Keeping up with Shirley Jones at the O’Neill theater
Actress and singer here for performance also reflects on her career
Not only did Oscar- winning actress Shirley Jones sing at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford this past weekend, but she also shared wonderful and often funny tales about her life and career.
Jones, 81, reminisced about the time she hung up on Burt Lancaster, not believing it was actually the famed actor. She recalled working with Marlon Brando, who scribbled his lines on his hands and the table where hewas sitting on set. She mentioned that she turned down “The Brady Bunch” before accepting a role in “The Partridge Family.”
Jones— who performed in concert Friday night, answered questions from Cabaret & Performance Conference participants on Saturday, and sat for an interview with The Day — had scores of fascinating stories to tell. And, yes, she’s as warm and charming as fans would hope.
She starred in her share of classic movie musicals — “Oklahoma,” “Carousel” and “The Music Man.” She won the Academy Award, though, for the 1960 drama “Elmer Gantry,” where she played a prostitute. Director-writer Richard Brooks didn’t want Jones for the role, but Lancaster, who was co- producing as well as starring, did. He called Jones to tell her they were considering her for the role and to ask her to fly in to meet Brooks. Jones, who was in San Francisco doing a nightclub act with her then- husband Jack Cassidy, recalls picking up the phone and hearing someone saying, “This is Burt Lancaster.”
“I said, ‘Sure it is,’ and hung up,” she laughs. “Thank heavens, he called me back.”
And Brooks eventually came around to appreciate Jones during filming. He predicted she’d win the Academy Award for her performance, which, of course, she did.
Among Jones’ other projects, she co-starred in the 1964 comedy “Bedtime Story” with Brando and David Niven. She recalled fondly how the three of them would hang out after shooting, with Niven regaling them with anecdotes about his life. As for Brando, she says, “I was a nervous wreck about working with Brando. ... It was a comedy, and he was dying to play comedy, and nobody would give him that opportunity because they never thought of him that way.”
He apparently took his comedy seriously— or maybe was a little insecure about it. Either way, in one scene, Jones recalls, “we did 40 takes— 40 takes! ( He’d say) ‘ Nah, nah, let’s do it again.’ By the time we finished, Iwas on the floor.” Here, she mimics slumping with exhaustion.
She says, “Some of the movies I did weren’t very good, but I got to work with such great people— I mean, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, all these people. Each time was an incredible experience.”
During a scene she did with Stewart in 1970’s “Cheyenne Social Club,” she was walking toward the door and forgot her lines, which she rarely did. She was so embarrassed, especially having that happen when she was working with someone like Stewart.
“I said, ‘Oh, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.’ He said — ” and here, Jones goes into a fine Stewart impression, complete with the distinctive stammers “— ‘Wuh, wuh, just, just say what comes into your head!’”
After a bevy of movies in the 1960s, Jones began considering television offers, in part because her three sons were school-aged and she felt she couldn’t take them to film sets around the world as readily as she had in the past. She turned down “The Brady Bunch,” not wanting to play the traditional sitcom mom taking the roast out of the oven. But she was interested in the premise for “The Partridge Family.” She starred, with stepson David Cassidy, from 1970 until 1974 in the series about a family of musicians led by a widowed mother.
Jones says she had some practical issues on that set: she had to learn to drive the Partridges’ iconic bus, which had a stick shift on the floor. When they wrapped the show, guys from the Teamsters Union — honoring her newly minted bus- driving skills — gave Jones a giant card that said, “Congratulations, from the Teamsters Union.”
When she was a youngster, Jones wasn’t intent on a life in the performing arts. She was thinking more about becoming a veterinarian. All that changed, though, when the recent high school grad attended an open audition and sang for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. They liked her so much, that, three weeks later, she was on Broadway in their “South Pacific.” A showbiz career was born.
Jones, surprisingly, doesn’t do much to maintain her singing voice. She modestly says that it isn’t what it once was and that she has to work harder on it now. She recently started singing lessons again. And two weeks before coming to the O’Neill, she worked with a pianist three times a week for two weeks.
She is matter-of-fact about her voice; she realizes her singing ability is a gift. When she was a kid, she thought everyone could sing like she did.
“Singing was just always so easy for me ... On ‘The Music Man,’ I remember Robert Preston saying to me, ‘Boy, what comes out of your mouth — how do you do it? It could be midnight and you could sing like that!’” she says.
In recent years, she’s continued to do a range of work. She and her son Patrick co-starred on Broadway in 2004’s “42nd Street” and have teamed up other times, too, including in 2012 for “The Music Man” at the California Musical Theatre.
Jones earned an Emmy nomination for the 2006 TV film “Hidden Places” and has popped up in series from “Hot in Cleveland” to “Raising Hope.”
She has done a solo stage piece, too, singing numbers from her musicals and telling stories from her past. That’s the concert she performed at the O’Neill, accompanied by music director John McDaniel. McDaniel, who was band leader and composer for “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” is the artistic director of the O’Neill’s Cabaret & Performance Conference.
Jones doesn’t yearn to do another full- fledged stage musical, but she’d love to do a Broadway play— a drama.
“One of the best experiences for me was ‘Elmer Gantry,’ and being able to graduate from being a singer, so- called, to acting — really acting — that gave me great joy,” she says.