David Cassidy on the Web
7 Surprising Secrets of The Partridge Family Cast from Shirley Jones's Memoir
July 29, 2013
By Vi-An Nguyen
www.parade.com
(Corbis)
Between 1970 and 1974, The Partridge Family was one of the most beloved TV shows in America. Audiences watched the singing family for four seasons as the show picked up five Golden Globe nominations, high ratings, and even a Grammy nomination.
In her new memoir, Shirley Jones takes readers behind the scenes of the wholesome series, revealing endearing—and shocking—details about the show's four-year run.
"I was sad to see the show end. If it hadn't been canceled, I would have been happy to carry on playing Shirley Partridge for another four years," Jones, 79, writes in the book. "For me and all the rest of the cast, this was the end of an era."
Below, see seven of the biggest revelations from Jones's days on The Partridge Family from her autobiography.
1. Before The Partridge Family, Jones turned down the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch.
Jones almost became another famous TV mom: before The Partridge Family came along, she was offered the part of Carol Brady. "While the idea of playing the mother in The Brady Bunch was initially attractive to me, I turned it down because I didn't want to be the mother taking the roast out of the oven and no doing much else," she writes. However, accepting the part on The Partridge Family was a much easier decision. "I had no doubts at all about playing Shirley Partridge," Jones writes. "First, because she was destined to become the first working mother on TV and I loved the script. Second, because working on the series would let me be an almost full-time mom and raise my kids."
2. The The Partridge Family's success contributed to her divorce from actor Jack Cassidy.
"The stratospheric success of the show took its toll on my marriage to Jack," Jones writes. "His overriding sense of inferiority in the face of my success drove him into the arms of other women even more often than before." After Jones caught Cassidy at a restaurant with another woman, he announced he wanted a separation, and the couple later divorced.
3. Danny Bonaduce was a troublemaker on set.
In the memoir, Jones calls Bonaduce, who played Danny Partridge, "highly talented" and "really, really smart." "But he was still a kid and would do kid things like get a dish of food and throw it across the room or have a pillow fight," she writes. "Danny was a wild child who came from an unhappy home. At eleven, he started smoking." And although the cast "loved and appreciated him, we couldn't deny that he was snotty at times. Once, when he was getting too big for his boots, we all ganged up on him and convinced Susan to pour a pitcher of milk over his head, just to put him in his place." The incident found its way into an episode of The Partridge Family, but with David Cassidy on the receiving end of the prank instead.
4. Susan Dey had a deep, unrequited crush on David Cassidy.
The actress who plays Laurie Partridge "had a great big crush on David, and he didn't reciprocate her feelings," Jones writes, adding that David saw Susan as "the sister he had never had." Even though the feelings were unrequited, Dey's crush persisted. "Throughout the series, Susan Dey continued to be crazy about David, but he didn't handle her emotions for him particularly well or sensitively," Jones writes, noting that David had frequent trysts with female fans as he became a famous musician in his own right. "She wouldn't listen to my advice to stay away from David, and I found myself warning her over and over against getting involved with him," Jones writes.
5. Jones loved some guest stars, but not others.
"One of the joys of working on The Partridge Family was the guest stars," Jones writes. When Farrah Fawcett joined an episode "everyone noticed what a great looker she was and predicted she would go on to be a big star," Jones says. Jodie Foster, who guest-starred when she was 11, was "one of the finest child actresses I had ever worked with," and Rob Reiner was "great" and also "fun to work with." On the other hand, Jones found fault with some of the other guest stars through the years: when Dick Clark came on the show, Jones "didn't like him very much," Richard Pryor was "so drugged up that he never asked me a thing about myself," and Ray Bolger was "a bit irritable and insisted that everything had to be his way," Jones writes.
"The public continued to find it hard to separate the Partridge family from the real-life actors playing them, which could sometimes cause serious problems in our lives," Jones writes. She tells the story of when her son, Ryan, was a toddler and invited a group of tourists into their home. Jones also notes that fans often assumed David was her real-life son (Jones was actually his stepmother), causing his birth mother, Evelyn Ward, a great deal of pain.
7. Susan Dey refuses to attend The Partridge Family reunions.
After The Partridge Family ended in 1974, Dey went on to several other TV parts, including a starring role on L.A. Law in 1986. "By then, she and David had grown apart, and nowadays they are completely out of touch, which hurts David tremendously," Jones writes. "I was also hurt that out of everyone on the show, only Susan consistently refuses to take part in any TV reunions of The Partridge Family."
