Partridge Family's Shirley Jones: The night I was asked to have a foursome with Joan Collins

By Lina Das

PUBLISHED: 20:13 EST, 25 July 2013 | UPDATED: 05:06 EST, 26 July 2013

'Sweet': Shirley Jones, pictured in 1964, has revealed that she was asked to have a foursome with Joan Collins

Shirley Jones is Hollywood royalty to the core. The actress and singer, star of such golden oldie movies as Oklahoma!, Carousel and The Music Man, won an Oscar in 1961 for her portrayal of a prostitute in Elmer Gantry (beating Janet Leigh in Psycho), was married to Broadway star Jack Cassidy and was stepmother to his son, teen heartthrob David Cassidy.

Shirley and David starred together in the 1970s TV series The Partridge Family, in which she played Mrs Partridge, widowed mother to a group of travelling child musicians, headed by David himself.

Shirley Partridge was sweet, pretty and uncomplicated — 'And in everyone's eyes, I was always identified with Mrs Partridge,' says the actress. But with the forthcoming publication of her memoirs, that image may be shot to pieces.

Tales of threesomes, aborted foursomes and marriage to a rampantly unfaithful, bipolar first husband who died in a horrific fire may, as Shirley herself remarks, make readers reach for the smelling salts.

There are tales, too, of some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Frank Sinatra 'was so self-involved . . . every single conversation centred only around him'; and he pulled out of the film they were due to make together, Carousel, because the great love of his life, Ava Gardner, had summoned him to be by her side.

Shirley shared passionate kisses with Richard Widmark, her co-star in the 1961 film Two Rode Together, but went no further because, 'despite my husband's infidelities, I still loved him'.

And she even had a brush with the king and queen of Hollywood — Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor — who had invited Shirley and husband Jack to a fundraiser at their home. 'When we got there,' says Shirley, 'Richard dragged me into one of the bedrooms, closed the door, and I thought to myself, "Uh-oh!".

'But instead of making a pass, he was trying to teach me to sing in Gaelic.

'Eventually, Elizabeth appeared at the door and said: "Get your ass out here!" They definitely had a fiery chemistry.'

'But I didn't set out to shock readers — I just wanted to tell the truth about who I am,' she insists. 'I'm a human being with all that entails — not just an actress or a character in a TV show.'

We meet at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel, and even in jeans 79-year-old Shirley exudes glamour. She looks terrific — the result not of having had work done, she tells me, 'but of good genes, going to the gym three or four times a week and having a Martini every afternoon at 5pm!'

During that time, she chats about the day with her second husband, comedian Marty Ingels, to whom she has been married for 35 years.

In the book, she says that her first husband, Jack Cassidy, was the love of her life, and one wonders how Marty felt living with the ghost of Cassidy for all those years.

'Well, the fact that Marty is a comic means he kind of deals with it with humour,' says Shirley. 'But he was so in love with me, and the more I got to know him, the more I fell in love with him.

'He's now the love of my life — and has been for some time. But it was hard in the beginning as Jack was really something.'

On their first date, Cassidy, a prodigious womaniser, told Shirley that he was going to marry her — despite the fact that he was already married to actress Evelyn Ward, and with a son, David.

Shirley, a virgin when they met, ignored everyone's warnings about him. 'I just didn't care what anyone said,' she laughs. 'He was exciting for me in every way.

'He loved that I was a movie star but also a small-town girl from Pennsylvania. He used to call me Mouse. He taught me about food, champagne, the theatre and sex.

'The funny thing was that I was very strong-willed as a girl and wouldn't listen to a word my mother said. But with Jack, I was the complete opposite: I just wanted to please him. He was a gentleman in every way but also highly sexual. The combination was intoxicating.'

Cassidy, older than Shirley by seven years, wasted no time in initiating her in grown-up pleasures. He introduced her to the sex drug amyl nitrite, and on one occasion in the 1960s, the couple were invited to the home of Joan Collins and Anthony Newley.

Star: Shirley with her Partridge Family including stepson David Cassidy

Joan ('she seemed like an interesting woman') cooked dinner — and afterwards the four retired to the living room, where Newley announced: 'Right, we've got some porno movies. Why don't we all get naked and watch together?'

