ELEVEN
When You Walk Through a Storm
When Jack, out of left field, broke the news to me that he wanted us to separate, I was still appearing in The Partridge Family. All my friends and all the cast members knew that I was separated from Jack and were kind and supportive to me.
Soon after Jack left me, out of a sense of self-preservation, unhappy as I was, I started dating. I met the father of one of Patrick’s friends, a divorced amateur tennis player, who was so proficient at the game that he could have turned professional. We ended up in bed together at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the sex we had together was nice. Later on, he bought me some jewelry, nothing expensive, but nonetheless a warm and loving gesture. However, our relationship quickly fizzled out. Then I met an attorney and dated him for a while, but after Jack, I found him boring.
I was yanked out of my boredom, though, when I discovered that Jack had lied to me all along. A friend of mine told me that he was living with Yvonne Craig, the actress who’d starred as Batgirl in the TV series Batman. (She had also once appeared on an episode of I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster, with Marty, who had not been immune to her charms.) Yvonne Craig was young, innocent looking, and overt about her sexuality. Voluptuous and sensual, she also combined the qualities of a siren with those of a little girl.
But not that little a girl . . . she had been romantically linked with Elvis Presley, Mort Sahl, and Robert Vaughn. Yvonne and Jack first met when they appeared together in the Love, American Style episode “Love and the Big Game,” which aired on January 29, 1971. At the time, Jack didn’t even mention her name to me.
To top the hurt and indignity of discovering Jack’s liaison with Yvonne Craig, to my fury I also discovered that before he moved in with her, he had been paying the rent on her luxurious apartment. All that in a time in which he was not making a great deal of money and, as always, I was supporting both of us. Finally, I confronted him, and he confessed the truth. He hadn’t wanted to tell me, he said, because he hadn’t wanted to hurt me. Which, of course, was ridiculous.
Soon after, Yvonne left Jack as a result of his accidentally running over her dog in the driveway and killing him—or so the story went, according to Jack. He was never able to be alone, so now he wanted me to take him back. I didn’t have to think too long about my answer. We had three children together, he was their father, and despite everything I still loved him.
The psychiatrist I was then seeing told me that I was making a big mistake by taking him back: “You are never going to change that man. Don’t go back into this marriage thinking you can.”
He was right, of course, but the Shirley Jones who had fallen so deeply in love with Jack Cassidy so many years ago wasn’t prepared to relinquish her dream man. And I didn’t. So after eight months of separation, Jack and I reconciled on August 29, and he moved back into our home.
One of the by-products of our separation and reconciliation was that our always-hot sex life became even hotter than before. It seemed that absence had made the heart, and other organs, fonder—for both of us. Which, perhaps, explains what Mrs. Partridge did next.
The Partridge Family was on hiatus again, and Jack and I started touring in The Marriage Band, the show that he had written and produced for us, a musical anatomy of marriage.
We played the Cocoanut Grove, various theaters in the round, and as the show was spectacular, with sixteen singers and sixteen dancers, it was perfect for Las Vegas and was scheduled to open at the MGM Grand Hotel there.
I had become friends with one of the dancers in the chorus, a girl whom I’ll call Jean. She was slim, pretty, with dark hair, tall, boasted the classic dancer’s body, and was not busty. I wasn’t threatened by her because Jack adored big bosoms in a woman more than anything else. As it turned out, he was prepared to drop this particular preference when a woman really appealed to him. Or was prepared to do anything to please him.
So one night after the show, Jack turned to Jean and said, “Honey, come and have a drink in our suite with us.” I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Jean was a nice girl, and we both liked her.
But nothing in my previous life or my marriage to Jack could have prepared me for what happened next.
The three of us sat around, drinking and talking. Jack and I drank Scotch and water, and so did Jean. I was relaxed, happy, and when Jack leaned close to me and kissed me passionately, I kissed him back passionately. Then he turned to Jean and kissed her passionately as well.
I’d been drinking, so I didn’t go into shock. Almost in a trance, I watched as Jack started taking Jean’s clothes off. To my amazement, she seemed to be all for it.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she and Jack had planned what would transpire between the three of us that night.
“Mouse, now you take your top off, as well,” he said.
I did, and he kissed me again, almost as if rewarding me for stripping off my clothes so readily in front of Jean. Then Jean moved closer to Jack, and he hugged her. Then the three of us hugged.
The next thing I knew, we were all in bed together. A thought flashed through my mind: “This will please Jack. And who knows, maybe this is something I should try. Maybe I’ll enjoy it.”
Jack started directing the two of us. “Kiss Shirley, Jean.”
She did, and I let her. I’d never kissed a woman before, and Jean’s lips were far too soft for my liking. But I went ahead and kissed her right back. I had never fantasized about having sex with a woman before—nor would I ever do so afterward—but that night I was willingly engaging sexually with another woman just to please my husband.
At the back of my mind I was sure that Jack had been to bed with Jean before, and that he’d planned this, going to bed with both of us at the same time. I didn’t get the slightest sense that night that he was in love with Jean.
