Shirley Jones

Shirley Mae Jones (Charleroi, Pennsylvania, March 31, 1933) is an American singer, stage, film and television actress. She awarded the Oscar for her performance in the film Elmer Gantry (1960). She is remembered for her participation in musical films and television series.

Biography

Her parents named her Shirley after the famous child actress and singer Shirley Temple. At the age of six she began to sing and at the age of twelve she took singing lessons. Her dream at that time was to become a great singer. When she finished her education in 1954, she traveled to New York to audition before the casting director of a major musical company. She made a good impression and was hired for the play South Pacific which ran on Broadway.

Shirley Jones (left) greets Nancy Reagan (1984)

A year later, in 1955, he received an offer to be in the musical film Oklahoma. Filming lasted an entire year and upon completion she returned to Broadway, where she starred in the stage version of Oklahoma . She then appeared in her second film, Carousel, and definitely turned to cinema. However, musicals were in rapid decline, so she found herself needing to be an actress, unable to utilize the lure of singing. The first roles that she played, she did not consider very satisfactory, since her characters were sweet and caramelized. Waiting for more interesting offers, she worked in some movies and TV mini-series.

In 1960, he got his break with the Richard Brooks film Elmer Gantry, in which he gave a brilliant performance as a vengeful prostitute, opposite an equally brilliant Burt Lancaster. For her role, she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Laurel Award, and a National Board of Review Award. However, the public wanted to see a nice and likeable Shirley Jones in the movies, so her next film was The Music Man, with Robert Preston, which was very successful as was Eddie's father's courtship, with Glenn Ford.

Starting in the 1960s, he dedicated himself for many years practically exclusively to television, where he made movies and mini-series, as well as some series. The popularity that she had achieved in the cinema kept her on television, a medium in which she was an appreciated actress during all the time in which she appeared. Within this medium, she became very popular in the series The Partridge Family (1970-1974), where she played the role of the mother of a family that was also a pop music group that included the singer David Cassidy (his stepson in real life), who would rise to fame as a teen idol as a result of this series.

At the turn of the century, and being older, he has returned to the cinema and has shot several films, resuming his film career as if he had not abandoned it in almost 20 years.

Filmography

• Family Weekend (2013)
• Car, Rain and Fire - Victorious (2012)
• Carnal Innocent (2011)
• Bathroom Boy (2004)
• Bloodhead (2003)
• Manna From Heaven (2003)
• That's 70 show (2000)
• The Adventures of Cinderella's Daughter (2000)
• Ping! (2000)
• Gideon (1999)
• There Were Times, Dear (1987)
• Tank (1984)
• Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
• Oddly Coupled (1970)
• The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)
• The Gulf (1969)
• The Happy Ending (1969)
• The Secret of My Success (1965)
• Fluffy (1965)
• Bedtime Story (1964)
• Dark Purpose (1964)
• To Ticklish Affair (1963)
• The fiancée of Eddie's father (1963)
• The Music Man (1962)
• Two Rode Together (1961)
• Pepe of George Sidney (1960)
• Elmer Gantry (1960)
• Bobbikins (1960)
• Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
• April Love (1957)
• Carousel (1956)
• Oklahoma (1955)

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards