With the end of the big-screen musical era, Jones fought for recognition as a serious actress to win the role in Elmer Gantry and other dramatic fare. She received a part in the chorus for Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and then, a year later, the starring role in the duo's Oklahoma! - as well as the title of 'Hollywood's new Cinderella,' as Jones recounts in her book. 'Smithton, and nothing,' Jones recalls as her flustered reply. In 1953, on a post-high school graduation trip to New York with her parents, a friend introduced her to an agent who, immediately impressed, told her to attend an open audition with John Fearnley, the casting director for the songwriting team of Rodgers and Hammerstein.Īfter 'going for broke' and singing The Best Things in Life Are Free, a voice from the theater called out to Jones on stage, 'Where are you from? And what have you done before?' She describes herself as a rebellious tomboy, 'wild, willful and independent,' who became obsessed with movies and their stars but intended to turn her love of animals into a career as a veterinarian. Her autobiography begins innocently enough, with Jones born in Charleroi, Pa., and moving as a toddler to Smithton, Pa., where her father helped run the family-owned brewery, the Jones Brewing Co.
but it was my life and it was the way I wanted to live it.' That includes Cassidy's impressive endowment, Jones' own 'highly sexed' nature that made orgasms a breeze, their threesome with another woman ('yuck,' she says, when asked about the onetime experiment), Cassidy's pre-marital sexual encounter with Cole Porter that Jones says left her unfazed, and her apparent tolerance for his infidelities.ĭoting mother: David Cassidy gets a kiss from his mother Shirley backstage during the TV Land Awards 2003 at the Hollywood Palladium The star was promoting her new book which recounts her early life and dazzling career that included working with two musical theater masters, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, as well as many of Hollywood's top actors, including Marlon Brando, Jimmy Stewart and Richard Widmark.īut a substantial part of the book is spent on her troubled marriage to the late Jack Cassidy, the glossily handsome actor and singer whom she describes in a passage as her first lover and 'sexual Svengali,' and whose lessons she shares candidly.
All in good fun: Shirley appeared to be in a jovial mood as Katie asked her whether she had been involved in a threesome relationship before
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