Shirley Jones: DO throw bouquets at her
This interview with the renowned singer/actress/Oscar winner, Shirley Jones, was published in the Kansas City Kansan on Sept. 18, 2002. It won a First Place plaque for Best Entertainment story from the Kansas City Press Club’s Heart of America 2003 Excellence in Journalism. I could not have accomplished such without the gracious Shirley Jones.
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By Steve CrumLife is still a carousel for Shirley Jones.
At 68 young years, the silver-haired diva and Oscar winner (Elmer Gantry) sang to an appreciative 500 last Friday evening. Harrah’s Casino in North Kansas City hosted the private one-hour concert that ran the Broadway showstopper gamut. Billed as “An Evening With Rodgers and Hammerstein,” it was that and more.
Medleys from Jones’ hit movie musicals The Music Man, Oklahoma!, and Carousel were sandwiched around less heard renditions of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” and classic film songs “As Time Goes By,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man,” and the Al Jolson and Judy Garland mainstay, “You Made Me Love You.” Her semi-operatic soprano never sounded better—and why is that surprising?
Dressed in a poured-into, red-sequined, high-slitted show gown, the forever Mrs. Partridge never looked better either. No, no…must not hit on David Cassidy’s stepmom. Besides, she’s still—at present—married to Marty Ingels, and they have had well publicized marital ups and downs over the years. Following a knock-out closing with the emotional ”You’ll Never Walk Alone,” Jones sat for greetings and autographs for nearly 45 minutes. Poorly set air conditioning prompted her manager to wrap a shawl around her shoulders.Then it was my turn. Shirley’s half-filled martini glass, another warmth aide, was placed near me in preparation for her interview seating. My few minutes alone with Shirley Jones were interesting, revealing, and most charming.
“It is perfect for my voice,” Shirley reasons as to why she continues to use Rodgers and Hammerstein music as a centerpiece for her performances.
It all began, she recalls, when she auditioned for none other than Richard Rodgers himself for a role in the original Mary Martin Broadway cast of South Pacific, back in the late 1940’s. The former Shirley Mae Jones of Charleroi, Pennsylvania was immediately cast as one of the Navy nurses.
A screen test at 20th Century Fox followed, and Jones’ mini whirlwind of film musical stardom began in 1955. She was Laurey in Oklahoma! and Julie in Carousel (1956), both Rodgers and Hammerstein scored. And she was paired with her idol, Gordon MacRae. “My very favorite show,” she beams, “is Carousel.”
A little known fact is that both films were shot in two different versions—one in Cinemascope and one in Todd-AO. That meant double filming for everyone involved, prompting Frank Sinatra, who was originally signed as Carousel’s Billy Bigelow, to bail out.
Jones explains: “The story goes that Sinatra arrived on the set for the first day’s filming, found out about the double-filming, and promptly got back into his limousine, saying, ‘No way!’ Sinatra was a one-take guy as it was.” Enter replacement Gordon MacRae, her co-star in Oklahoma!…and movie history was made.
“Sinatra and I had already done all the pre-recorded songs too,” said Jones. So what happened to those Sinatra-Jones recordings? “We have looked for them for years,” she laments. “They are apparently lost forever.”A year after Carousel, Jones was paired with pop singer Pat Boone for April Love. Then movie musicals gasped for air. Their era had mostly passed. Shirley Jones had to adapt. In 1960, she adapted superbly to straight drama.
“I owe it to Burt Lancaster who fought to have me cast in Elmer Gantry,” Jones said. She won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as prostitute Lulu Bains. For the next 40 years, she would star in over 50 movies, both theatrical and made-for-TV, as well as TV sitcoms Shirley and The Partridge Family, the latter co-starring the stepson from her marriage to singer Jack Cassidy, David. The secret of The Partridge Family’s lasting success in reruns? “Family,” she answers. “Even though we were a family on the road, and I was unmarried, we were happy and loved each other…and we were the first series to feature a single mother.”
Her life would include charitable work, community projects, book writing, and fitness videos (she is in) as well.
Always there have been the concerts, like the Harrah’s tour she is on now. Next month, in October, look for her on PBS stations in a solo concert of Broadway songs, as well as a Kennedy Center evening of show tunes, hosted by Shirley, and featuring legendary talents like John Raitt and Howard Keel. Raitt, the original Billy in the stage Carousel, will duet “If I Love You” for the first time with Shirley Jones.
Then there is Shirley’s movie career. She is getting great notices for her performance in Manna From Heaven, now playing. Next year, her first horror film, Bloodhead, opens. She is still filming another departure, that of “Crazy Aunt Sis,” in Bathroom Boy. Her part is that of a “tobacco spitting, trailer park owner.”
Four decades back, in 1962, Shirley Jones wowed at the lily-pure Marian the Librarian in what she calls “a true American class, The Music Man.” Months of filming was about to begin, she recalls, when she was told of her pregnancy. “I reluctantly told the director, Morton DaCosta, who was stunned,” she smiles. “He ordered, ‘Whatever you do, don’t let anyone know!’”
