David Cassidy: A Family Affair

David Cassidy was an actor and singer from a family of artists.
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It is interesting that I jotted down David Cassidy as a possible blog topic right after he died, thinking he must have had some intersection with the 1980s, like Donny Osmond for example.

As it turned out, his fame came in the 1970s and he largely disappeared from public view by the 1980s.

I did discover a couple things though. I did watch reruns of “The Partridge Family”, the show that made him famous, into the ‘80s I am sure, and members of his family were just as interesting as he was.

Whether it was a TV family or his real-life siblings, parents and step-parents, David Cassidy’s career was a family affair.

The Partridge Family
Some of my earliest memories are of watching “The Partridge Family”. Wikipedia reveals it ran from 1970 to 1974, so I must have watched it in reruns. They aired on CBC, Channel 9, on the peasant vision dial into the early 1980s.

I don’t have a lot of solid memories, more general ones, like the fact the Patridges were a family band, with Keith Partridge, played by Cassidy, as the lead singer. The family’s mother Shirley, played by Shirley Jones, played keyboards, and everyone had a crush on Laurie Partridge, played by a young Susan Dey. Danny Partridge, played by Danny Bonaduce, was the wise-cracking member of the family, and there were two younger siblings, a boy and girl. The boy, Christopher, played drums, and was played by two different actors. The girl, Tracy, played the tambourine. Looking after them all was their manager Reuben Kincaid, played by Dave Madden.

Another memory was the tour bus they had. It was an old school bus with psychedelic designs all over it.

The other memory was the opening credits using a cartoon partridge laying eggs, with each egg representing one of the children. It was set to a theme song that began, “Hello world, hear the song that we’re singing, C’mon get happy.”

I also recall that David Cassidy became a teen idol, eclipsing the popularity of the shown and that one of his big songs was, "I Think I Love You."

Family affair
Much of my information about the Cassidys comes from my Mom. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s in particular, she was up on all the show business news.

She told me that Shirley Jones was actually David Cassidy’s step-mother in real life. She had been married to his father Jack Cassidy, who was an acclaimed actor of his own. However, I never saw him in that period because he died in 1976 in a fire. Only later did I discover, doing some reading for this post, that he died when he fell asleep on his couch with a lit cigarette.

She was also an acclaimed actor already, having won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1960 for her role in “Elmer Gantry”.

At the end of the 1970s, Shaun Cassidy came along. He was the son of Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, so he was David’s half brother. My Mom always said Shaun looked like his mother.

Shaun exploded onto the scene on two fronts. He hit the top of the charts with his version of the song “Da Doo Ron Ron”, and followed that up with, “That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll”, which peaked at number three. He also appeared as Joe Hardy on the TV series “The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries”, with Parker Stevenson as Frank Hardy. Cassidy even brought the two together performing, “That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” on an episode of “Hardy Boys”. He later went on to play Dave, the lead character in the television series “Breaking Away”, based on the movie of the same name.

The ‘80s and beyond
By the time the 1980s rolled around, all the strands of the Cassidy family had receded from the spotlight.

According to Wikipedia, David Cassidy revealed he was broke by the dawn of the decade. He would go on to have some more singing success, and hit the stage in musical theatre and Broadway productions. He appeared in movies and was on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2011. He declared bankruptcy in 2015, and started having health problems with his liver and kidneys and was diagnosed with dementia.

He died in 2017.

Shaun Cassidy moved behind the camera to direct a wide range of TV shows, which he continues to do to this day. He is currently executive producer and writer for the NBC medical drama “New Amsterdam”.

Shirley Jones continued to act until just a few years ago.

Parting thoughts
David Cassidy would continue to perform on stage and screen, and often it would be with one of his half brothers or step-mother.

So, from the start of his career to the end, it was always a family affair.