Shirley Jones - Shirley Jones: A Memoir

CONTENTS

To my glorious father,
who loved me as I was
and left me far too early

INTRODUCTION

For those of you who remember me as the innocent, blond, blue-eyed ingnue of Oklahoma! and Carousel and The Music Man , the real-life, everyday me is far removed from the characters of Laurey, Julie, and Marian the librarian. While I was proud to sing great American standards such as People Will Say Were in Love, If I Loved You, and Till There Was You for the very first time on-screen, I have never myself been that innocent or ever been that kind of an ingnue.

Similarly, for those of you who remember me as Mrs. Partridge of The Partridge Family , while I adored being a real-life mother to my four boys (Shaun, Patrick, Ryan, and David, who is my stepson), I am nowhere near as breezy and uncomplicated as Mrs. Partridge. And Im not a spoiled Hollywood movie star or a jaded TV icon, either.

Deep down I am a small-town girl from Smithton, Pennsylvania, who made movies with such actors as Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Glenn Ford, David Niven, Rossano Brazzi, and Pat Boone. I appeared on TV with my stepson, David Cassidy, and the rest of the wonderful cast of The Partridge Family , but also with Farrah Fawcett, Richard Pryor, Jerry Lewis, and Dean Martin. I partied with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Collins; I performed for President Eisenhower, President Johnson, President Ford, President Reagan, and the first President Bush; and I rubbed shoulders with Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles, Warren Beatty, George C. Scott, and Cary Grant. And I was married twice: first to the ultimate lothario, Tony Awardwinning star Jack Cassidy, and then to the zany actor/producer Marty Ingels, who is my current husband. Along the way, I won an Academy Award as well.

But deep down I remain that small-town girl from Smithton, Pennsylvania, and in the dead of the night, in my secret soul, I still sometimes wish I had taken a different path and never gone into show business, but followed my dreams and become a veterinarian instead.

In this memoir you are going to meet the real, flesh-and-blood Shirley Jones, not just the movie star or Mrs. Partridge. While my life may, on the surface, seem to be full of glitter and glamour, from the inside looking out that is far from the whole.

In my private life, Ive had struggles, dilemmas, and tragediessome of the same struggles, dilemmas, and tragedies that many other women of my generation have had to cope with: the early death of a parent, marriage to a rampantly unfaithful first husband, watching helplessly while a child battled a drug habit, trying to make peace between a second husband and children from a previous marriage, and all the usual challenges in growing old.

And then there is my sexuality, when I was in my prime and now that I am on the threshold of my eighties. I plan to tell the truth about that aspect of my life, and to rip away the seven veils and reveal every facet of Shirley Jones, however shocking that may be to you or Mrs. Partridge or Marian the librarian.

So bring out the smelling salts, hang on to your hats, and get ready for the surprise of your lives!

ONE

A Beautiful Morning

Although I was named Shirley after the saccharine child star Shirley Temple, Ive always been far more full of spice than of sugar.

As a baby, instead of cooing away softly and then serenely sleeping all day in my crib, I screamed and screamed at the top of my voice until I got attention. My favorite pastime was chewing on my crib because I seemed to like the taste of varnish so much. I chewed so hard, and with such great determination, that chew marks were left all over the wooden rails of my crib.

I was sturdy, adventurous, and unafraid. When I was four years old, and playing in the family-owned Jones brewery, my grandfather promised me jelly beans if I drank some beer. I jumped at the opportunity, tried the beer, and hated it.

But I loved the brewery, and everything about it, primarily because it was my haven, my second home. My father, Paul Jones, and his brothers ran the Smithton, Pennsylvania, brewery, and from the time when I was three years old and we moved from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, where I was born, I spent much of my childhood there, playing hide-and-seek among the beer vats and the ice lockers, while my fathers employees all held their breath, terrified that I would accidentally lock myself in a freezer and emerge as a pint-size ice sculpture!

The Jones Brewing Company employed at least half of Smithton (population only 800), and it was started by my grandfather William B. Jones, who hailed from Wales. He immigrated to Pennsylvania, became a coal miner, worked himself to the bone, and saved enough money to buy a corner building in the little town of Smithton, a Norman Rockwell painting in living color. Then he converted that building into a small hotel with six rooms and called it the Jones Hotel. He was the bartender, and my grandmother Lulu did everything else necessary to make the hotel run smoothly.

The official story, the one that I grew up knowing by heart, was that the hotel was so successful my grandfather bought a building on a beautiful site on the Youghiogheny River, which flowed through Smithton, joined the Monongahela River, and then ran right into Pittsburgh, twenty-one miles away. In 1907, in that riverside building, he founded the Jones Brewing Company.

The unofficial story, one that I heard years later, was that William B. Jones, my grandfather, actually won the brewery in a poker game! According to that tale, the brewery had originally been based in Sutersville, Pennsylvania, and manufactured Eureka beer. After my grandfather won the brewery in 1907, he renamed it the Jones Brewing Company and moved it to Smithton.

Whatever the truth, Im sure of one thing, the origin of the name of Jones brewerys most beloved beer. According to family lore, one of my grandfathers earliest customers was an African-American man who regularly visited the brewery along with his bulldog, Stoney.

My grandfather grew to love that dog so much that after the dog died, he declared, From now on, my name is Stoney Jones. And he named the beer he brewed Stoneys beer after the dog he loved so much.

Since then, the Jones Brewing Company, Stoneys beer, and Stoneys Light beer have been featured in the movie Striking Distance , starring Bruce Willis, and in the TV shows Northern Exposure and My Name Is Earl .

Although I never knew my grandfather well, I inherited his love of animals and, as a child, raised mice, birds, squirrels, and had no fear of snakes or spiders. No fear whatsoever. In fact, my biggest ambition was to become a vet and look after animals of all types and sizes. Then, fate took a hand and I became something quite different.

My grandfather died of diabetes aged only fifty-six, after having his leg amputated, rumor had it, because he drank too much beer. Sometime before he died, he tried to reverse his diabetes by instructing that Stoneys beer be manufactured without sugar. Sadly, that didnt help, and he died anyway. Nonetheless, even today, Stoneys beer is still manufactured without sugar or preservatives.

After my grandfathers untimely death, my formidable grandmother Lulu inherited the Jones brewery, and my father and his brothers ran it for her.

Despite his responsibilities, my father was a relaxed, generous, and happy man, with a heart of gold. From the first, he was the love of my life. When I was in the crib and screamed until it felt as if my lungs would burst, he would immediately rush into my nursery at top speed, lift me high in his strong, muscular arms, then place me on his barrel chest, whereupon I would promptly fall into a deep, contented sleep.