C’mon, Get Happy: 5 Surprising Facts About Top TV Mom Shirley Jones

Lori Acken May 7, 8:00 am

Shirley Jones on flower Background — Mario Casilli/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

If you were a TV-obsessed kid in the early ’70s, you probably wished your family was really a groovy rock band that tooled around in a Mondrian-patterned party bus? After all, The Partridge Family bopped onto TV screens every Friday night and made the situation seem perfectly reasonable. And perfectly wholesome, too, courtesy of the family’s matriarch, cool and comely widow Shirley Partridge, who was played by stage and screen star Shirley Jones.

Though she and her offspring performed snappy pop tunes — some of which leapt from the TV screen to the Billboard pop charts — in coordinating bell-bottomed, wide-lapeled outfits, Shirley Partridge was no pushover. Not where her kids were concerned … and not where her thoroughly modern sensibilities were concerned either. Shirley Partridge and her brood championed women’s rights, ageism, sexism, racial discrimination, environmentalism, teen runaways and more.

THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY, from left: David Cassidy, Shirley Jones, 1970-74.

Gene Trindl/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

Which was more than A-OK with Mrs. Shirley Jones. Jones had already turned down the chance to play another beloved TV mom — Carol Brady — “because I didn’t want to be the mother taking the roast out of the oven and no doing much else,” she wrote in her 2013 memoir. In Shirley Partridge, Jones saw the chance to play primetime TV’s first working mother, while serving as a working mom herself.

Though The Partridge Family, and its ensuing stereotyping, took a toll on Jones and other cast members, especially her TV sons David Cassidy (her real-life stepson) and Danny Bonaduce, Jones still wrote that, “I was sad to see the show end. If it hadn’t been canceled, I would have been happy to carry on playing Shirley Partridge for another four years. For me and all the rest of the cast, this was the end of an era.”

In honor of TV’s most rockin’ mom of five, here are five more fun facts about Shirley Jones.

1 Jones was named after child star Shirley Temple

POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, Shirley Temple, 1936,

20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy: Everett Collection

The Pennsylvania-born Jones didn’t feel she was born to be a star — but her parents may have felt otherwise. They named their daughter after child star Shirley Temple, setting Mae as the girl’s middle name. Contrary to a popular rumor, that wasn’t an homage to vaudeville star Mae West, but rather to honor Shirley’s aunt. However, Jones did reveal that the first famous person she ever met was indeed West, who was performing in Jones’ hometown when Jones was a teen.

2 She actually planned on becoming a vet

THE MUSIC MAN, Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, 1962

Everett Collection

“My dream life was to become a veterinarian,” Jones told the Topeka Capital-Journal in an interview ahead of a 2014 performance of “The Music Man — The Concert,” in which Jones starred with another singing son, Patrick Cassidy, reprising her 1963 movie role. Jones said she rescued everything from skunks to squirrels as a kid — but she also sang in the church choir from age 6 on.

When Jones’ family visited New York the summer before she was set to begin her veterinarian studies, Jones auditioned for famed Broadway songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II on a whim and landed a role in their stage production South Pacific. Which would eventually lead her to the stage and screen productions of The Music Man, and put an end to her veterinarian dreams.

3 Jones earned an Oscar for playing a prostitute, the same year Elizabeth Taylor did

Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, winners of Best Actor and Actress Awards, holding their Oscars. Also with them is Shirley Jones, winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. (Original Caption) 4/1961- Los Angeles, CA:

Bettmann/Getty Images

Jones earned the 1960 Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Elmer Gantry for playing Lulu Baines, a pastor’s daughter whose reputation is ruined when she falls for the title character. At the same ceremony, Taylor took home the Best Actress statuette in BUtterfield 8 for her role as Gloria Wandrous, a freewheeling socialite whose already dicey reputation is ruined by a fling with a wealthy executive.

4 She loved The Partridge Family but knew it was the final nail in the coffin for her film career

THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY, Suzanne Crough, David Cassidy, Jeremy Gelbwaks, Shirley Jones, Danny Bonaduce, Susan Dey, 1970-1974, first season

Credit: Everett Collection

In a 2009 interview with the Vancouver Sun, Jones said that her agents had warned her that TV success could spell big screen disaster. “Though it was great for me and gave me an opportunity to stay home and raise my kids, when my agents came to me and presented [Partridge] to me, they said, ‘If you do a series and it becomes a hit show, you will be that character for the rest of your life and your film career will go into the toilet’ — which is what happened.

5 Mother and sons were all No. 1

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 16: Shirley Jones and Shaun Cassidy attend a screening of “The Music Man” during the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival on April 16, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

Presley Ann/Getty Images for TCM

Jones and her son Shaun Cassidy are technically the only mother-son duo to each have Billboard No. 1 hits. Jones hitting No. 1 with the Partridge Family smash “I Think I Love You,” which also became the best-selling single of 1970. Shaun Cassidy struck gold with “Da Doo Ron Ron” seven years later. But Jones’ stepson and costar David Cassidy also sang vocals on the “I Think I Love You” single, so technically Shirley has two “No. 1” sons.