Overcoming Celebrity Obsession

Overcoming

Celebrity Obsession

Diane Saks

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Copyright © 2011 Diane Saks

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-2847-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-2848-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 7/23/2011

CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Phase 1

Chapter 1

DIANE’S CELEBRITY OBSESSION

Chapter 2

WHAT DIANE LIKED MOST ABOUT DAVID CASSIDY

Chapter 3

THE NEW WAY TO LOOK AT CELEBRITY OBSESSION

Chapter 4

CELEBRITY OBSESSION AND THE MEDIA

Chapter 5

CASSIDY VS PARTRIDGE: THE CASSIDYS

Chapter 6

CASSIDY VS PARTRIDGE: THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY

Chapter 7

THE FANTASIES ABOUT DAVID CASSIDY: AFX (PRONOUNCED AFF EX)

Chapter 8

FROM FANTASY TO REALITY

Chapter 9

IS HE KEEPING A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET FROM YOU

Chapter 10

WHEN DID ALL THIS CELEBRITY ADMIRATION BEGIN

Chapter 11

MARRIAGE MEMORIAL: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CELEBRITY GETS MARRIED

Chapter 12

JOHN TRAVOLTA: TEEN HEARTTHROB

Chapter 13

THE GREASE CONTEST: EXPERIENCING CONTESTS

Chapter 14

BLOW OUT: THE MOVIE

Chapter 15

THE JOHN TRAVOLTA FANTASIES: SINGLE FANTASY

Chapter 16

MICHAEL J. FOX CONFIRMS MY CELEBRITY OBSESSION DIAGNOSIS

Phase 2

Chapter 17

CELEBRITY OBSESSION PHASE 2: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 18

LEADING UP TO DAVID CASSIDY

Chapter 19

THE DAVID CASSIDY YEARS

Chapter 20

BULLY TARGET

Chapter 21

THE JOHN TRAVOLTA YEARS

Chapter 22

WHY FANS PREFER TO OBSESS OVER CELEBRITIES THAN DEAL WITH REAL LIFE

Chapter 23

EXAMINING MY MICHAEL J FOX OBSESSION

Chapter 24

EXPLORING MY BAD REPUTATION

Chapter 25

BEING ANGRY WITH MYSELF

Chapter 26

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS: MODIFIED JAILHOUSE JUSTICE

Chapter 27

THE IMAGE I NEEDED TO LIVE DOWN

Phase 3

Chapter 28

CELEBRITY OBSESSION PHASE 3: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 29

MOVING ON FROM CELEBRITY OBSESSION

Chapter 30

TRANSFERRING YOUR ALLEGIANCE FROM YOUR CELEBRITY

Chapter 31

ESTABLISHING CAREER OPTIONS FROM YOUR CELEBRITY OBSESSION

Chapter 32

UNBREAKABLE OR HOW TO BECOME A MOVIE EXTRA: UNBREAKABLE, STARRING BRUCE WILLIS.

Chapter 33

RELATIONSHIPS

AFTERWORD

Publishing History

With iUniverse

So You Want To Be A Rock n’ Roll Bride

Obsessive

Love, Honor, and Cherish Until Marriage Do Us Part

Another Day of Infamy

With Publish America

Diary of a Victim

I didn’t want to hear about ‘typical adolescent problems,’ or ‘other girls,’ or ‘you’ll grow out of it.’ I didn’t want to be treated the same as all-the-other-girls, but as Anne–in-her-own-right, and Pim (father) didn’t understand that.

Anne Frank translation of July 15, 1944

Anne Frank The Definitive Years Edition, 1996

In Memory of

Paula Goodspeed 1978-2008

And dedicated to celebrity obsessed people, especially females at all levels of celebrity obsession.

