Where Are They Now: Shirley Jones

Here at Harvest Gold Memories, I've featured a recurring series I call "Pop Culture Reunions" where I share various video clips from different cast reunions of TV shows, movies or even musicians and bands that were popular back in the 1970s and 1980s. In June 2012, I featured one for "The Partridge Family" or http://goo.gl/yuqQN which ran on NBC's Today Show on March 1-2, 2010. Almost the entire cast was featured ... EXCEPT for Partridge Family mama Shirley Jones, and Susan Dey who played sister Laurie Partridge.

Shirley Jones' real-life stepson David Cassidy (who happened to play Keith Partridge on the show) said she couldn't make the cast reunion because she was out touring at the time.

That was kind of a bummer.

However, I guess that's a testament to the fact that academy award winner Shirley Jones remains extremely active and keeps herself busy even at age 75 (her age at the time of the reunion on the Today Show). Shirley Jones looks largely unchanged over the last 30 years. Today, her platinum blonde hair has turned completely white, which I think helps her to keep a youthful appearance. But aside from not having gained a pound since her first movie premiers, she looks pretty much the same as she did when she played Shirley Partridge.

Regular readers here may recall that I've also started to feature a segment from Australia's 7 television network called "Where Are They Now?" when I introduced everyone to a clip on "The Six Million Dollar Man" (or visit http://goo.gl/QkLm9). Apparently, that particular program ran only for about a year or two in Australia, but nevertheless featured one of the missing parties from "The Partridge Family", notably actress and singer Shirley Jones.

I should note that the segment I'm featuring today actually pre-dates the cast reunion for "The Partridge Family" by several years since it ran in 2007 whereas the reunion took place in 2010. However, I think this fills in a missing piece of info from the original posting on "The Partridge Family", and the discussion with Shirley Jones remains as relevant today as it was in 2007. She talks about how she got involved in television to do "The Partridge Family" at a time when everyone told her it would be career suicide (it wasn't), how she wanted to do the show so she could remain home with her sons, how she still stays in touch with many of her former castmembers from the show, and more.

Without further delay, catch that clip below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/rXfsDvdLeUI:



Let me just close by including some additional info on Shirley Jones that is not necessarily included in the preceding video.

For one thing, Shirley Jones has been happily married to a man by the name of Marty Ingels for the past 35 years! Talk about an enduring relationship, especially in Hollywood where marriages are sometimes considered disposable commodities. Although her marriage to Jack Cassidy ended in divorce in 1976, her marriage to Marty Ingels seems to have endured the test of time.

While they might appear to be an unlikely couple, as the book "Shirley & Marty: An Unlikely Love Story" (see http://amzn.to/WplTIK to buy the book) written by Shirley Jones, her husband Marty Ingels, and Mickey Herskowitz writes in a very entertaining way happens to note, he's a New York transplant who's also a comic, and they really seem to compliment one another very well. Shirley who is the quintessential American (I believe she's originally from Pittsburgh), while her husband Marty is a gruff, Jewish guy from Brooklyn, New York and his accent shows that you can take the man out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the man!

However, both of them discussed on a very entertaining podcast of Stu's Show (hosted by Stu Showstak, see http://www.stusshow.com/) recorded on September 15, 2010, where Shirley commented that one of the reasons their marriage has endured for so long (certainly by Hollywood standards), in her own words, was "Because I'M the crazy one!". That podcast is available for $0.99, just visit http://www.stusshow.com/ and search in the archives for "Shirley Jones". I would have to say that podcast was a pretty entertaining look at Shirley Jones in a way that I would say is probably seldom seen by outsiders.

Shirley Jones also has her own website at http://www.shirleyjones.net/ which is also worth a visit if you're so inclined. She's got all kinds of stuff from her long and successful career in the entertainment business. Let me just remind everyone that although "The Partridge Family" was certainly not all she was known for, certainly anyone who remembers that show (either from original broadcasts, or broadcasts in syndication) might also like to visit an awesome fan-made website about "The Partridge Family" at http://cmongethappy.com/. There, you can find out virtually everything about the show, and it even has the font for the show you can download for your computer ... all free.

