Fortunately, Red was dating Lou’s best friend, which seemed to make it all right when the four of us went to the movies together on one special Saturday night. After a few more Saturday-night double dates like that, my mother grudgingly accepted that Lou and I were an item for keeps.
By the time I was fifteen, Lou became a West Point cadet, and I only had eyes for him. I was his girlfriend, and everyone in Smithton knew it. It probably seemed to them that our marrying one day was a foregone conclusion.
Lou was at the top of his class, and in his plebe year he invited me to West Point for the weekend and presented me with his pin. He was in love with me, he said, and he wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives.
Although Lou’s declaration did not come as a surprise to me, I still went very quiet, didn’t commit to anything, and on the way home to Smithton gave my future a great deal of thought. I remember ultimately concluding with regret that although Lou was a wonderful man and would become a wonderful doctor when he graduated, being married to him was not the life for me. I wanted more.
I wanted to be in show business because I could sing, to go to college, to star on Broadway, and not to be a wife. Besides, I’d already met another man. . . .
Lou was stable and strong and conventional, but young as I was, I knew that those qualities did not set me on fire. I wanted something else. I wanted adventure. And adventure I would later get in my marriages, both to Jack Cassidy and to Marty Ingels. But even way back then, when I was still in my early teens, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted a challenge, an unconventional man. And, boy, did I find him!
Bill Boninni was not a Smithton boy. Far from it. He was Italian, with thick, black, curly hair; he wasn’t tall; he drove a red Cadillac convertible; and his wealthy father owned a restaurant in Pittsburgh. More important to me than any of that, he had a sense of humor just like my father had, and sadly, when all was said and done, Lou didn’t have one at all.
I was just sixteen years old on the day when Bill and I first met. He was nineteen years old. My friend Red and I were sunbathing on the beach by Conneaut Lake, where my aunt had a cabin, and Bill and a friend, Roy, came over and introduced themselves to us.
Soon the four of us were speeding along in Bill’s Caddy, bound for a nearby restaurant. He was so charming, so citified, so different from all the Smithton boys I knew, that when he asked if he could see me again, I agreed.
Only when he pulled up in front of my house in his red Cadillac convertible a couple of days later did word of my new gentleman caller spread all over Smithton. Fortunately, Lou was away at West Point and the news did not reach him at that early stage. But I knew that it was just a matter of time before it did.
Nonetheless, I was enthralled by Bill. When he kissed me for the first time, I suddenly understood what a kiss really felt like and melted. Besides, he was fun, outrageous, and would do anything to get attention. (A bit like Marty, really.)
One time, he even drove his Cadillac right into the lake. After I took him to my senior prom, that same night he actually asked me to help him clean up the bar in his father’s restaurant because he had promised his father that he would.
So Red and I and Bill and Roy all ended up cleaning Bill’s father’s bar with scrub buckets and mops, laughing, playing the jukebox, joking and falling all over the place, still dressed in our formal prom gowns and elegant tuxedos. That same evening, I tasted my first glass of wine, and Bill and I had a great time together. Every single moment I was with Bill, we had a great time together.
That great time didn’t include sex, though. Sure, we petted, but there wasn’t any question of my jumping into bed with Bill. I wasn’t that kind of girl. Casual sex just didn’t interest me. I was determined to wait until I fell in love and got married and then lost my virginity with my husband.
None of which didn’t mean that I wasn’t sexy. Quite the reverse. I was born highly sexed, even though I didn’t realize it at that time. I was that and more, but I would only discover the truth about my supercharged sexuality much later, with my first husband, Jack Cassidy.
But Bill and I had so much fun together. I was attracted to him physically, he was funny and sophisticated, and everything about him intrigued me. Red and I often double-dated with Bill and Roy, all in a whirl of theaters and fancy restaurants.
I fell for Bill quickly, but there was still the matter of Lou, and I felt guilty. So I sat down and wrote Lou a classic, heartfelt Dear John, telling him how much I respected him, and how I knew that he was going to become the most worthy citizen ever and win all kinds of awards, but that I thought that show business was going to be my life.
Then I took a deep breath and wrote more, confessing the rest of the truth: I’ve met a young man that I’m dating now.
I had been honest in my letter to Lou and braced myself to face the consequences of my words. Sure enough, Lou was devastated. He wrote back, I am so sorry you feel this way, and much, much more, all in the same vein, which made me feel extremely guilty.
Worse still, a few days after Lou received my letter, his mother stormed over to our house and said, “How dare you do this to my son! He’s trying to make his way in the world and he’s doing so well, and you absolutely devastated him. How could you do it?”
I felt awful. From that moment on, whenever Lou’s mother saw me walking down the street (which was often, as we lived across from each other), she walked the other way. It was dreadful, but that’s how it was.
Through the years, though, I watched Lou’s professional progress from afar with great pride and affection. He served with honor in Vietnam, won medals, then married and later had six children, became a doctor, the assistant to the Surgeon General, and even operated on former President Eisenhower.
