Shirley Jones
b. 31 March 1934, Smithton, Pennsylvania, USA. An actress and singer whose film portrayals of sweet and wholesome ingenues in the '50s contrasted sharply with her Academy Award-winning performance as Burt Lancaster's prostitute girlfriend in ELMER GANTRY (1960). After taking singing lessons from an early age, Jones performed in stage productions before making her film debut opposite Gordon MacRae in the excellent film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955). So successful was the collaboration, that the two stars came together again a year later for another Rodgers and Hammerstein project, Carousel. After appearing with Pat Boone in APRIL LOVE (1957), Jones turned in an impressive acting performance alongside James Cagney in the musical comedy-drama NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL, joined a host of other stars in PEPE, and made one or two lack-lustre features before partnering Robert Preston in another fine adaptation of a Broadway show, The Music Man (1962). From then on, Shirley Jones eschewed musical films for dramatic roles in big-screen features and on television. She was married for a time to the actor and singer Jack Cassidy, and she co-starred with her step-son, David Cassidy, in the top-rated television series THE PARTRIDGE FAMILYin the early '70s. Later in the decade she had her own show entitled SHIRLEY. She continued to sing in nightclubs and concerts, and in the late '80s undertook a 14-week tour of the US in The King And Iwith David Carradine. In the summer of 1994 she appeared with Marty Ingels in a provincial production of A.R. Gurney's two-hander LOVE LETTERs, and also starred in a Detroit revival of THE KING AND I.