Jack Cassidy

Jack Cassidy, born John Joseph Edward Cassidy on March 5, 1927, in Richmond Hill, New York, was an American actor, singer, and theatre director whose Broadway career spanned from 1944 to 1975. The youngest of five children, Cassidy was the son of Charlotte, née Koehler, and William Cassidy, an engineer at the Long Island Rail Road. His father was of Irish descent and his mother of German ancestry.

Cassidy built his reputation primarily as a musical theatre performer, accumulating an extensive list of Broadway credits that included Around the World, Music in My Heart, Alive and Kicking, Wish You Were Here, Shangri-La, Fade Out – Fade In, and Maggie Flynn. His most celebrated stage work came with She Loves Me, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1964, as well as a Grammy Award. He also appeared in It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, Murder Among Friends, and She Loves Me Not, among other productions.

Beyond the stage, Cassidy became a prolific television presence. He received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, one for the 1967–68 CBS series He & She and another for The Andersonville Trial. The role of Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was reportedly written with Cassidy in mind, drawing on a similar buffoonish character he had played in He & She, though he declined the part; it ultimately went to Ted Knight. Cassidy later appeared as a guest in a 1971 episode of that series, playing Ted's brother Hal. He made three appearances as a murderer on Columbo, in the episodes "Murder By the Book" (1971), "Publish or Perish" (1974), and "Now You See Him..." (1976), and guest-starred on numerous other programs including Gunsmoke, Bewitched, Get Smart, Hawaii Five-O, and Barnaby Jones. He co-starred with Ronnie Schell in a television revival of Hellzapoppin' and provided the voice of Bob Cratchit for the animated television special Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol.

His film work included a co-starring role as an informer in The Eiger Sanction alongside Clint Eastwood, and he was cast as John Barrymore in W.C. Fields and Me, a role that drew on his established screen persona as an urbane, confident egotist with a dramatic flair.

In his personal life, Cassidy was married twice. His first marriage, in 1948, was to actress Evelyn Ward, with whom he had a son, David, who later became a teen idol and starred in The Partridge Family alongside Cassidy's second wife. Cassidy and Ward divorced in 1956, and that same year he married singer and actress Shirley Jones. Together they had three sons: Shaun, Patrick, and Ryan. Shaun Cassidy became a teen idol in the late 1970s, starring in The Hardy Boys and producing four top-40 records. Cassidy and Jones divorced in 1975. Cassidy had twelve grandchildren, among them Katie Cassidy by his son David, and Jack Cassidy, who was a contestant on the television singing competition The Voice in 2017.

In the final years of his life, Cassidy suffered from bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and his behavior became increasingly erratic. In December 1974, he was hospitalized in a psychiatric facility for 48 hours. On the morning of December 12, 1976, a fire broke out in his West Hollywood apartment after he fell asleep on his couch with a lit cigarette. A charred body discovered near the front door was identified as Cassidy's through dental records and a signet ring bearing the Cassidy family crest. He was 49 years old. His remains were cremated and scattered in the Pacific Ocean.