Shirley Mae Jones is an American actress and singer. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry. She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family.
About Shirley Jones in brief
Shirley Mae Jones is an American actress and singer. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry. She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family. Jones was the first and only singer to be put under personal contract with the songwriters. She has worked with some of Hollywood’s icons: Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and director John Ford. Her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, was an unknown at the time of the show’s debut. The show spawned a number of albums and singles by Shirley Jones and David Cassidy and was screened in over 70 countries. She was born on March 31, 1934, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Methodist parents Marjorie, a homemaker, and Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. She says that many people have incorrectly assumed that her middle name was named after vaudeville and film legend Mae West, but Jones was actually named after her aunt. The first star Jones ever met was West, who was performing at the Twin Coaches supper club in Rostraver around 1954. She began singing at the age of six in the Methodist Church choir and took voice lessons from Ralph Lewando. Her first audition was for an open bi-weekly casting call held by John Fearnley, casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein and their various musicals.
In 1970, after turning down the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, she was the producers’ first choice to audition for the lead roles in the ABC musical sitcom based loosely on the real- life musical family The Cowsills. During its first season, it became a hit, and Jones and her co-stars were co-starred by 20-year-old stepson David Cassidy. The series focused on a young Widowed mother whose five children form a pop rock group after the entire family painted its signature bus to travel. The problem with Partridge—though it was great for me and gave me an opportunity to stay home and raise my kids—when my agents came to me, they said if you do a hit and it becomes a show, you will be that for the rest of your life and your film career will go into the toilet, which is what I have no regrets about, she says. She is married to actor and director Ron Howard and they have three children, a son, a daughter and a son-in-law. The couple have a son named Keith, who played Keith Partridge in the hit musical Me and Juliet, and a daughter, Kelly Partridge-Keith, Keith and Keith, Keith, and Keith played Keith’s eldest son, Keith Keith in The Music Man. Jones says she is proud of her family’s history of philanthropy.
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