Shirley Jones and Florence Henderson both played beloved moms on 1970s sitcoms. Jones portrayed Shirley Partridge on The Partridge Family, while Henderson starred as Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch. So perhaps it’s no surprise that fans sometimes confused the two actors for each other, as Jones once revealed in an interview.
Shirley Jones was compared to Florence Henderson
While Jones won an Oscar and starred in Broadway musicals, to many people, she’s best known for her work on The Partridge Family, which aired from 1970 to 1974 on ABC. She reflected on her long career in a conversation with the Television Academy Foundation.
The Partridge Family’s run overlapped with that of The Brady Bunch, which starred Henderson as mom of six Carol Brady and aired from 1969 to 1974. When asked if she was ever compared to another TV mom, Jones was quick to answer.
“Florence Henderson [from] The Brady Bunch,” she replied. “She was really the only one, because we were right on top of each other [on] Friday night. We had that comparison. Still do. I have people call me Florence and she has people call her Shirley.”
Jones turned down the Carol Brady role on ‘The Brady Bunch’
If things had gone a bit differently, Jones could have been the one playing Carol Brady, not Henderson. The Elmer Gantry actor was offered the role as the matriarch of the blended family but turned it down.
“I was first offered the role of Carol on The Brady Bunch, but I didn’t want to be the mom pulling the roast out of the oven,” she told Closer Weekly. “On The Partridge Family, I became the first working mom on TV.”
Instead, Henderson – a friend of Jones’ from their days in musical theater – landed the part and secured her own place in TV history.
Shirley Jones felt bad for kids who wanted to join ‘The Partridge Family’
Jones played an idealized mother on television, but she stressed that she was not the same as her character. While there was a “lot of” herself in Shirley Partridge, there was also “a lot that wasn’t.”
“You know, this is a television show. This is not real life,” she said.
Jones – herself a mom to three and stepmom to one (fellow Partridge Family star David Cassidy) – said Shirley Partridge was was “too well-defined” compared to a real-life mother.
“Life isn’t that way,” she said.
Jones recalled that children would sometimes tell her how much they wanted to be a part of The Partridge Family, which she felt was a bit sad.
“A lot of kids said, ‘Oh, I grew up with you and I wanted my mom to be just like you. I wanted to come and live with you and I wanted to be in the band,’” she said. “That’s nice. But you know, I just always felt sorry for these kids, because obviously something was really lacking in their life.”
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