DAVID CASSIDY, ’70S TEEN IDOL, DEAD AT 67

FORT LAUDERDALE – Former 1970s teen heartthrob David Cassidy, who rocketed to world-wide fame as the star of the television sitcom “The Partridge Family,” died Tuesday night. He was 67.

Cassidy died in a Fort Lauderdale area hospital where his spokeswoman said he was battling liver and kidney failure.

“On behalf of the entire Cassidy family, it is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father, our uncle, and our dear brother, David Cas-

sidy,” JoAnn Geffen said in an emailed statement. “David died surrounded by those he loved, with joy in his heart and free from the pain that had gripped him for so long. Thank you for the abundance and support you have shown him these many years.”

Cassidy announced in February 2017 that he was suffering from dementia. He also announced that he would quit touring to deal with his health.

The entertainer moved to South Florida in 2002, longing for a low-profile existence far from the one he gained as a pop star and teen idol. At the height of his success, Cassidy’s fan club reportedly was bigger than those of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

Cassidy found the relative calm he was looking for in the posh Fort Lauderdale neighborhood of Harbor Beach in a waterside home tucked behind tall hedges on Ocean Drive. There, Cassidy, his wife Susan ShifrinCassidy, and their young son, Beau, led a South Florida life of PTA meetings and kids’ baseball.

In a 2003 interview, Cassidy told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he moved to South Florida to duck the limelight.

“I make an effort to make this a normal life,” he said. “We are too occupied with celebrity. Believe me, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.”

Cassidy served as grand marshal of the Winterfest Boat Parade in 2003, showed up at a public meeting to lobby for a partial closing of a neighborhood street and was occasionally seen at local watering holes such as Bahia Cabana.

On occasion, fans would pull up in front of Cassidy’s house, and he would come out and pose for photos, one neighbor reported.

“It’s no big deal,” Cassidy told that neighbor, Charles Resta. “They’re fans. If I’m here, I don’t mind that much. It doesn’t happen very often.”

What thrust Cassidy back into the headlines in recent years was a struggle with alcohol that he discussed openly after three arrests over a four-year span between 2010 and 2014.

Cassidy, in an interview with CNN in 2014, said his trouble with alcohol was “very humbling and it’s also humiliating.”

In 2015, he faced jail time stemming from a hit-andrun. That year, he also went through a divorce with his then wife of 24 years, Susan Shifrin-Cassidy, and a bankruptcy.

After filing for Chapter 11, he was forced to sell his Harbor Beach home at auction. For more on this story, go to SunSentinel.com/cassidy