It also brought backlash from her admirers. She overturned her squeaky-clean image once before with her Oscar-winning portrayal of a vengeful prostitute in "Elmer Gantry" (1960) opposite Burt Lancaster, and the role that she considers her most important. So she's grown-up enough to tell her story, and her admirers should be grown-up enough to read it? "That's exactly how I feel," says Jones. "I never would have written this book if I weren't the age I am now," she says.
And her autobiography makes that abundantly clear, although she says it took the passing of years to bring such candor. The character of Marian, the spinsterish librarian in 1962's "The Music Man," another smash hit for Jones, "wasn't me," she says firmly.
There's a recounting of 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 (king of the retakes to exhaustion, Jones says), Jimmy Stewart (charmingly ditsy) and Richard Widmark (the only co-star she fell in love with).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. "So bring out the smelling salts, hang on to your hats, and get ready for the surprise of your lives!" she writes, coyly, in the book's introduction. Then there's "Shirley Jones," her new autobiography (written with Wendy Leigh and published by Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books imprint) that turns the 79-year-old actress' image on its head in startling - even shocking - ways. It all adds up to the publicly familiar Shirley Jones, whose crystalline soprano voice and dewy prettiness made her an immediate star in the 1950s film versions of "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel" and who captured a subsequent generation of fans in TV's "The Partridge Family" in the 1970s. Jones' living room has the sort of traditional furniture and knickknacks (exception: a prominent Academy Award) that would fit any suburban house. Her elegant, modestly high-necked jacket is black, her makeup is discreet and her silver hair tidy. Partridge, offering a warm smile and handshake. LOS ANGELES - Shirley Jones opens the door to her house and appears every inch the ladylike Marian the librarian or sweet farm girl Laurey or cheerfully steady Mrs.
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