Trivia: A singer almost from the time she learned to talk, American actress Shirley Jones was entered by her vocal coach in the Miss Pittsburgh contest at age 18. The attendant publicity led Jones to an audition with Rodgers and Hammerstein for potential stage work. Much taken by Jones' beautifully trained voice, the producers cast her as the leading lady in the expensive, prestigious film production of their theatrical smash Oklahoma! (1955). In 1956 Jones starred in another Rodgers and Hammerstein film adaptation, Carousel; this and her first film tended to limit her to sweet, peaches 'n' cream roles for the next several years. Thankfully, and with the full support of director Richard Brooks, Jones was able to break away from her screen stereotype with her role as a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960) -- a powerfully flamboyant performance that won her an Academy Award. Alas, filmgoers preferred the "nice" Shirley, and it was back to goody-goody roles in such films as The Music Man (1962) and A Ticklish Affair (1963) -- though critics heartily praised Jones' performances in these harmless confections. It was again for Brooks that Shirley had her next major dramatic film role, in 1969's The Happy Ending, which represented one of her last movie appearances before her four-year TV stint as the glamorous matriarch of The Partridge Family. This popular series did less for Shirley than it did for her stepson, teen idol David Cassidy, but The Partridge Family is still raking in ratings (and residuals) on the rerun circuit. Her unhappy marriage to the late actor Jack Cassidy long in the past, Jones found domestic stability as the wife of actor/agent Marty Ingels, with whom she wrote a refreshingly candid dual biography. The actress also played a recurring character on The Drew Carey Show (1998-1999), and appeared in numerous documentaries throughout the 2000s. Jones had a supporting role in 2006's Grandma's Boy, and guest roles on shows like Cougar Town and Raising Hope.

Trivia: A performer whose career soared and peaked in the early '70s, multifaceted entertainer David Cassidy dramatically redefined the term "teen idol," as others including Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka had before him. In his heyday, Cassidy culled an untoward number of admirers, including legions of starstruck teenage girls. The son of actors Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward (and the stepson of Shirley Jones), David landed his first major break on the blockbuster '70s musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), opposite Jones, Susan Dey, and Danny Bonaduce. Based very loosely on the experiences of the real-life family vocal band the Cowsills, the now-iconic series told of a widowed mother and her brood of rowdy kids, who became national pop stars overnight, and eked out a life touring in a colorful schoolbus and performing all over the country. Cassidy -- 20 years old when the series premiered -- played the eldest Partridge boy, 16-year-old David. Series producers took advantage of the program's success by marketing the Partridges as a real-life recording group, fronted by David (who was not a professional musician); this worked, and brought Cassidy Grammy Awards and the largest celebrity fan club in the history of recorded music. The triumphs were somewhat short-lived, however, and by 1975 (a year after Family folded) Cassidy's popularity with the younger market had declined, as new and fresher talent took his place. He responded by branching out into acting roles, in films such as A Chance to Live (1978), The Narc (1978), and The Night the City Screamed (1980), and in time established an agreeable presence as a musical theater star, on Broadway and in London's famed West End.Cassidy's overall popularity rebounded in the mid- to late '90s. Thanks in no small part to a nostalgia craze and to presence on VH1, he landed an assignment opening the 75-million-dollar show EFX at the MGM Grand, which in turn gave him the clout to mount and produce his own revue in Vegas, a tribute to Sinatra and co. christened The Rat Pack Is Back (1999). In the following decade, Cassidy began touring once again, signed a new record deal, and issued a series of albums including Then and Now (2001) and Touch of Blue (2003). Busy as ever, he topped TV GUIDE's list of the 25 Greatest Teen Idols in 2005.

Trivia: Like her TV contemporaries Ron Howard and Valerie Bertinelli, actress Susan Dey grew up before the eyes of America. In 1970, the eighteen-year-old Dey was cast as Laurie Partridge on the popular sitcom The Partridge Family, garnering excellent reviews from critics who otherwise wrote off the series as a waste of time. As early as the 1975 TV movie Cage without a Key, Susan was struggling to break away from her goodie-goodie Partridge image. She almost succeeded with her nude love scene in the 1977 theatrical feature First Love, but audiences still preferred to see Susan in such roles as Jo March in the 1977 made-for-TV Little Women. Also in 1977, she starred in the obscure television series Loves Me, Loves me Not. In 1986, she accepted the role of no-nonsense attorney Grace Van Owen in the courtroom television drama LA Law, and in 1992, Susan was permitted to flex her comedy muscles once more as Wallace Porter in the weekly sitcom Love and War, though she grew dissatisfied with her role and left the series in 1993. Dey would continue to appear in selective projects over the coming years, specializing in Lifetime orignal movies like Deadly Love, Blue River, and Bridge of Time. Dey would also enjoy a story arc on the series Third Watch.