During the early eighties, I was booked to perform in Maryland, and Lou got wind of it and wrote to me, asking me to visit. So I called him when I arrived, and we met at a little outdoor restaurant and reminisced about old times together.
Although I’d jilted Lou all those years ago, he was still lovely to me and said how proud he was of me. In return, I told him how proud I was of him, of all the things he had achieved, and how heroic he had been in Vietnam.
Soon after, I found out that he had terminal cancer. I was utterly devastated. A while later, I was scheduled to be in Washington, so I called Lou’s wife and arranged to stop by and see him.
When I arrived at his house, he came out to meet me dressed in full military uniform and invited me in. His wife left us alone together. He introduced me to two of his children, then he brought down lots of scrapbooks and showed me pictures of his family.
We didn’t have long together, as I had a plane to catch, and I told Lou that I was so sorry about his condition and that I wished I could stay with him longer.
He walked me to my car but, in the middle of the driveway, stopped short and said, “Before you go, Shirley, I have something to tell you. I have never stopped loving you.”
The tears flowed for both of us.
I kissed him good-bye, then left.
He passed away two weeks later.
Afterward, I sent his wife back the plebe pin along with a note telling her that I felt it belonged to her.
She sent me a long note, along with a scrapbook he had kept about me, and all the letters I had written to him through the years.
I thought you should have this scrapbook, so that you will always have it as a memory of how he felt about you, she wrote.
Back when I was dating Bill, my relationship with him had grown hotter (but it still didn’t include sex). Consumed by passion and a sense of adventure, one crazy day when I was sixteen years old, I suggested to him that we drive across the border to Maryland and get married there.
My suggestion wasn’t as romantic as it sounded, though. Red and Roy were with us, and my plan was that all four of us would take the plunge and get married over the border, together.
We drove across the state line and were just
fifteen minutes away from arriving at the justice of the peace’s office when, fortunately for my future and theirs, Bill, Red, and Roy talked me out of my madcap idea, and we turned around and drove back to Smithton.
Soon after, Bill and I broke up. My suggestion, not his. Preceded, of course, by my Dear John. I was getting quite good at these letters and felt quite in control of my loves and my life. But pride, as they say, comes before a fall. For I was yet to meet my Waterloo, my first husband, the love of my life, Jack Cassidy.
Bill Boninni and I stayed in touch through the years, and when I was performing at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh in 1958, he turned up at the stage door after my first show. We talked about our past together, and Bill told me he was happily married, and I was glad. Three years later, he died.
In 1952, while Bill and I were still dating, my singing teacher, Ralph Lewando came up with a revolutionary idea. Or so it seemed to me at the time. He suggested that I enter the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, and sing an aria as my talent.
It wasn’t that he considered me to be “cheesecake” material. His suggestion was motivated by the pageant’s prize: a two-year scholarship to the drama school at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
So I followed Ralph’s advice, gritted my teeth, and entered the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, which was the preliminary contest leading to Miss America. And, despite my misgivings, my parents, who, as always, were solidly behind my career choices, encouraged me.
I never dreamed that I had any chance of winning the contest. I didn’t have a model-girl figure, or high cheekbones, so I didn’t think that I was a beauty-queen type at all. I was just an all-American girl, not a smoldering, sultry beauty like Marlene Dietrich. Apart from which, I was the youngest girl entering the contest that year.
I sang Arditi’s beautiful aria “Il Bacio” and, to my everlasting amazement, won the contest, the two-year scholarship to the Pittsburgh Playhouse drama school, plus $500 and a gold charm bracelet. After that, I made some personal appearances and then entered the Miss Pennsylvania competition and came in second.
Winning the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, then getting the opportunity to study at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, should have been a dream come true for me. But strangely enough, I had mixed feelings about spending two years studying singing and drama; sure, I wanted to be a Broadway star. But more than that, I still wanted to be a veterinarian.
In the summer of 1953, after my high school graduation, I was still torn between my Broadway ambitions and my dream of becoming a vet. At which point, my mother gave me the best advice she had ever offered me: go to junior college and then make up your mind which career path to follow.
So I signed up for Centenary Junior College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, figuring that my mother was right.
I was due to start college in September, and in July, my parents and I took our usual trip to Manhattan, and to Broadway.
Then, as they say, fate intervened.
The three of us were staying at the Taft Hotel, and, on a whim, I called a friend, Ken Welch, who was the former musical director of the Pittsburgh Playhouse. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, Ken and I were running through some numbers, while he accompanied us on his piano. He even took the time to compose a song especially for me, “My Very First Kiss.” Then, because he believed in my talent so strongly, he went out on a limb and introduced me to Broadway agent Gus Schirmer (a member of the illustrious G. Schirmer publishing dynasty). Gus signed me up on the spot and uttered the sentence that would change my life: “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s casting director is having an open audition at the St. James Theatre today. Why don’t you go along?”
Well, I was very young, I had no Broadway experience, and I had never been to an audition in my life. But I was game for anything, so I plunged straight in and decided to attend the audition.