'But that just never interested me at all,' says Shirley, 'and so Jack said no and we left. But that kind of stuff was always going on. We went to the nightclub Studio 54 and people would be having sex in the waterfall, or we'd go to Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion and they'd be having group sex there. But that just turned me off.'

Only once, later on in their marriage, did she and her husband engage in a threesome with a young dancer.

'Jack orchestrated it all,' says Shirley. 'It didn't do anything for me. I wasn't attracted to that kind of thing. Jack was my attraction.

'But I didn't feel jealous of her because I always knew I was his number one lady.

'Jack was different. For him, sex was any place, any time, anybody. It was a sickness with him which got worse as he got older. But he was always very honest with me, even before we married. He told me that when he was 16 he'd even had an affair with the composer Cole Porter.

'And when we first got married, he said: "You'll always be the love of my life . . . but maybe in ten years, I'll be having affairs."

'At the time, I just laughed it off with a "Well, maybe I'll be having affairs too!". But he meant it, and he didn't even wait ten years!'

Whatever the complications of their personal life, professionally, the couple were a dream ticket, starring together in stage versions of Oklahoma! and Wait Until Dark, while raising their sons — Shaun, now 54, Patrick, 51, and Ryan, 47, all of whom are in showbusiness.

But while Shirley's career continued to flourish, Jack, though an esteemed stage star, could never reach the screen career heights of his wife. When she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1961, 'it proved the beginning of the end of my marriage'.

'Yes, I was in love with him, but I also wanted him to be the one to stand out. I was the one making the movies and, I hate to say it, making the money too.

'When we were in LA, people didn't gravitate towards him like they did in New York when he was on Broadway. So if we went to a restaurant where we were meeting a lot of people, I'd lock myself in the ladies' room for a while so that Jack could have the night.'

Cassidy's career insecurities also affected the way he treated his sons. 'There's no doubt in my mind that if his movie career went the way he wanted, he'd have been a better father,' says Shirley. 'As much as he adored his sons, he wasn't very present.

'He was a very neat person, too, and if a toy was left out, he'd shout at the boys, which was hard for them. So, much as I adored Jack, I wish he'd been a better father.'

Things got worse when David went on to find superstardom in The Partridge Family alongside Shirley. The show transformed David into a singing star and worldwide teen phenomenon.

And Shirley admits: 'Jack didn't want David to be a rock star at all: he thought it was very low. It was tough for David because all he wanted was his father's approval. But David and I got on really well and I know he respected me, which was great.

'In the beginning it was hard because he felt I took his father away [David was three when his parents separated], but that changed as he got older. I tried to be a good stepmother, and David was just divine.'

Jack and Shirley did eventually separate for eight months. When they got back together, Shirley couldn't help noticing that Jack was 'drinking too much, taking too many drugs'. He was starting to forget lines and even miss shows.

His behaviour became more erratic and one night, after he had started blazes in every fireplace of the family's house, Shirley, fearing for the safety of her children, called the doctor and Cassidy was taken to a private psychiatric hospital in a straitjacket.

Though he took his medication for a while, Jack also continued to drink — 'a lethal combination' — and in 1974 Shirley filed for divorce after 18 years of marriage.

Cassidy tried to woo her back, even though by this time she was seeing Marty Ingels, who was to become her second husband.

On December 11, 1976, Cassidy invited her over for a Christmas drink, but Shirley refused. Instead, Cassidy, then 49, went out for dinner, returned home drunk, fell asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette in his hand and the smoke and fumes killed him.

'It was just a horrible way for him to die,' says Shirley, 'and devastating for the boys. David had grown really close to his brothers, and they were all just heartbroken.'

Last year he revealed that his birth mother, Evelyn Ward, had been suffering for years from Alzheimer's-related dementia. She died two days before Christmas.

'David has lost both his parents in such awful circumstances,' says Shirley. 'I feel so sorry for him. I think it made him feel lost.

As for Shirley, she looks back on her colourful life with no regrets. 'It's been extraordinary,' she says. 'And I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.'

Shirley Jones: A Memoir is published by Simon & Schuster UK on August 1.

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Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2378398/Partridge-Familys-Shirley-Jones-The-night-I-asked-foursome-Joan-Collins.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

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