![]() In it, Shirley played Shirley Partridge, widowed mother of five who dispensed wisdom and backing vocals in equal measure. ![]() ![]() “The Partridge Family” is one of the most beloved and fondly remembered television shows of the nineteen seventies. When the offer came to star in half hour television series about a musical family, Shirley jumped at the chance. She was just twenty-five.Īfter playing the female lead in a number of popular films including The Courtship of Eddie’s Father with Glenn Ford, Bedtime Story with Marlon Brando and David Niven, Never Steal Anything Small with James Cagney, and The Cheyenne Social Club with James Stewart and Henry Fonda, Shirley longed to spend more time at home with her children. For her stunning performance, Shirley received the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. These men would cast her against type as a prostitute in Sinclair Lewis’ timeless classic Elmer Gantry. Along the way, she caught the attention of actor Burt Lancaster and director Richard Brooks. Shirley appeared (again with Gordon Macrae) in the next Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece, Carousel, and would complete her turn in the triad of Great American Movie Musicals opposite Robert Preston in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. Under the direction of the great Fred Zinnemann, and playing opposite her childhood crush, Gordon Macrae, Shirley’s star was born. At seventeen, Shirley was awarded the title of “Miss Pittsburgh.” At eighteen, after traveling to New York to audition for the chorus of “South Pacific,” she was personally selected by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein to star in the film version of what was then the most successful and transformative of stage musicals, Oklahoma. An only child with a deep love of animals, she had her sights set on becoming a veterinarian, but her timeless beauty and God given talent as a singer led her family to encourage her to pursue a career in show business. Shirley grew up in the shadow of her family brewing company alongside the Youghiogheny River. Not bad for a beer salesman’s daughter from a small town in Western Pennsylvania. In addition, she won an Academy Award for a starkly dramatic role, played the lead in an immensely popular television series, appeared on Broadway, sang for nine Presidents, married two fiercely talented men, raised three accomplished sons, and is currently helping to nurture ten wildly independent grandchildren. In an extraordinary career spanning more than six decades, Shirley has starred in over thirty motion pictures, including three of the most iconic film musicals of all time. No performer is more indelibly linked to the great American movie musical than Shirley Jones.
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