page_title: The Partridge Family
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: The Partridge Family / History
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of television actors, (Clockwise from top) David Cassidy, Jeremy Gelbwaks, Shirley Jones, Suzanne Crough, Danny Bonaduce and Susan Dey promoting the September 25, 1970 premiere of the ABC comedy series The Partridge Family.
context_page_description: The Partridge Family is an American musical sitcom starring Shirley Jones and featuring David Cassidy. Jones plays a widowed mother, and Cassidy plays the oldest of her five children, in a family who embarks on a music career. It ran from September 25, 1970, until March 23, 1974, on the ABC network as part of a Friday-night lineup, and had subsequent runs in syndication. The family was loosely based on the real-life musical family the Cowsills, a popular band in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
context_section_description: The Partridge Family was created for television by Bernard Slade, and the series' executive producer was Bob Claver. The show was inspired by and loosely based on the Cowsills, a family pop music group that was famous in the late 1960s. In the show's early development, the Cowsill children were considered by the producers, but because the Cowsills were not trained actors and were too old for the roles as scripted, Slade and Claver abandoned that idea. Shirley Jones had already been signed as mother Shirley Partridge and star of the show. Surviving members of the Cowsill family have more recently suggested that in fact they were the leading contenders for the child roles, but the deal was wrecked because their tyrannical father insisted that his own wife should play the mother role, despite the producers' insistence that Jones's casting in the role of Mrs Partridge was not negotiable.
  The pilot was filmed in December 1969. This unaired pilot differs from the pilot that was broadcast in 1970. In the unaired pilot, Shirley's name is Connie and she has a boyfriend played by Jones's real-life husband at the time, Jack Cassidy, father of David Cassidy. Laurie mentions her late father once getting drunk at a Christmas party. The family has a different address and live in Ohio.
  The show proved popular, but the fame took its toll on several, if not most, of the starring cast, particularly David Cassidy. In the midst of his rise to fame, Cassidy soon felt stifled by the show and trapped by the mass hysteria surrounding his every move. In May 1972, he appeared nude on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in a cropped Annie Leibovitz photo. He used the article to get away from his squeaky clean image. The article mentioned that Cassidy was riding around New York in the back of a car "stoned and drunk."
  Shortly after the series ended, scriptwriter Roberta Tatum launched a lawsuit against Screen Gems concerning the creation of the show. Tatum claimed that she had submitted a similar premise to Screen Gems prior to 1970 called Baker's Half-Dozen. The matter was resolved out of court, with Tatum receiving a reported $150,000 from Screen Gems.
caption: The Partridge Family, season 1
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