David Cassidy in the News
TELEVISION - David Cassidy Dishes The Dirt And Talks About His Tv Biopic
January 7, 2000
By Nancy Imperiale Wellons
The Sentinel Staff
The Orlando Sentinel
Gee, they always looked so happy in their crushed velvet costumes.
But we're learning the inside story: the cast of The Partridge Family was actually a roiling mess of raw emotion.
First there was Danny Bonaduce (Danny Partridge) telling a grim tale of off-the-set child abuse in his November ABC movie, Come On Get Happy: The Partridge Family Story.
Now comes The David Cassidy Story, airing Sunday night at 9 on NBC. Cassidy (Keith Partridge) is executive producer of this gloomy look at the rise and fall of the Tiger Beat cover boy.
What's next - Shirley Jones admits she couldn't really play the tambourine?
Until the next chapter, here's Cassidy's tale of woe:
While other young adults in the 1970s were struggling to afford a VW Bug or get a job without cutting their hair, Cassidy was coping with what he calls the ``enormous burden'' of having money, sex and stardom thrown at him thanks to a hit sitcom.
What's worse, his image of himself didn't mesh with how others were treating him. And he had problems with his father. And he was frustrated with singing all those lovey-dovey pop songs when his real ambition was to be Jimi Hendrix.
But he's 49 now, fresh off stage successes in Las Vegas. He says he has changed his tune.
``I can't say I was always this cheerful about it,'' he admitted in a recent conference call with journalists. ``But I was never apologetic about being so successful, or about anything I had done - my work, my music, or about selling millions of records or making millions of people happy.''
Mr. ``C'mon, Get Cranky,'' has become ``I Think I Love Me.''
Cassidy isn't so enamored with castmate Susan Dey, who played little sis Laurie Partridge. She's legendarily mum about her Partridge years and doesn't communicate with the rest of the cast.
``It's really sad,'' Cassidy said, ``that Susan Dey can't embrace the fact that she was 16 years old and millions of people loved her.''
He's sad for TV brother Bonaduce too. He says he didn't bother to watch Bonaduce's movie, which was ``totally a commercial network ratings attempt to steal the thunder from NBC'' and his movie.
Cassidy's real-life half-brother - teen star turned TV producer Shaun Cassidy - watched it and told him Bonaduce's movie was ``so incredibly bad it was embarrassing.''
``I love the guy, and I'm friends with him and will always have a great love for him,'' Cassidy said of Bonaduce. ``I understand who he is. Look. Danny, he'd go to the opening of a Venetian blind. He's done really cheap stunts in his life. ... I've tried to tell him, `You don't need to do that, Danny. You don't need to go and box Donny Osmond. You're very funny.'...Unfortunately, he can't resist the need for attention.''
Cassidy, on the other hand, says he shunned the spotlight.
``It's a fascinating story, if you didn't have to live it,'' he said. Later he added, ``I toured all over the world and played the biggest arenas, but I knew that continually perpetuating that was making me more and more unhappy.''
Cassidy says he never wanted to be a pop star. He was striving to become a serious actor like his father, Jack Cassidy (played to the hilt in the movie by Malcolm McDowell). His dad and agent practically forced him to try out for the Partridge role, he says.
Cassidy's buddies predicted the show would flop. They were wrong.
The movie details Cassidy's rise from obscurity to worldwide phenomenon. But it doesn't celebrate any of that success. There are scenes featuring the wide-eyed pop star being savaged, in one form or another, by his troubled dad, by wild-eyed female fans, and by TV execs blinded by the bottom line.
There's a lot of death - of his manager, his father, his bank account and his career.
The movie's message: David Cassidy was a tortured soul trying to please people who were too busy repackaging him to contemplate how miserable he was.
Of course, now Cassidy himself is doing the repackaging.
Unmentioned in the movie, for example, are the many tawdry sexual encounters Cassidy detailed ad nauseam in his 1994 autobiography C'mon Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus. There's no mention of his frolics with Dutch flight attendants, actresses Gina Lollobrigida and Meredith Baxter, and groupies, such as ``Barbara the Butter Queen.'' His tortured tumble with Susan Dey is dealt with in a mercifully brief segment.
Cassidy also name-drops like a madman in his book - Paul McCartney, John Lennon, David Bowie, Don Johnson, Sal Mineo - but most are missing from the movie. Even his second marriage is overlooked.
And Cassidy had nowhere near the buff build of Andrew Kavovit, the former soap actor (Paul Ryan, As The World Turns) who plays the pop star.
``I thought Andy made me look good,'' Cassidy admitted. ``I only wish David Cassidy could've had a body like that.''
Kavovit had his own troubles slipping into the David Cassidy/Keith Partridge skin. Cassidy praised Kavovit's ``bravery in going forward and trying to do something we now think of as legendary.''
``At the end of the film they rolled the cameras and I got up with Andy to loosen him up,'' he said. ``I tried to give him a sense of `Put yourself out there. Allow yourself connection with those people who love and adore you.' He's never sung in front of an audience...I can't quite define how difficult that might be for anybody.''
We understand it's an enormous burden.