So they both kept the secret as the weeks and months passed. As her waistline expanded, DaCosta ordered special dresses adorned with large bows and such as coverups.“By the time the final scene on the bridge with Robert Preston was shot,” Jones muses, “I was pretty large. Robert took me in his arms, closely embracing me, ready for a tender kiss, when…suddenly, he literally jumped backwards a foot. He yelled, ‘What the hell was that?’ I answered, ‘That was Patrick Cassidy!’ He, of course, didn’t know I was expecting. Years later, when Patrick was grown, he was thrilled to meet Robert Preston in his dressing room one evening. As he held out his hand for a shake, saying, ‘I’m Patrick Cassidy,’ Preston immediately jerked his hand away, and jumped backwards, shouting, ‘I know, I know! We met already!’”
Shirley, you jest.
Return With Us Now To TV Westerns: ‘LASH OF THE WEST’
By Steve Crum
Lash LaRue (aka Al “Lash” LaRue) was a top B-western movie star of the 1940’s and ’50s, specializing in his use of the bullwhip. (He reportedly taught Harrison Ford how to use it for the Indiana Jones movies.)
He was the man in black outfit, riding a black horse. AND he had a great sidekick, Al “Fuzzy” St. John.
His TV “career” is hardly worth mentioning since his 15-minute Lash of the West ran a mere four months on ABC. (The show consisted of him introducing clips from his old movies.) Lash is pictured above in his heyday, and as a guest on an early David Letterman show. “The Humphrey Bogart of Westerns” died May 24, 1994 at 78.
Return With Us Now To TV Westerns: ‘SKY KING’
By Steve CrumKirby Grant, who portrayed the title heroic character in TV’s Sky King from 1951-52, did not age that much–which is apparent in these photos taken in 1951 and 1984.
Grant tragically died in a car accident on Oct. 30, 1985, near Cape Canaveral. He was on his way to observe the Space Shuttle Challenger liftoff.
Return With Us Now To TV Westerns: ‘THE CISCO KID’
By Steve CrumWas The Cisco Kid a friend of yours like he was mine? One of the earliest TV shows filmed in color, The Cisco Kid [1950-56] starred Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carillo. (It is still rerun today.)
At right is Renaldo shortly before he died in 1980. He was actually of Romanian descent.
Since Carillo, who died in 1961, was elderly when he portrayed Pancho, I’ve included his early portrait. Carillo was an original California aristocrat who has a state park named after him. The correct Castilian pronunciation of his last name is Cay-reel-yo.
Excessive violence kills Bond-spoof ‘Kingsman’
By Steve CrumThe comic book-based Kingsman: The Secret Service tries so hard to spoof Bond films, but never quite succeeds. God knows serious money was loaded into it, from extensive digital effects to star power. But at best Kingsman only emulates Bond takeoffs that have preceded it over the last 50 years, making it a spoof of a spoof. Let me put it another way: Via the hind teat this movie sucketh.
Directed and co-written by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass; X-Men: First Class), Kingsman: The Secret Service most closely echoes the Matt Helm series, an early James Bond spoof, which starred Dean Martin. There have been other take-offs on Bond flicks—from movies (Our Man Flint, Austin Powers) to TV (Get Smart). My guess is that since the Bond franchise is still alive and well after all these decades, why not give today’s young audience something old, which to them translates to something new: another Bond parody.
After all, how many 20 year-olds have seen even one of the four Matt Helm movies, a series that ran from 1966-69? Update that sub-genre with more sex and profanity, and add a heavy dose of digital effects to really enhance the violence. For Kingsman, fail to include any of the humor, wit, and suspense its predecessors contain.
Like the Bond setting, Kingsman is British based and centers on the exploits of licensed to kill agents protecting the Queen’s realm. The plus of the story is the focus on “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), whose secret service father was killed years ago by enemy agent Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), who sports prosthetic legs resembling razor sharp swords. Shades of Bond’s Oddjob with that slice and dice hat. It turns out that Eggsy’s dad’s friend and fellow agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) has waited 17 years until Eggsy is grown so he can basically recruit the young man to become a Kingsman, thus following in his father’s footsteps.
Eggsy reluctantly agrees, and undergoes combat and survival training along with other young recruits. This is where Kingsman: The Secret Service is interesting and thoroughly original. Once trained and properly dressed for the part, thanks to Hart, Eggsy is off to avenge his father and save the world from a nefarious, lisping, hip-hop villain, Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson). (How appropriate this movie opens on Valentine’s Day weekend.) Valentine plans to control the world via cell phones and electronic implants.
The second half of the movie becomes a loud, f-bombing cliché of excessive violence. There is a near endless, disgusting mass murder sequence occurring inside a church that is over-the-top gross. Don’t we get enough of decapitations and shootings on the evening news? Despite the violent sequences (that go on too long) featuring mass killings and heads exploding, there is not much blood spilled…even when one guy is literally sliced in half. Accept this as an observation, I am not a fan of bloodletting.
Another original touch is the naming of secret service agents, borrowing from the legendary King Arthur’s knights. Michael Caine plays home-based leader Arthur; Colin Firth is Galahad; Mark Strong’s Merlin trains the candidates; and Eggsy’s father was Lancelot. Clocking in at 129 minutes, Kingsman: The Secret Service seems even longer.
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Grade on A-F Scale: C