Goodbye to the 67-Year-Old Teen Idol

Watching The Partridge Family week after week, there was one question that always popped into my mind.

How does David Cassidy get his hair to do that?

You see, I had hair that, like Cassidy’s, curled up on one side at the shoulder. But the other side just hung straight down. Nothing I did could change that. Mind you, I wasn’t a huge, wealthy star with a hairdresser at the studio, I was just a kid in junior high. (Today, I would settle for hair that stays on my head).

Cassidy is being remembered by 60-year-old teenage girls today, their first crush, someone who sold zillions of copies of 16 and Tiger Beat. They probably don’t know that all came about because Screen Gems was willing to take a huge gamble on him.

Television in the late ‘60s and into the ‘70s wanted to attract young viewers. One way to do that was through music. But there had to be a very careful balancing act. On one hand, the music had to sound like it belonged on a Top 40 station, not some cheap knock-off, for young people to accept it. On the other hand, it couldn’t be that hippie pinko music that turned off “America-love-it-or-leave-it” parents. But a combination musical-group/tv series could be a gold mine for anyone who could pull it off. Columbia Pictures decided to take the chance. They borrowed a sure-fire winner from real-life. The Cowsills were a musical group of well-groomed youngsters and their mother. If the idea worked in real life, it could work on TV. And the studio pinned its hopes on 36-year-old Oscar-winner Shirley Jones, known more for her role as Marian the Librarian in The Music Man, and a virtual unknown who just turned 20.

Columbia’s TV subsidiary was Screen Gems. The company had acquired Bell Records in 1969. They joined together in a huge push of The Partridge Family before the show had even aired. Here’s Back Stage magazine’s version of events from its issue of June 26, 1970.

$100,000 Promo Campaign to Push Series
A special campaign to help pre-sell a new tv series was announced by Bell Records.
Larry Uttal, President of Bell, said that he will spend more than $100,000 for the initial release of a single and an LP for The Partridge Family, starts of the new Screen Gems “Partridge Family” show, debuting on ABC-TV this fall.
A situation comedy series with music, dealing with the adventures of a mother and her family of five children who become recording starts, it will star Shirley Jones and David Cassidy.
Not since the days of the “Monkees” has any company invested so heavily in such a comprehensive promotion and advertising campaign involving a television series and recordings.
Bell Records has engaged the public relations firm of Bernie Ilson, Inc., specialists in television and record publicity, to create and coordinate the entire campaign on their behalf. Ilson and his staff will work with ABC-TV and Screen Gems publicity and advertising departments (who are sharing the costs of the campaign) and Dick Gersh Associates, Bell’s corporate P.R. film, in the execution of the entire campaign.

David Cassidy had been doing guest-starring roles on a few TV dramas at the time he auditioned for The Partridge Family, though “starring” is a bit of a stretch. Audiences wouldn’t have known who he was. After winning the Keith Partridge audition, he and Jones hit the promo circuit in August. Most newspaper stories I’ve spotted are interviews with Jones in the “look what movie actress is doing television now” vein. The series was designed around her. But the Atlanta Journal Constitution talked to Cassidy. He’s careful to leave the impression with those Southern parents reading that he’s not into that anti-war music like those un-American kids. He’s safe and benign, he’s telling them.

David Cassidy Seems on Way As the Next Teen-Age Idol
By SUZANNE MOORE
David Cassidy may be on his way to becoming the country’s next teen-age idol. The combination is right—his interests are music and acting, and he gets a chance to combine them on his forthcoming series for television, “The Partridge Family.”
But even before his series or record albums have hit the airwaves, David is already being hounded by telephone calls from ardent female admirers. So much so, in fact, that he was forced to halt incoming calls on his recent eight-city promotional tour, which, last week, included Atlanta.
The 20-year-old son of actor Jack Cassidy is not disturbed by the prospect of stardom. “I’m digging it,” he said. “I don’t mind if they (fans) hang an image on me. I don’t think it will be hard to live with because, after all, it’s just an image—not really me.”
David admits that he is one of those persons who always has wanted to become a performer. “I saw my father on stage when I was three years old,” he said, “and I really liked it. There is nothing else I want to do.”
David has appeared in one Broadway musical, Allan Sherman’s “The Fig Leaves are Falling,” and several TV series: “Ironsides,” [sic] “Medical Center,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” and “Mod Squad.”

In the new series, David shares the spotlight with his stepmother, actress Shirley Jones.
David says that the series was not created especially for him and Miss Jones. “I was just one of many people trying out for the part,” he said. “And I didn’t know Shirley was going to be in it until just before we started shooting.”
However, the two seem to have formed something of a dynamic duo, at least musically. “The show is about a family that forms a rock group,” he said. “Shirley and I do all the vocals for the show and for the two albums—to be released after the show premieres Sept. 25.”
David describes the music as a “light rock sound. It’s happy music, meant strictly to entertain.”
That type of music fits David’s tastes. “I really dig listening to music,” he said. “But when I listen to it, I want to be able to enjoy it for what it is. I don’t want it to tell me what is right or wrong with this country.”
David thinks too many people try to read things into music, especially the type of music written by the Beatles and Bob Dylan. “You don’t have to rip it apart, and analyze every theme,” he said. “It’s all right there. You should take it like it is and enjoy it.”
Portraying a teen-aged rock band leader has taught the young actor one thing about television. “They don’t know how to write for teenagers,” he said. “They don’t know how to integrate them into the comedy routine, so they give them honky [sic] things to say like ‘gee Mom.’”
Despite a very hip appearance, David describes himself as a “middle-of-the-roader.” He is not in sympathy with student activists. And he is not particularly turned-on by youth-oriented entertainment, such as the Broadway musical “Hair.”
His most challenging work, thus far, has been dramatic roles for television.
“Serious acting requires more study, but it’s more rewarding . . . and I would rather watch myself doing that.”
David sees the new television series as a “fantastic opportunity—the fulfillment of a long-awaited dream come true.
“Right now, show business is the thing. I see no other way for me.”

“That type of music fits David’s tastes?” All PR flackery, despite the fact the Partridges’ first hit, I Think I Love You, jumped to No. 1. By the time Cassidy wanted off the series in 1973, he told United Features writer Barbara Lewis: “I was given material to do that I would not have selected myself.” And he did mind what image the fans hung on him. They were hanging on every word in the teen rags, of which Cassidy told Lewis: “They were always writing things about me that were not true.”

He eventually saw his teen idol mantle fall upon singing stepbrother Shaun. As life rolled on, he wrote a book, toured, traded off on nostalgia for the series he had wanted to quit, and had mounting issues that seem to befall too many people in show biz. Then his health did him in at a far-too-young age.

Cassidy will always be remembered for his part in a TV show with some pretty well-put together elements: comic by-play (thanks to Danny Bonaduce and Dave Madden), eye candy for boys and girls, unassuming bubblegum music. He never seems to have generated the disdain and ridicule that some current teen idols have received. Notwithstanding some personal problems later in life, Columbia’s gamble paid off for David Cassidy.