PREFACE

Overcoming Celebrity Obsession explains celebrity obsession in a new way. This is not a book of explanations from professionals, such as sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. You may know someone who is celebrity obsessed, I love this guy and I know everything about him. I know the names of every member of his family, the name of his dog. I know what his hobbies are, and that he can’t stand soda with ice in it. I know he loves root beer and his favorite color is blue. Sometimes you’ll experience being with a fan who says, I know where he hangs out. I ‘m going to get an after school job to make enough money to go to Hollywood, and track him down. Readers, this is exactly the type of person who wrote this book. You’ve probably read celebrity autobiographies from women. These women wrote a paragraph or a sentence about that sexy guy they liked in the fan magazines, long ago. I don’t know any woman who has anything on me. You have no idea. Reading the first eight chapters, you’ll probably know almost as much about David Cassidy as you know about your favorite celebrity. You’ll also learn some things about the girl who was probably his number one obsessed fan—me. If you have read anything about celebrity obsession, this is what sets me apart from the other experts.

By being celebrity obsessed, I had learned about the problems of treating celebrity obsession. I firsthand learned, no matter who you are, and what you believe you feel towards your famous someone, it’s considered hero worship. Hero worship never fit me, and it didn’t matter how I felt. It was the long learned and accepted opinions of the professionals that mattered. I don’t believe all celebrity obsession is hero worship. Sometimes an adolescent girl will actually fall in love with some celebrity. This was the case with me.

In my personal experience, I fell in love with a television actor. It was typical in my early celebrity obsession treatment, the fan falls for a celebrity based on a character he plays in a television series. If the fan could understand the guy she is in love with is only a character in a story, perhaps she would give up her obsession. This is not always the case. In the first chapter, I’ll be asking you to write a story about the first time you fell for your celebrity. It’s true many fans do fall for a celebrity, in the role of a particular character. This is OK, if this is your story.

I don’t know how old the celebrity obsession theories are, but I think a formerly obsessed fan actually knows more than a professional. I think it’s time to update the celebrity obsession treatment.

Finally, sometimes I will change my audience viewpoint. In this book, you should only take into consideration what you think applies to you. I had meant Overcoming Celebrity Obsession for the approximate ages of 12 to 29.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the celebrities I had admired who inspired this book, especially David and John. I would like to thank John Blechacz (Blay Hah z) and Sarah Vetro Blechacz, who is not only my personal trainer, but had also suggested I research Google on celebrity obsession. It was on Google, I realized nobody knew my celebrity obsession books, so I decided to write this one.

I want to thank the members of the Writer’s Circle for making me a better writer. I also want to thank all my professors and tutors at ASU (Arizona State University), especially my first professor, Matt Roberts, who showed me what my writing strengths and weaknesses were in English Comp 102, and my current tutor, David Moakley. I want to thank my former English professor, Whitney Carpenter, from Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania, Susan O’Hara from St Joseph’s University, and Marion Kazan from Temple University, who taught me about fat paragraphs. I would like to thank Eileen Spangler of TV Guide and Burt Prelutsky for allowing me to use the TV Guide quotes on Shaun Cassidy. Thank you iUniverse editorial staff and Cara. To Roselle and Michael who loaned me a laptop when I was in assisted living when I broke my leg due to two male students, one on a skateboard and the other on a bicycle. To anyone else who contributed to this book and I forgot to thank. Thank you.

Phase 1

Find out why you are obsessed with a particular celebrity.

Chapter 1

DIANE’S CELEBRITY OBSESSION

Once upon a time in a land called Pennsylvania, lived a little girl born on March 31st. One day, she fell in love with an entertainer named Cassidy. They wed. They also divorced.

Once upon a later time in a land called Pennsylvania, lived another little girl born on March 31st. One day, she also fell in love with an entertainer named Cassidy. This is her story.

IT WAS AROUND 9:30 PM on a Thursday night, February 11th to be exact. There was a slight crimp in my stomach, like one gets when riding in an elevator. Then, I felt like I was falling, falling, falling—into a ditch. I would not hit bottom for a little more than six years. I could hear the song Doesn’t Somebody Want To Be Wanted, playing in my head.

