25 Facts About Shirley Jones

Shirley Mae Jones was born on March 31,1934 and is an American actress and singer.

Shirley Jones won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry.

Shirley Jones played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family, which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.

Shirley Jones says that many people have incorrectly assumed that her middle name was named after vaudeville and film legend Mae West, but Shirley Jones was actually named after her aunt.

Coincidentally, the first star Shirley Jones ever met was West, who was performing at the Twin Coaches supper club in Rostraver around 1954.

Shirley Jones began singing at the age of six in the Methodist Church choir and took voice lessons from Ralph Lewando.

At the time, Shirley Jones had never heard of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Shirley Jones became the first and only singer to be put under personal contract with the songwriters.

Shirley Jones's character becomes a prostitute who encounters her seducer years later and reveals his true character.

Shirley Jones was reunited with Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Shirley Jones was convinced that the combination of music and comedy would be a surefire hit.

Shirley Jones's real-life 20-year-old stepson David Cassidy, who was an unknown actor at the time, played Shirley Partridge's eldest son Keith and became a teen idol.

Shirley Jones was a very good role model for me, watching the way, you know, she dealt with people on the set, and watching people revere her.

In 1979, Jones tried her hand at television for the second time, starring in the NBC show Shirley, which, like The Partridge Family, featured a family headed by a widowed mother, but the show failed to win ratings and was cancelled toward the middle of the season.

Shirley Jones was in the dramatic project There Were Times, Dear, in which she played a loyal wife whose husband is dying of Alzheimer's disease; she was nominated for an Emmy Award for this work.

In February 1986, Shirley Jones unveiled her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street just around the corner from Hollywood Boulevard.

In July 2005, Shirley Jones revisited the musical Carousel onstage in Massachusetts, portraying "Cousin Nettie".

In July 2006, Shirley Jones received another Emmy Award nomination for her supporting performance in the television film Hidden Places.

Shirley Jones was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for the same film but lost to Helen Mirren for Elizabeth I Shirley Jones appeared in Grandma's Boy as a nymphomaniac senior citizen.

Shirley Jones had a recurring role as Burt Chance's mother in the Fox TV comedy series Raising Hope.

In mid-2012, Shirley Jones played Mrs Paroo, when her son Patrick played Harold Hill, in a California Musical Theatre revival of The Music Man.

In 2014, Shirley Jones guest-starred on an episode of General Hospital as Mrs McClain.

On November 13,1977, Shirley Jones married actor and comedian Marty Ingels.

Jack "wanted to come back right up to the day he died", Shirley Jones said in a 1983 newspaper interview.

Shirley Jones was devastated when Suzanne Crough died on April 27,2015; Crough played one of her TV daughters on The Partridge Family.