Book Reboot: "The Official Preppy Handbook" And Its Reboot "True Prep"

Two years ago was the 30th anniversary of a book that became something of an accidental bestseller known as "The Official Preppy Handbook" (it was published in 1980) by Lisa Birnbach.  The book was written pretty much as a tongue-in-cheek look at the WASP establishment, but the author wasn't really part of that establishment, as a Jewish Girl who happened to attend an elite prep school and later, the Ivy League Brown University.  She probably had access to the elite WASP establishment, but she was also something of an outsider looking in which made the book so entertaining (I think I can say that having grown up in Connecticut with family surnames of Wilkinson, Bradford and Stone and a family affiliation with a prep school known as The Gunnery).  Her educational background probably helped her as a then-aspiring author to gain access to the publishing industry, and the publisher was pleasantly surprised with the great sales numbers for the original "Official Preppy Handbook".  Still, the original book was a very entertaining look which combined some facts with some fiction.

It was a runaway success in 1980, but the book's actual buyers weren't exactly whom the publisher (or the author) anticipated they would be.  Mostly, the buyers were kids in flyover country that envisioned themselves as part of that elite world.

In any event, the reboot, whose preparation was chronicled by such "establishments" as The New York Times (see http://nyti.ms/OXAlU9 for the news on the reboot, and http://nyti.ms/QNDO88 for the subsequent book review) and even included a co-author with a preppy-sounding name (Chip Kidd), but was not necessarily the runaway success of the original.  Apparently, its initial first-print run was reduced from from 150,000 copies to a more modest number of 60,000.  That's not to say the publisher lost money on it (it did get published after all) but the publishing industry really isn't what it was back in 1980, and success may be defined differently today based on sales numbers.  The reboot really wasn't as funny as the original, and that may be why it didn't work as well.

Some blog critics were less than kind (see HERE for an example) to the reboot, and I hate to admit it, but I have to agree, as I think they were mostly correct.  For example, Robert Lanham wrote:

"... the book's smugly discreet tone is precisely what is most exasperating about True Prep. Let's face it, most Americans are too busy trying to make ends meet to discuss with "loving irreverence" those dandily-dressed hedge-funders. And should the topic be broached, the last thing they're looking for is a little old fashioned discretion."

Having read both versions of the book (although my original copy of the now out-of-print "Official Preppy Handbook" was lost or tossed long ago), I can say the new book "True Prep" was probably done with very good intentions (although Lisa Birnbach probably did little more than give her name to the venture as a ghostwriter to Chip Kidd, who was probably responsible for most of the content for the reboot, though she was a great person to promote the book as some of the videos that follow seem to indicate, and I can say the book definitely looks familiar to the original in format, design and tone) but "True Prep" just didn't amuse me the way the original "Official Preppy Handbook" did in 1980.

As an FYI, Lisa Birnbach has an "official" blog which can be visited at http://lisabirnbach.tumblr.com/.  It seems to be primarily a vehicle for promoting the reboot book "True Prep".

Official "True Prep" Video
http://youtu.be/lu21HMJJ2Ak



ABC News Nightline Covers "True Prep" (Humorously)
http://abcn.ws/2bP0GXY

Sometimes, things weren't meant to be rebooted (such as the 2007 reboot of the seventies TV show "The Bionic Woman" which I really hated) and in this case, I can say that probably applies to the "True Prep" reboot of the 1980 original "Official Preppy Handbook".  The original was cute, but the reboot is probably lacking in some of the bite that the original had, hence the reboot really didn't work as well as the original did.  Indeed, the reboot paints a picture of 2010 as a much more-inclusive world of prepdom, but the fact remains that while the world may have changed since 1980, that doesn't mean the sequel can approach the fun of the original in this case.

If you want to evaluate the reboot for yourself, the good news is that it can be found in many places, including on iTunes, Google Play/Android Marketplace and, of course, traditional booksellers including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.  As an added benefit, the book is sold in both print and electronic versions.

Or, better yet, see if it's available at your public library!