David Cassidy on the Web
Shirley Jones savoring salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
By Lisa Bornstein
Rocky Mountain News
Shirley Jones says she was the "first and last person under personal contract to Rodgers and Hammerstein."
More than any others, two women were most closely associated with composers Rodgers and Hammerstein.
There was Mary Martin, indelible in South Pacific and The Sound of Music.
Then there was Shirley Jones. The 19-year-old recent arrival to New York was in the chorus of South Pacific when she was chosen by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for the movie adaptation of Oklahoma!
Jones and her son, Patrick Cassidy, along with Broadway stars (and real-life couple) Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley, will perform My Favorite Things: A Tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein this weekend at the Colorado Festival of World Theatre in Colorado Springs.
Most actors of the time were signed to a movie studio; Jones was put under contract to two men.
"I was the one and only, first and last person under personal contract to Rod gers and Hammerstein," she said recently by phone from her home in Los Angeles.
"I was never under contract to a studio, ever. This all happened within a year, less than a year of my very first audition for them. I guess from that time, they were just preparing for the film of Oklahoma!"
Her memories make a snapshot of theater and Hollywood history, particularly of Rodgers, known for coming on to his actresses.
"Richard Rodgers was very sort of anti-Hollywood. He didn't like films. He was afraid of what they would do with their (work).
"Dick was kind of a ladies' man, a well-known one. I'm not telling tales out of school. His daughter, Mary Rodgers, she says the same thing. But he was a super-talented man. His music was the most important thing in his life.
"Every week that man would come in backstage, play the piano and call the entire cast in to go through his show, once a week. And any time a show went out on the road, he would rehearse the orchestra at least for a week.
"What he didn't want a singer to do, he didn't want their own phrasing. He wanted it phrased the way he had written it."
Over seven years, Jones starred in three classic movie musicals: Oklahoma! in 1955, Carousel in 1956 and The Music Man in 1962. The roles were so indelible that for a time no one would hire her.
"They stopped making musical motion pictures, and as far as Hollywood was concerned, my career was over," she said. "They always thought if you were a singer, you couldn't act, which I never understood. Naturally, you're acting in a musical as well.
"So my career was finished, and after I did Carousel, I decided I was going to have to do something if I was going to have a career."
She went into television, doing such theater-based shows as Playhouse 90. Her agent was against it.
"The agent said, 'You're a movie star.' Well, I wasn't working, let's face it."
What saved her career (shortly before The Music Man) was her Oscar-winning role as a prostitute in 1960's Elmer Gantry.
"I did 20 motion pictures after the Oscar. I had a whole new career."
For one generation, that career consisted of The Partridge Family, on which she starred for four years with her stepson, David Cassidy.
Now, Jones, 74, is coming to Colorado Springs with her younger son, Patrick, for the Rodgers and Hammerstein tribute. They first performed together four years ago on Broadway in 42nd Street.
"I do a lot of the introductions of the things that we're going to sing," she said of the tribute. "But this dialogue with the four of us, it's hysterical. It's a husband and a wife arguing with each other and a mother and a son arguing with each other."
And more than 50 years after her Oklahoma! debut, Shirley Jones can still hit the high notes.
"I was just vocalizing when you called," she said.
"The only problem I ever have now is the middle range. I can sing low great, I can sing high still great, but the middle range is weaker because I am a soprano and apparently this is what happens with a soprano."
My Favorite Things A Tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein
* When and where: 8 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs
* Cost: $20 to $67
* Conversation with the cast of My Favorite Things: 10 a.m. brunch, 11:30 a.m. presentation Sunday, Pikes Peak Center, $20 (no brunch) to $50 (brunch).
* Information: 866-464-2626