Trivia: The saga of irascible and gravel-voiced actor Danny Bonaduce is archetypal and defiantly American: the child actor who scores early in his youth, bottoms out on multiple levels, and rebounds as a middle-aged man, in a slightly different celebrity role. But rarely has the tale unfolded with such color or verve.Before he reached the age of 12 (a time when most pre-adolescents are attempting to survive the rigors of elementary school), the diminutive, redheaded Bonaduce rocketed to national fame as the mischievous ten-year-old Danny Partridge on the blockbuster ABC sitcom The Partridge Family, alongside young co-stars David Cassidy and Susan Dey. His fame and success were somewhat limited, however. Though Bonaduce culled an estimated 350,000 dollars from the series, the program folded in the late summer of 1974, and the actor reportedly squandered most of his earnings not long after. Years of inactivity followed, save guest appearances on such celebrity-studded series as Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, and contributions to exploitationers such as Murder on Flight 502 (1975) and H.O.T.S (1979). The actor soon found himself battling poverty and drug addiction; a drug bust and mandatory counseling for narcotics possession followed in 1985. Bonaduce's personal life hit the skids as well; he lived with his mother well into adulthood, then married a Japanese woman, Setsuko Hattori, to help her obtain a green card, and separated from her six months later. Another drug bust ensued in 1990.Professionally, Bonaduce first caught his second wind in the late '80s, when radio personality Jonathon Brandmeier learned of his plight and staged a mock food drive to raise support for the actor. The gimmick worked; Bonaduce soon received invitations to do guest spots on numerous radio programs (including that of Howard Stern) and devised the idea of hosting an on-air slot himself. In December 1988, WEGX FM, a radio station out of Philadelphia, hired him as its late-night DJ on a call-in talk program. In time, Bonaduce moved to the midday slot on Chicago's WLUP-FM, a "personality talk" station.Bonaduce scored high ratings consistently (especially with listeners who recalled him from Family) and continued throughout the 1990s. His return to filmed entertainment began choppily and unpromisingly, with the ugly and sleazy, shoestring-budget exploitationer America's Deadliest Home Video (1992), but he soon opted for another direction -- parlaying his radio-hosting experience into a filmed, syndicated daytime talk show. Danny! premiered in 1995 and unabashedly explored the same lurid subjects as Sally Jessy Raphael and Montel Williams, but Bonaduce reeled in some critical kudos for his work. Time Magazine's Ken Tucker observed, "Danny Bonaduce is a very likable entry in a very unlikable genre. What's refreshing about the gravelly voiced redhead is that he's never pious, and he implicates his audience in the sleaze he teases." When the program folded within a few months, Bonaduce continued his radio gigs at stations in New York and (later) Los Angeles. The actor then launched yet another televised talk show, The Other Half, in 2001; a male-driven flip side to The View that he co-hosted with Dick Clark, Saved by the Bell alumnus Mario Lopez, and others, the show lasted for two years.Not long after, Bonaduce emerged yet again, as a reality TV star. Breaking Bonaduce premiered on VH1 on September 11, 2005, and pushed reality television far beyond the limits of questionable taste and ethics. The program featured calamitous episodes from the actor's home life with his second wife, Gretchen, and their two children. Low points included Bonaduce confessing his extramarital infidelity; consuming alcohol, pain killers, and steroids; verbally abusing everyone in sight; and attempting suicide by slashing his wrists (off-camera). Troubled by the actor's behavior, the producers ultimately threatened to cancel the series unless the star entered rehab; Bonaduce complied. His full rehabilitation treatment was then featured on the series. Bonaduce would continue to appear on screen, with small roles on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and reality appearances on Re-Inventing Bonaduce and The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest.

Trivia: Was the youngest of eight children. Learned to ride a motorbike before the age of 4. First professional acting job was in a Barbie commercial. Was thanked by director-producer Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman; Against All Odds) in his Oscar acceptance speech after he won the Best Live Action Short award in 1979 for Teenage Father. Showed horses until she was 18, winning numerous ribbons. After college, owned a bookstore until 1993.