I was only lying in my bed, reading a book about the new television shows of the season. It wasn’t the first time I read the book, either. I focused on the black and white picture of a young man in the book. The picture was a close-up made from a group shot of the Partridge Family, performing in their maroon velvet vests, white button-down shirts, and matching maroon pants, except for Tracy, Suzanne Crough, (pronounced crow). She had long strawberry blonde hair with bangs and a white hair band. Suzanne wore a maroon velvet jumper and white leotards, banging a tambourine against her right thigh. The young man’s name was David. He was in the character of Keith who was singing lead in the company of his band. The picture, a close-up, was a photo-op to promote the new television series. David’s brown hair was parted in the middle and hung down to his collar. (see cover) He was singing, Together(Havin’ A Ball.) He lip-synched the song. David was probably about nineteen when the picture was taken, but on February 11th he was only twenty going on twenty-one. In real life, David had to record actual records that were played on the real radio airwaves. He seemed happy in the picture. Something inside me for no reason it seemed, told me otherwise.

I could sense even though David appeared happy in the picture I was looking at, at the time, he really wasn’t. His picture spoke to me. Like a fortune teller, I could feel vibrations from the picture. The picture spoke to me and I fell in love.

The Truth

It may sound pathetic. David might not like it because it makes him look weak. It threatens machismo.

Recently, I just finished watching an Elvis Presley special documentary. The documentary was filled with clips from Elvis’s career and members of his family—cousins, in-laws, daughter, and ex-wife. They talked about him. Priscilla said she thinks she fell for Elvis’s vulnerability and his ability to sometimes seem like a little boy. Elvis used to talk mostly about how much he missed his mother— her death—the greatest tragedy of his life. It’s debatable whether she died of a heart attack or of acute hepatitis C. I believe I could sense the little boy in David, too.

I looked at David’s picture and it said to me, in that mellow voice of his, It’s hard for me to go anywhere without being mobbed. It’s hard for me to go to the beach, shopping, the cleaners, the mall, the movies, restaurants. Then he said to me, It’s hard for me to find someone who can like me for myself. I can like a girl and ask her out. Then, I find she only likes me for my status, money, or what I can do for her image and career. I just want someone who doesn’t want anything from me but me.

(1) I noticed David went for his show business goals and didn’t just talk about them.

(2) David wasn’t afraid of competing. It didn’t matter who or how many people were up for the same role. If he was right for the role, he got the part. If he wasn’t right for the role, he moved on to something else. The actor didn’t talk all the time about his starting his show business career in New York City and not doing it. When David got that high school diploma, he was off to start his career. He worked very hard as an actor, musician, dancer, and singer to get his performance as perfect as possible. The young man wasn’t a slouch who worked on his talents halfway and then just show up to perform. I think as a result, David was possibly too concerned about having his helpers and assistants do the best job possible. He has earned the reputation, from those who worked with him, of being difficult.

In my own experience, it seemed to me the more eager I was to get a job done, the slower my helpers became.

David was a goal oriented person, even though he didn’t always realize his goals. He used to say he wanted to do movies and play a bad guy. Musically, the actor-singer wanted to record an album just like All Things Must Pass, by George Harrison.

(3) David was very independent or at least as independent as his celebrity would allow him to be. He had his own home from the time he returned to California from New York, at age nineteen to peruse his work in television drama and comedy. He could keep himself fed and care for his own clothes.

(4) David loved animals. Animal lovers in most cases have a sweetness and tenderness about them.

(5) David wasn’t a bodybuilder kind of guy, but he did have a physical strength I would find helpful in everything from household chores to someone’s emergency falls. Maybe his biggest strength was to not let his parents’ divorces tarnish his desire to have his own family, someday. I’ll be listing more later on in this chapter. I hope all these strong qualities about David, make up for the little boy vulnerability that got to me that night I fell in love with him.

Analysis 1: I never knew anything about how David felt about his celebrity, anywhere, previously. There was an article in the book, but it didn’t say anything about how he felt about his celebrity. I believe I had sensed his feelings towards his celebrity status. The article was about Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, and Susan Dey (pronounced Day). It was upbeat. David talked about the series and the music from a rock band he was in in high school. He didn’t give the name of the band or the high school. David went over to the water cooler with the author. David took a paper cup and filled it. He joked with the author, I’m putting on my fish act. I learned David knew when young people frequented restaurants. He went to them on off-nights.

