama Shirley, which, like The Partridge Family, featured a family headed by a widowed mother, but the show lost to win ratings and was cancelled near the middle of the season. In several episodes of Drew Carey's "older woman" companion, Jones appeared in a cameo in a 2000 episode of That '70s Show, as he revived Shirley Partridge's character.

She was also in the wildly popular film There Were Times, Dear, in which she played a loyal wife whose husband is dying of Alzheimer's disease; she was also nominated for an Emmy Award for this work.

Jones unveiled her on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 1986, just around the corner from Hollywood Boulevard. Bitter Sweet, No.l Coward's rare revival of his operetta, appeared in 1983. The first time a mother and son were known to appear together on Broadway in 2004, she returned to Broadway in a revival of 42nd Street portraying diva Dorothy Brock opposite Patrick Cassidy. Jones revived the musical Carousel on stage in Massachusetts in July 2005, portraying "Cousin Nettie" as "Cousin Nettie."

Jones received another Emmy Award nomination in July 2006 for her role in the television film Hidden Places. She had been nominated for a Screen Actor Guild award for the same film but she was disqualified for Elizabeth I, which was lost to Helen Mirren for Elizabeth I. She appeared in Grandma's Boy (2006) as a senior citizen. During the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular Festival in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, she appeared on November 16, 2007, marking the state's 100th birthday.

Jones sang the songs "Oklahoma!"

From the musical Oklahoma, "People Will Say We're In Love" and "People Will Be In Love."

Jones would appear alongside Colleen Brady on the long-running NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives in early 2008. As David and Patrick's mother, Jones appeared on ABC Family's short-lived show Ruby & The Rockits.

Stage Door Records, a U.K. label, released a retrospective collection Then & Now, which contained 24 songs from Jones' musical career, as well as songs from the films Oklahoma!, Carousel, and April Love. "Beauty and the Beast," "Memory," and a sentimental tribute to The Music Man were among the album's tracks. In the Fox TV comedy series Raising Hope, Burt Chance's mother appeared on a regular basis.

When her son Patrick played Harold Hill in a California Musical Theatre revival of The Music Man, Jones played Mrs. Paroo in mid-2012.

Jones appeared on an episode of General Hospital as Mrs. McClain in 2014.

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