Word: showbiz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Shirley Jones is yet another sitcom widow in discreet heat in The Partridge Family, the saga of a Cowsills-like pop sextet. The show is carried by Danny Bonaduce, who has the showbiz cunning and Manhattan mouth of a David Merrick-in the body of a freckled, redheaded ten-year-old. Clap-Trapp though it was, the Partridge premiere never got as icky as another show-biz-set sitcom, the late (1953-65) Danny Thomas Show, which has now been exhumed as Make Room for Grandaddy. The same old cast is back, but in TV's Age of Relevance...
...lose her gusto. This is called getting stale. Once in a long while a performer appears who remains as fresh in the road company as she was on opening night. This is called Elly Stone. Oddly enough, in the early years of her career, Elly seemed a sure showbiz loser. In the '50s she sang her way cross-country with her first husband, an itinerant magician. They slept and nearly froze in a Kansas scrap-car lot; they lived on bananas in Florida; they starved; they split. Elly played club dates and even a carnival-all without recognition...
...know whether these kids are worth loving or even what her relationship to them is and (b) flip-flop clothing and jumping up and down to the steps of a mundane choreographer don't communicate a real kookiness, but only serve as flashcards for a kind of showbiz cutesiness. At best, the number reminds us of Lynn Redgrave's fleshed-out Georgy and her scene with the kids in the film...