Shirley Jones

American actress and singer Shirley Jones (1934) had her breakthrough in her first film, the great musical Oklahoma! (1955) as Laurey, the farm girl in love with cowboy Gordon MacRae. The following year, she starred in another classic musical, Carousel (1956). But by this time, musicals were a dying art. She changed her peachy-cream image with her role as a vengeful prostitute in the drama Elmer Gantry (1960), for which she won the Oscar for Supporting Actress. A decade later, she returned on television as a widowed mother of five children in the popular series The Partridge Family (1970-1974) opposite her real-life stepson, teen idol David Cassidy.


Big vintage card.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 818. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones in Carousel (1956).


Spanish postcard by C y A, no. 87. Shirley Jones and Pat Boone in April Love (Henry Levin, 1957). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

The dying art of the film musical

Shirley Jones was born Shirley Mae Jones in 1934 in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Her Methodist parents were Marjorie (née Williams), and Paul Jones, owner of the Jones Brewing Company. She was named after child star Shirley Temple. Jones started singing at the age of six in the Methodist Church choir. She started formal training at the age of 12 and would dream of singing with her idol, Gordon MacRae.

Jones won the Miss Pittsburgh contest in 1952. Upon graduating from high school, Shirley went to New York to audition for John Fearnley, casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein and their various musicals. Fearnley was so impressed, he ran across the street to fetch Richard Rodgers, who was rehearsing with an orchestra for an upcoming musical. Rodgers then called Oscar Hammerstein at home. The two saw great potential in Jones. She became the first and only singer to be put under personal contract with the songwriters. Shirley's Broadway debut was a minor role as a nurse in the musical 'South Pacific'.

Within a year, she would be in Hollywood to appear in her first film, the musical Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann, 1955) as Laurey, the farm girl in love with the cowboy Gordon MacRae. Oklahoma! (1955) would be filmed in CinemaScope and Todd-AO wide-screen and would take a year to shoot.

After that, Shirley returned to Broadway for the stage production of 'Oklahoma!' before returning to Hollywood for Carousel (Henry King, 1956), again with Gordon MacRae. Other film musicals quickly followed, April Love (Henry Levin, 1957) with teen idol Pat Boone, and Never Steal Anything Small (Charles Lederer, 1959) starring James Cagney.

But by this time, musicals were a dying art, and she would have a few lean years. In Great Britain, she appeared in the mediocre comedy Bobbikins (Robert Day, 1959), starring Max Bygraves and a talking baby. She would work on television in programs like Playhouse 90 (1956) and The United States Steel Hour (1957). Both were anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3344. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Pat Boone and Shirley Jones in April Love (Henry Levin, 1957).


Vintage postcard, no. 5210.

A darker role to change her peachy-cream image

With a screen image comparable to Peaches and Cream, Shirley Jones wanted a darker role to change her image. In 1960, Richard Brooks cast her as the vengeful prostitute Lulu Bains in the dramatic film Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960). With a brilliant performance against an equally brilliant Burt Lancaster, Shirley won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1961, she was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Elmer Gantry. In total she was nominated four times for a Golden Globe in 1963 (starring in the film musical The Music Man), 1971 and 1972 (both times for her lead role in the musical sitcom The Partridge Family).

But the public wanted the good Shirley, so she was cast as Marty Purcell in the Western Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961) and as Marion, the librarian, in the successful musical The Music Man (Morton DaCosta, 1962), starring Robert Preston and the young Ron Howard. Preston had played the role on Broadway, and his performance, along with Shirley was magic.

Shirley would again work with little Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Vincente Minnelli, 1963) starring Glenn Ford. With an uncharacteristically brunette hairstyle, Jones played the role of a woman who falls in love with Tony Randall's lion-owning professor in Fluffy (Earl Bellamy, 1965). But the films changed in the 1960s, and Shirley's image did not fit. Her film career stopped in 1965, but there were always nightclubs and later television. In 1970, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her lead role in the TV drama Silent Night, Lonely Night. Decades later, in 2006, she was nominated again for her supporting role in the television film Hidden Places (Yelena Lanskaya, 2006) and in 2010 for her one-off guest role in the drama series The Cleaner).

A new generation discovered her as Shirley Partridge in the television series The Partridge Family (1970-1974), a musical sitcom based loosely on the real-life musical family The Cowsills. 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 show also spawned a number of albums and singles by The Partridge Family, performed by David Cassidy and Shirley Jones. That same year, 'I Think I Love You' reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. While the success of the show would do more for her stepson, 20-year-old teen idol David Cassidy, it would keep her name and face in the public view for the four years that the series ran. The show still plays in reruns. After the show ended, Shirley Jones spent the rest of the 1970s in the land of television movies. The television movie The Lives of Jenny Dolan (Jerry Jameson, 1975) was made as a pilot for a series that was not picked up. In 1979, Shirley appeared in a comedy show called Shirley (1979-1980), but the show lasted only one season.

Shirley Jones would appear infrequently in the 1980s, and in videos extolling fitness and beauty at the end of the decade. Her later films include the action comedy Tank (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1984) with James Garner, the parody Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth (John Blanchard, 2000) and the comedy Grandma's Boy (Nicholaus Goossen, 2006). Her first marriage to actor Jack Cassidy lasted from 1956 to 1975. With him, she had three sons, Shaun (1958), Patrick (1962), and Ryan Cassidy (1966). Jones married again in 1977, to actor Marty Ingels. She published a book about her life with Ingels in 1990, titled 'Shirley and Marty: An Unlikely Romance'.


Dutch postcard by Muziek Parade, Bussum, no. AX 2792. Susan Dey, David Cassidy, Shirley Jones, Jeremy Gelbwaks, Suzanne Crough and Danny Bonaduce in the TV series The Partridge Family (1971-1974).


Dutch postcard by Muziek Parade, Bussum, no. AX 7265. Danny Bonaduce, Susan Dey, David Cassidy, Suzanne Crough, Jeremy Gelbwaks and Shirley Jones in the TV series The Partridge Family (1971-1974).


Dutch postcard by Muziek Parade, Bussum, no. 7294. David Cassidy, Shirley Jones, Susan Dey, Brian Forster, Suzanne Crough and Danny Bonaduce in the TV series The Partridge Family (1971-1974).

Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.