Trivia: The son of a house painter, American actor/dancer Ray Bolger grew up in a middle-class Boston neighborhood called Dorchester. Bolger knew what he wanted to do in life the moment he saw Broadway entertainer Fred Stone literally bounce on stage in a Boston production of Jack O'Lantern. "That moment opened up a whole new world for me" Bolger would remember; after a relatively aimless childhood, he determined to become a performer himself. Starting out in vaudeville as a dancer, Bolger developed a loose-limbed ad lib style that would win him starring spots in such 1930s Broadway musicals as Life Begins at 8:40 and On Your Toes; in the latter, Bolger introduced Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue". Signed by MGM in 1936 for a featured solo in The Great Ziegfeld, Bolger was given a $3,000 per week contract and was expected to take whatever part was assigned him. But Bolger balked when he was cast as the Tin Man in the studio's Wizard of Oz. He felt the role was too confining for his talents, so Bolger convinced the film's Scarecrow, Buddy Ebsen, to switch parts with him. This move, of course, assured film immortality for Bolger, but wasn't so beneficial for Ebsen, whose allergic reaction to the Tin Man's silver makeup forced him to drop out of the film and be replaced by Jack Haley. Bolger's movie career pretty much took second place to his Broadway work in the 1940s. In 1948, Bolger was awarded the lead in a musical version of Charley's Aunt titled Where's Charley? It was when the daughter of one of the production people began singing his lyrics back to him during out-of-town tryouts that Bolger, in league with composer Frank Loesser, developed the "everybody sing" chorus for the song "Once in Love With Amy". Bolger repeated his role in the 1952 filmization of Where's Charley (1952), then continued his Broadway career with intermittent film appearances into the 1960s. He also starred in a 1953 TV series, alternately titled The Ray Bolger Show and Where's Raymond?, which was so bad that even he was uncharacteristically putting himself down before the inevitable cancellation. Bolger suffered a few career setbacks on stage in the early 1960s, and his villain role in Disney's Babes in Toyland (1961) hardly showed him to best advantage, but the performer prospered as a nightclub performer during the rest of the decade in a nostalgic (if slightly lachrymose) act which recalled his past song hits. Bolger charmed live audiences with his still-athletic hoofing skills into the 1970s. In the twilight of his career, Bolger was allowed to sparkle in guest spots on such TV programs as The Partridge Family, The Love Boat, Baretta, and even PBS's Evening at the Pops.

Trivia: From her earliest stage work onward, American actress Rosemary DeCamp played character roles that belied her youth and fresh-scrubbed attractiveness. On radio, DeCamp developed the vocal timbre that enabled her to portray a rich variety (and age-range) of characters. A peripheral performer on One Man's Family at 21, DeCamp showed up on several radio soap operas and anthologies before settling into the role of secretary Judy Price on the Dr. Christian series in 1937. DeCamp made her film bow in Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), in which she and most of the cast were required to "age" several decades. With The Jungle Book (1941), the actress played the first of her many mother roles. The most famous examples of DeCamp's specialized film work are Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), in which she was the Irish-American mother of George M. Cohan (James Cagney, who was 14 years her senior), and Rhapsody in Blue (1945), in which she played George Gershwin's Jewish mother (Gershwin was impersonated by Robert Alda, who was one year younger than DeCamp). Even when playing a character close to her own age, such as the Red Cross worker in Pride of the Marines (1945), DeCamp's interest in the leading man (in this case the same-aged John Garfield) was strictly maternal. On television, DeCamp was Peg Riley to Jackie Gleason's Chester A. Riley on the original 1949 run of The Life of Riley. She also played rakish Bob Cummings' levelheaded sister Margaret in Love That Bob (1955-59), and later was seen as Marlo Thomas' mother on That Girl (1966-70). In 1965, Rosemary subbed for her old friend Ronald Reagan as host on Death Valley Days; FCC rules of the time compelled the removal of Reagan's scenes when the show was telecast in California, where he was running for governor. Upon Reagan's election, Robert Taylor took over as host, but DeCamp was installed as permanent commercial spokesperson for 20 Mule Team Borax. Semi-retired for several years, DeCamp reemerged in 1981 for a "de-campy" cameo part in the horror spoof Saturday the 14th.