Shirley Jones

Shirley Mae Jones was born on March 31, 1934, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Marjorie (née Williams) and Paul Jones, who owned the Jones Brewing Company. Her paternal grandfather emigrated from Wales, and she was named after child star Shirley Temple, though her middle name was taken from an aunt rather than Mae West, as many have assumed. The family later relocated to the nearby town of Smithton. Jones began singing at age six in a Methodist Church choir and studied voice under Ralph Lewando. She attended South Huntingdon High School in Ruffs Dale, where she took part in school productions, and in 1952 she won the Miss Pittsburgh contest.

Her professional career began when she auditioned for John Fearnley, the casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Fearnley was sufficiently impressed that he brought Richard Rodgers across the street from a rehearsal to hear her, and Rodgers in turn contacted Oscar Hammerstein by telephone. The two songwriters placed Jones under personal contract, making her the first and only singer to hold such an arrangement with them. They cast her in a minor role in South Pacific, which marked her Broadway debut. Her second Broadway engagement was Me and Juliet, where she began as a chorus member before becoming an understudy for the lead role and earning strong notices during the Chicago run. Jones went on to appear on Broadway from 1949 to 2001, with credits that included The Sound of Music, Maggie Flynn, South Pacific, and 42nd Street.

Rodgers and Hammerstein subsequently cast Jones as the female lead in the 1955 film adaptation of Oklahoma!, launching her screen career. She followed that with the film musical Carousel in 1956, April Love in 1957, and The Music Man in 1962, in which she was frequently cast in wholesome roles. Her film work brought her into collaboration with performers including Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and director John Ford. In 1960, Jones departed sharply from her established screen image by playing a woman corrupted by the title character in Elmer Gantry, a role in which her character ultimately becomes a prostitute who later exposes her seducer. Director Richard Brooks had initially opposed her casting, but reversed his position after observing her first scene and told her she would win an Academy Award for the performance. She did, taking home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1963, she appeared alongside Ron Howard, who had played her brother in The Music Man, in The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Jones also appeared in Fluffy in 1965, playing a woman who falls in love with a lion-owning professor portrayed by Tony Randall, adopting an uncharacteristically brunette hairstyle for the part.

In 1970, Jones was cast as Shirley Partridge, a widowed mother of five whose children form a pop-rock group, in the ABC musical sitcom The Partridge Family, which ran until 1974. The series was based loosely on the real-life musical family the Cowsills. Jones had previously turned down the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, a part that went to her close friend Florence Henderson. Her stepson David Cassidy, then 20 years old and a relatively unknown actor, was cast as Shirley Partridge's eldest son Keith and became a teen idol during the show's run. Jones and Cassidy had first met in the mid-to-late 1950s, when Cassidy was approximately six years old, following his father Jack Cassidy's divorce and remarriage to Jones. Neither Jones nor Cassidy was aware the other had auditioned for The Partridge Family until they encountered each other at the casting sessions. The series became a hit in its first season and was broadcast in more than 70 countries. The Partridge Family released multiple albums and singles, performed by Cassidy and Jones, and their 1970 single "I Think I Love You" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. That achievement made Jones the second person, after Frank Sinatra, and the first woman to hold both an acting Academy Award and a number-one single on that chart. The Partridge Family received a NARM award for best-selling single of 1970 for that recording, and in 1971 the group was nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Artist category. Jack Cassidy's death in 1976 brought Jones and her stepson closer, as both mourned alongside her three children.

In 1975, Jones starred in the television film Winner Take All as a compulsive gambler whose addiction leads her to steal from her husband and become involved with her bookie.