Consequently, when he gave her oral sex, I felt that he was taking part in a physical exercise—which he was thoroughly enjoying—but nothing more than that. I didn’t want to scratch Jean’s eyes out, and I didn’t feel competitive with her, either. I wasn’t jealous or insecure. I just sat and watched.
After a while I started wishing that the entire enterprise were over.
Then Jack took Jean’s hand and put it between my legs. I lay back while she masturbated me, and I had an orgasm. Having orgasms had never been that difficult for me because I was always very sexual and easily turned on, so that night in Las Vegas with Jack and Jean was no different.
Meanwhile, Jack carried on directing us. “Isn’t this fun? You are going to feel so good about this, Shirley.”
Jack, Jean, and I spent three hours in bed together, going through all the various permutations of lovemaking . . . although perhaps that’s the wrong word. Love had nothing to do with it—it was just sex. To Jack, having sex was just like eating a slice of pie: part of his life, and meaningless. For all I knew, he had probably already had sex with all the other dancers in the show, as well. Until now, I had looked away.
But now I was in bed with one of them.
As dawn was breaking over the Strip, Jean said, “Good night. It was a lovely evening. I really enjoyed it,” and then she left. Afterward, Jack and I hugged, then we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
The next morning, Jean came up to me and whispered, “I hope you weren’t too embarrassed about last night. I really apologize if it was a bad night for you.”
I shook my head. “No, Jean, it wasn’t.”
Jack was in the seventh heaven about what had happened. “Jesus, Shirley, isn’t Jean a great girl?”
I nodded and said nothing because I interpreted his comment as meaning that Jean was a great girl to have around for sex but for nothing else. I was his wife, he loved me, and I knew that Jean wasn’t for him. But what the three of us did together that night wasn’t for me, either. Jack knew it, and he intuited what I was about to say before I said it, which was “Jack, I love you, and I want to be with you, but I don’t much enjoy having
threesomes with you.”
If Jack hadn’t fully come to terms with my sexual boundaries before, after that night in Las Vegas with Jean, he now understood conclusively that threesomes were just not my thing. From then on, I assumed that he went his own way, sexually speaking, and, I guess, had threesomes with other women instead.
I was still madly in love with him, and my awareness of his many infidelities, in whatever permutations he chose, didn’t tarnish my love for him. Nor did our threesome with Jean. She stayed in the show, and we remained friends and never ever talked about our night with Jack again.
Soon after, I was back on the set, Shirley Partridge incarnate, and America’s favorite mother.
Off camera, in the real world, the Swinging Seventies were in full bloom, and Jack was determined to explore every aspect of the new sexual freedom. He wanted it all: swinging, pornography, drugs, group sex. I carried on just looking away and ignoring his infidelities. But when all the stress of his career failures, the drugs, the wild nights, and the multiple sexual partners started to take their toll on him, I had to confront the horrendous truth about what was happening to him.
After he first came back to me after our separation, I couldn’t help noticing a change in him. I knew he was drinking too much, taking too many drugs, as well as receiving “vitamin shots” from a Las Vegas doctor. Forever afterward, I wondered what was in those shots but never found out.
Jack had always been the consummate professional, but now he sometimes forgot his lines onstage and instead started ad-libbing wildly, leaving me confused about my next line or my next move. He started taking sleeping pills at night and then pep pills in the morning, and once or twice, to my shock, he actually missed a show altogether.
One night, when we were playing a theater in Warren, Ohio, he went out to get some cigarettes (by then he had a four-pack-a-day habit). After about an hour, he arrived back at the hotel and came up to the suite again. He walked through the door and then slammed it hard behind himself, dramatically. I saw that his eyes were glazed over and that his hands were shaking involuntarily. Then, in a hushed voice, he said, “I just had a long conversation with my mother.”
Jack’s mother had been dead and buried for years. I was speechless.
He went on in a rush of words, “I met her on the street on my way back here. She was standing under an old oak tree in the square, and I stopped and talked to her. We had a long conversation. She warned me to be very careful of my smoking. She said that my cigarettes were going to kill me.”
At the time, I placated Jack and didn’t pay any attention to his words. I dismissed his mother’s supposed warning that Jack’s cigarettes would end up killing him. I only remembered that “warning” years later, when one of Jack’s cigarettes did ultimately kill him. By then, of course, it was too late.
For years, Jack felt his career hadn’t ever hit the heights of which he had dreamed. He had starred in Broadway shows, but many of them closed far too soon—and not because Jack gave a substandard performance. Jack never did that. Through the years, he guested on episodes of Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maverick, Hawaiian Eye, Bronco, The Real McCoys, 77 Sunset Strip, and Surfside 6. But he never became the star he wanted to be.
Along the way, he was offered the part of Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The part had, in fact, been written specifically for Jack, but, perhaps because it came too near the truth about himself—who really wants a mirror held up to themselves?—he made the rare error of turning the part down. Later on, though, he did a guest shot on an episode of the show, which aired on October 23, 1971, in which he played the part of Ted’s twin brother, Hal, a photographic model.
Despite turning down The Mary Tyler Moore Show, he was now a regular guest on TV quiz and talk shows and had established a strong presence on television as a witty bon viveur, playing himself really. But despite his success on television, he continued to yearn to conquer Hollywood.
