For one teen, life became a musical whirlwind

For a moment in the 1950s, real life was like someone’s daydream.
A small-town teenager visited Broadway. A few hours later, she was at the core of the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein empire.
This comes to mind now, as Turner Classic Movies has a spurt of classic musicals. The films (also on HBO Max) include:
— Shirley Jones films Monday (Aug. 25). “Oklahoma” (shown here, 1955) and “Carousel” (1956), both with Gordon MacRae, are at 5:30 and 8 p.m. ET; “The Music Man” (1962), with Robert Preston, is at 10:15 p.m.
— Donald O’Connor films Thursday. That peaks at 8 p.m. ET with “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), with Gene Kelly — who choreographed dazzling dance numbers and then performed then with O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds.
These are all worth seeing or re-seeing. Also, it lets me get back to a story Jones told me: I’ll recall it loosely here, with some added details:
Jones grew up in a tiny Pennsylvania town of under 400, where she sang in church and in musicals at the regional high school. At 18, she won the Miss Pittsburgh pageant.
At about that time, she ventured into Manhattan, where the casting director for Rodgers-and-Hammerstein musicals had open auditions every two weeks. Like all the other wide-eyed hopefuls, she sang for him — and then …
The casting director departed … and returned a short time later with Richard Rodgers, Broadway’s top composer. He listened to her, then phoned his lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein.
A short time later, she was singing again — this time across the street, in a theater, backed by a full Broadway orchestra.
At this point, someone might ask: WHY did Rodgers and a full orchestra happen to be there on a random weekday? It turns out they were rehearsing for an upcoming show.
Jones promptly became the only person to sign a personal contract with Rodgers and Hammerstein, who could nudge her career along.
They gave her a small role in Broadway’s “South Pacific” and a bigger one in the Chicago production of “Me and Juliet” — then rushed her to Hollywood. Jones starred in the first Rodgers-and-Hammerstein musical — “Oklahoma” (1955), at 21 — and then in the second, “Carousel” (1956).
She would go on to make a few more musicals (including “Pepe” and the vibrant “Music Man”), some movies-with-music — including Pat Boone’s “April Love” (1957), which TCM airs at 3:30 and a lot of comedies. But she also had a blistering drama role, winning an Academy Award as best supporting actress in “Elmer Gantry” (1960), which TCM airs at 1 a.m., after the musicals.
Now Jones is 91 and known to many people as the singing mom in TV’s “Partridge Family.” Others are more familiar with her step-son, the late David Cassidy (also of “Partridge Family”), or her sons. Shaun Cassidy is a brilliant man, a former pop star and actor who became a writer and producer; Patrick Cassidy has done five Broadway musicals.
And those first movies?
Leonard Maltin praises both. In his “Movie Guide” (Random House, 2017) he gives both three-and-a-half stars. “Oklahoma,” he wrote, is an “expansive film version … filled with timeless songs and the beautiful voices of MacRae and Jones to sing them.”
Jeanine Basinger begged to differ. In “The Movie Musical” (Knopf, 2019), she said “Oklahoma” merely looks like a play someone filmed. “Maintaining staged artificiality takes the life out of the material, which is DOA onscreen.”
She’s happy with “the lovely young Shirley Jones,” but feels “Carousel” was doomed the moment Frank Sinatra dropped out, causing MacRae to be miscast as a rogue.
Now viewers can decide for themselves, during TCM’s musical surge.