According to a recent interview promoting his 2009 show Ruby & the Rockits, David said he eventually had to hire someone to do his shopping for him when he was on The Partridge Family.

Analysis 2: It would be fifteen months when my intuition about how David felt towards being recognized, would be realized. A male friend told Rolling Stone, in 1972, about their December 1970 trip to Hawaii.

David thought the world knew he was going to Hawaii. When they arrived, David was reluctant to leave his plane seat. When he realized he had no choice, he walked crouched, trying to pull his sun hat down over his head and hoping he would not be noticed. His friend convinced David that nobody knew he was coming and that his behavior would draw attention to him. David was then able to relax and enjoy himself.

Analysis 3: As far as dates and friends went, David’s most frequent dates were two girls he knew from high school and two actresses who guest starred on The Partridge Family (not mentioned in this book). His closest friends were those he went to high school with. I didn’t know any of this on February 11th.

Analysis 4: Doesn’t Somebody Want To Be Wanted. It’s true I knew song so well, I could even play it in my head anytime I wanted to. It was number five in the early part of the year, according to Billboard. It took twenty years to learn David wasn’t too crazy about that song. According to Partridge Family Up-To-Date CD, it was David’s least favorite Partridge Family song. He said it sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. It almost caused him to walk off the set because he didn’t want to do the song. He said he was diametrically opposed to songs with speaking in the middle.

David didn’t like Doesn’t Somebody Want To Be Wanted because it threatened my cool. I thought I knew subconsciously, David associated pain with that song. I was too happy for myself, I couldn’t get David’s subconscious message, consciously.

The argument is an old one. How can you love someone you don’t know? I believe that on some kind of a level, I really did know David. Now where is that crystal ball, anyway? Too far-fetched? Well listen up as Diane explains it all.

It’s as simple as ABC. Intuition isn’t all that hard to understand. Intuition is kind of like magic. I’m also an Aries, the head sign. Did you know TV Land’s hottest witches are Aries? Elizabeth Montgomery, Bewitched (April 15, 1933-May 18, 1995) and Melissa Joan Hart, Sabrina the Teenage Witch (April 18, 1976).

I believed it could be hard to find real love and true friends when you are famous. People want you for what they can get out of you. In time, David would begin concert tours. On the way to the concert tours, David was sometimes thrown into car trunks, or laid down on the floor of sedans, underneath blankets, in order to avoid mob scenes that took place when the limousine arrived at the concert hall. In the 1980s, there were more stories published about David’s fame in the 1970s. In David’s case, the stories told of how things got bad because he was a teen heartthrob. He couldn’t leave his house for nine months, alone. When he left the house, he couldn’t leave without the assistance of a police escort.

He found it hard to communicate with people, including his own mother and other family members, about what he was emotionally going through.

I believe I had sensed David’s problems with being a celebrity, before the public was made aware of it. The saddest part of all would be the barriers, both physical and mental, that would have kept me from even attempting to hold my hand out to him. He never knew how I felt.

As far as me being like Shirley Jones who was the woman who married David’s father, I resembled Kellie Martin (Life Goes On) more. If I had to update my description it would be a toss up between Meg Griffin of Family Guy or Peg Hill of King of the Hill. I think I am more the latter. I had wavy light brown hair, parted in the middle, down to about my chest. I wore brown plastic framed glasses. In June of that year, I got gold wire-framed octagon shaped glasses.

Shirley Jones, on one hand, had been described as a beautiful doll-faced blonde. Shirley Jones was an only child. I, on the other hand, was cute and attractive. I was not beautiful. I could sing, but I was no Shirley Jones. I had two older brothers. It’s your turn to talk about how your celebrity obsession started.

***

Love is really about admiration. To love someone you have to admire them.

