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The Partridge Family's Mum, Shirley Jones

Shirley Jones

Actress

Shirley Mae Jones was born on 31 March 1934 in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and grew up a few miles away in the small town of Smithton. She was the only child of Marjorie (née Williams) and Paul Jones, whose family owned the Jones Brewing Company, a Smithton institution better known today by its beer brand, Stoney's. Her paternal grandfather, William B. Jones, came to America from Wales, making Jones's Welsh heritage a family matter of some local pride, even if the exact Welsh town the family came from is not recorded in any source consulted for this article.

After being crowned Miss Pittsburgh, Jones travelled to New York, where she won a contract with Rodgers and Hammerstein at her very first audition. It proved a golden ticket: she starred as Laurey in the film of Oklahoma! (1955) and as Julie Jordan in Carousel (1956), establishing her as one of Hollywood's leading musical stars. She then reinvented herself against type, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the world-weary prostitute Lulu Baines opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960).

Jones found a second, very different kind of fame in the 1970s as Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother fronting a family pop group in the musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), co-starring her real-life stepson David Cassidy. The show turned her into a household name for a new generation and produced a string of hit records credited to "The Partridge Family" featuring her own voice.

Jones continued acting on stage, film and television for decades afterward and remains one of the best-known American entertainers with a documented, if lightly sourced, Welsh family line, a reminder that the Welsh diaspora's reach extended deep into American industry and popular culture.

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Oscar-winning American film, stage and television star of Welsh descent, best remembered for Oklahoma!, Elmer Gantry and The Partridge Family.

Jones's family were prominent in Smithton, Pennsylvania, where her grandfather's Jones Brewing Company became a local institution, later famous under its "Stoney's" brand. Her mother's maiden name, Williams, is itself a classically Welsh surname, though this alone is not confirmation of further ancestry beyond the paternal Jones line.

After her early success in Oklahoma! and Carousel, Jones balanced a film career (including The Music Man in 1962) with a hugely popular run on television, and continued performing on stage and in cabaret well into later decades, remaining a fixture of American entertainment for over sixty years.

Career Highlights

  • Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Elmer Gantry (1960)
  • Starred as Laurey in the film of Oklahoma! (1955)
  • Starred in Carousel (1956) and The Music Man (1962)
  • Played Shirley Partridge in The Partridge Family (1970-1974)
  • Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
ℹ️ Born Shirley Mae Jones, 31 March 1934, Charleroi, Pennsylvania, USA

Jones's paternal grandfather, William B. Jones, emigrated from Wales to Pennsylvania and later ran the family brewery in Smithton; no specific Welsh home town is confirmed in available records, so this article states the connection as documented rather than invented.

From: GazMan
Her Welsh grandfather founded the Jones Brewing Company in Pennsylvania, makers of Eureka 'Welsh style' dark beer!
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