Shirley Jones

About Shirley Jones

Shirley Mae Jones (born March 31, 1934) is an American actress and singer. She starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man. Ironically, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a "bad girl" in Elmer Gantry. For younger fans, she is probably best known as Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children in the television series The Partridge Family, co-starring her real-life stepson David Cassidy.

Shirley Jones was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh to Marjorie Williams and Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. An only child, she was named after Shirley Temple. The family later moved to nearby Smithton, Pennsylvania. She won a beauty pageant as a teenager and was crowned "Miss Pittsburgh 1952".

Jones impressed Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II with her musically-trained voice and was cast as the female lead in the film adaptation of their hit play Oklahoma! in 1955. Other musicals quickly followed, including Carousel (1956), April Love (1957) and The Music Man (1962), in which she often typecast as wholesome, kind characters. However, she won an Oscar for her performance in Elmer Gantry as a woman corrupted by the title character played by Burt Lancaster. She becomes a prostitute who, when she encounters her seducer years later, takes her revenge. Jones also has an impressive stage résumé, playing the title character in the Broadway musical Maggie Flynn in 1968.