The wings of the St. James Theatre, just off Broadway, were packed that morning with nearly one hundred singers and dancers, all set on being cast in a Rodgers and Hammerstein show—any one of them. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the geniuses of the musical theater, had so many shows running simultaneously on Broadway and throughout the country at that time that they had to replace chorus people constantly.
During their legendary careers, which changed the course of American musical theater, the iconic duo Rodgers (who wrote the music) and Hammerstein (who wrote the lyrics) created a string of hit musicals from Oklahoma! to The Sound of Music, not to mention Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I—and won a stupendous thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize.
So here I was, Shirley Jones from Smithton, Pennsylvania, standing alone on the stage at the St. James Theatre, in front of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s casting director, about to sing for all I was worth. After all, I had nothing to lose, so I went for broke and sang “The Best Things in Life Are Free.” When I finished, a voice from the auditorium shouted out some abrupt questions: “Where are you from? And what have you done before?”
“Smithton,” I stammered, “and nothing.”
I later discovered the voice belonged to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s respected casting director, John Fearnley. “Haven’t you been in any shows?” he went on.
I shook my head.
“Then have you got something else prepared?”
I had.
I launched straight into my second number, Rodgers and Hart’s “Lover,” which I sang in a high key.
To my surprise, John Fearnley asked me to sing a third song. Luckily, I had come prepared with “My Very First Kiss,” the song Kenny had written just for me.
After I’d finished, there was a moment’s silence from the auditorium, during which I wished the stage would open up and swallow me right then and there.
Finally, three words rang out that would change my life: “I’m very impressed.”
Then John Fearnley asked me to wait. “Mr. Rodgers happens to be across the street rehearsing the orchestra for Oklahoma! at City Center. I would like to have him hear you,” he said.
I was so excited that he liked me that I didn’t even catch the name of the man for whom I was supposed to sing next. I waited a few minutes, then there was a rustling in the stalls as a second man joined Fearnley in the auditorium.
At Fearnley’s request, I sang the same three songs over again, and then a voice rang out: “You have a beautiful voice, young lady.”
“Thank you, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”
“Mr. Richard Rodgers, my dear.”
Whenever I tell the story of what happened next at the master classes I sometimes give for young people at universities, I cringe with embarrassment at how quickly and easily everything unfolded for me. It was as if a magician had waved his wand and effortlessly raised the curtain on my career.
“Could you wait twenty minutes?” Richard Rodgers asked me. “I’m going to call my partner, Oscar Hammerstein, who is at home. I would like to have Mr. Hammerstein hear you sing.”
I shot a glance at Kenny, who shook his head and dropped a bombshell on me: He couldn’t accompany me because he had to leave for the airport in a couple of minutes to catch a plane. I explained this to Mr. Rodgers.
“No problem,” Richard Rodgers said. “You can sing with the symphony orchestra.”
I had never seen a symphony orchestra, never mind sung with one. But, as I said, I was game for anything. Ten minutes later, I was standing in front of a real-life symphony orchestra, about to sing to the most famous Broadway-musical-theater team of all time.
In retrospect, my saving grace that day was that I thought this kind of thing happened ten times a day on Broadway. I assumed lots of unknown kids with no experience walked in off the street and ended up singing for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Had I known that I had got a break in a billion, I would have been overcome by an avalanche of nerves, but as I didn’t, I was not.
“Miss Jones, do you know the score to Oklahoma!? Mr. Hammerstein asked.
“I know the music, but I don’t know all the words,
” I said, probably committing the gaffe of a lifetime, as Hammerstein was the lyricist. Fortunately, I was oblivious.
I was handed the score, and, as the gravity of the moment started to dawn on me, I held it right in front of my face, so that I wouldn’t have to look at either Rodgers or Hammerstein. Then I launched into “People Will Say We’re in Love,” followed by “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
Mr. Rodgers thanked me and went into a corner, where he conferred with Mr. Hammerstein in a hushed voice.
“Miss Jones, what are your plans?” Mr. Rodgers called out from the auditorium after a short while.
“I’m starting college in a couple of weeks, Mr. Rodgers.”
“Miss Jones, we would like to make you an offer,” Mr. Rodgers said. “We have a spot for you in the chorus of South Pacific.”
I accepted his offer without a moment’s hesitation and, soon after, with Gus Schirmer’s help and advice, became the only performer ever to be put under contract to Rodgers and Hammerstein. A seven-year contract, no less! My future as a Broadway musical star, it seemed, was assured.
So that’s how it all began.
I owed it all to Richard Rodgers. He was my fairy godfather, and I was grateful.
Well, perhaps not as grateful as he hoped I would be.
A year after my first audition with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, I was cast in the movie version of Oklahoma! and was being hailed as “Hollywood’s new Cinderella.” Mr. Rodgers invited me into his office and made a cold-blooded pass at me.
I was shocked, but I somehow had the presence of mind to say, “You are very kind, Mr. Rodgers”—removing his pudgy hand from my knee—“and I will always think of you as my grandfather.”
It is a tribute to Richard Rodgers’s professionalism that he didn’t take steps to fire me or ensure Oklahoma! was the last movie I would ever make.
Shirley Jones: A Memoir Page 3