When he was cast as the villain in Clint Eastwood’s thriller The Eiger Sanction, I was intensely relieved. Jack was finally on the threshold of the movie success he had craved for so many years. I hoped against hope that perhaps this new upsurge of his career, and the possibility that he might now find Hollywood success at last, would put his emotions and his life on an even keel once more.
However, since we were still touring in The Marriage Band and had to play our last series of shows at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, I hadn’t reckoned on his having to commute to The Eiger Sanction location in Death Valley every day. So he was forced to get up at five each morning, then rush to catch a helicopter, fly to Death Valley, work on the movie all day, then fly back to Las Vegas in time to go onstage with me at the MGM Grand. A tough schedule, and in retrospect I believe he paid a high price in his health, his nerves, and his entire mental stability.
One night, soon after he had flown back from Death Valley, and we were both supposed to be getting changed to go onstage, I walked into the living room and found Jack crouched in the corner of the room, stark naked.
We had to go onstage in half an hour, so I stayed as calm as I possibly could and explained that we needed to do the show.
Jack met my gaze serenely, then said, “I finally know now that I’m Jesus Christ.”
It flashed through my mind to say that Jesus probably never played cabarets, but I stopped myself from making a joke.
Then Jack fixed me with a hypnotic gaze and launched into a rambling monologue, which ended with “Shirley, my father is here. My mother is on her way. I have to speak to them. So lock yourself into your bedroom, as I am not sure what I am doing.”
I couldn’t deny to myself anymore that Jack was seriously mentally ill. And that right then he was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, with all that entailed. I had no choice but to admit the truth. Mindful of his warning, and aware of the dangers in staying around someone in a manic stage and capable of harming himself and anyone in his vicinity, I followed Jack’s advice and took refuge in my bedroom, and the lock clicked. Jack had locked me in.
I picked up the phone and called our business manager, Howard, in LA and gave him a blow-by-blow account of Jack’s bizarre behavior, ending with my considered opinion that Jack was in the throes of a full-blown nervous breakdown.
I explained to Howard that I didn’t want Jack to be carted away to a hospital here in Las Vegas, but that I wanted him to be transported to a Los Angeles hospital. Howard assured me that he understood my feelings and that he was primed to leave for the airport at once and would fly to Las Vegas straightaway and bring Jack back home to Los Angeles with him.
Moments after I hung up with Howard, Shaun called. “Don’t worry, Mom, we’ll come and get Dad.”
I was intensely touched by his concern and his offer of help in this crisis. But I told him that he needn’t come himself. Howard was on his way and would take Jack home.
By now, the enormity of the situation had hit me, and I was crying my heart out, shaking and begging Jack to open the door and let me out of the bedroom, but to no avail.
Within an hour, Howard, who had had the presence of mind to rent a private jet, arrived at the suite. But Jack refused to open the door. However, I could hear Howard pleading through the door with Jack, begging him to get dressed and let him take him back to LA.
“Shirley can do the show on her own tonight and carry on that way till you’ve served out your contract,” Howard explained to Jack in as conciliatory a way as possible.
That pulled me up short. Jack might be in the midst of a nervous breakdown, but that didn’t mean that the world had stopped dead. We still had a show to do, and like any actor, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the show always has to go on.
So after Howard managed to gain admission to our suite and opened the door for me, I went onstage and announced to the audience that Mr. Cassidy was unable to perform that night due to illness. “The show is about love and marriage,” I said, “and it was obviously written for two p
eople, not one. So I hope it won’t seem funny that I’m singing both parts.”
Then I did half the show (rather than struggle through all of it) on my own. Fortunately, the audience was completely unaware of the sad events that were occurring behind the scenes and seemed to love it.
Later, I learned that Howard had literally picked Jack up, thrown a robe on him, got him to the airport, and then onto the plane. According to Howard, Jack didn’t protest, but was still in a manic state and all during the flight kept saying, “My mother is up there. The plane is going to crash because she’s going to bring it down.”
Then he switched tacks: “That spider over there! That’s really my mother. She’s been reincarnated as a spider, I swear!”
Jack’s madness had a strange kind of logic as his mother was named Charlotte, as is the spider in Charlotte’s Web. And she had certainly spun a web of guilt around Jack. When he was a child, she had beaten him severely; consequently his relationship with her was always strained, and he did not attend her funeral. Hence the guilt, which, I believe, was partly responsible for his psychotic episodes.
When he got back to Los Angeles, thankfully he agreed to seek medical treatment for his mental health, and I hoped against hope that the treatment would work, but sadly it did not.
One evening toward the end of 1973, I came home one night after appearing in a concert, to find that Jack had lit blazing fires in every fireplace in the house, each of which was piled high with wood. He kept throwing more and more wood and paper on the fires, and the resultant heat was unbearable.
The moment he saw me, he immediately took his pants off and said, “Let’s make love.” Petrified by his state of mind and wanting to placate him, I followed him into the next room, where he threw more wood onto the fire in the fireplace there, then ran out of the room and threw more wood onto every single other fire in the house, as well.
Shirley Jones: A Memoir Page 15