Ryan O Neal

Chasing Farrah

March 23, 2005

Chapter 2

WHAT DIANE LIKED MOST ABOUT DAVID CASSIDY

WHO WAS DAVID CASSIDY to me? Some women use the word crush, and some use the word idol to describe their former passion for David. I use neither. Maybe he was the Elvis to my Priscilla, the John Lennon to my Yoko Ono, or even the Moondoggie to my Gidget. At least that was what I wanted him to be. I like that. Maybe if I go on tour to promote this book, I’ll use it.

When I examined why I fell in love with David, I realized it was more than one reason. It was fragmented. You’ve probably heard from a lot of so-called professionals, easy reasons why a teenage girl will like a celebrity:

(1) She identifies with his television character.

(2) She thinks he has super human powers.

(3) She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Paula Goodspeed had a boyfriend, yet she was obsessed with Paula Abdul.

(4) She doesn’t have an exciting enough life, so she thinks he has a glamorous one. There are probably many many more reasons. I personally think these are useless reasons professionals use. They don’t want to take the time to give us reasons that will benefit us. Professionals seem to want this subject to be a one-size fits all situation. The real reasons why a teenager likes a particular celebrity are as individual as your own fingerprint. It has to do with the personal experiences a teen had from as far back as infancy or the womb. For example, Paula Goodspeed’s eighteen-year obsession with Paula Abdul was said to be due to severe abandonment issues. She had multiple personalities that stemmed from severe sexual abuse.

In my own experience, I have found professionals who didn’t even want to work on why I was obsessed with David Cassidy. I found my obsession was linked to my slight physical and slight learning disabilities. The professional I saw in my middle teens, treated my physical disability and David Cassidy obsession as two separate things. I know just as Paula Abdul is connected to Paula Goodspeed’s past sexual abuse, David Cassidy is connected to my disabilities. My disabilities led to some psychological abuse I had. It’s important to know, Paula Abdul didn’t create Paula Goodspeed’s sexual abuse, and David Cassidy didn’t create my disabilities and psychological problems. Paula Goodspeed saw Paula Abdul as a solution to her problems, as I once saw David Cassidy as a solution to my own. Whatever the truth is concerning Paula Abdul and David Cassidy, doesn’t matter. Intention is what counts. These are some examples of the individuality of the teenage fan.

When I did this second exercise, I placed my reasons for loving David into three categories.

(1) My limited Premonition

(2) My two older brothers

(3) My physical disability

Premonition

Two years before I had even heard of David, I began to form what I called my idea of Mr. Right. I wanted him to be a nice guy who liked animals and children. I couldn’t see his face. He had his back to me, and in spite of that, I knew he had a handsome clean-shaven baby face. His hair was a straight to wavy, light to medium brown. It was long enough to drape over the shoulders of his long-sleeved, red and white vertical striped button-down shirt. In the back, his hair was draped over the yoke of his shirt. He was well built but not like a weightlifter or a wrestler. His shirt was tucked into blue jeans and held up by a wide black belt. Underneath the jean hemline, on his feet, he wore black leather boots that went up to his ankles. The boots had one inch heels on them. His eyes could be any color. He was twenty years old. He stood between 5’3 and 6’ tall. His name was one of several, including David. David" was created by compiling everything I liked about different guys in society that physically appealed to me.

Several years later, HE came along. I didn’t put the Mr. Right list and David together until researching So You Want To Be A Rock n’ Roll Bride. David, twenty, turned out to have beautiful long eyelashes over beautiful greenish–brown hazel eyes. Depending on the lighting, he could have green eyes with a trace of brown or solid brown eyes.

I have long eyelashes, too. Depending on the lighting, my eyes could either look like turquoise blue or olive green. The brown in my eyes was like a slight spill over from my eyeball.

David had a handsome baby face and some crowded teeth. I loved that Crest smile. I have crowded teeth, myself (bottom only).

David had a beautiful prominent Adam’s apple. His teeth, his eyes, and his Adam’s apple, all three were special traits. It also didn’t hurt, our names both began with the letter D, had five letters in them, and we were both born under the sign of Aries. David wore his medium brown hair in a shoulder length shag haircut, with bangs. He had a slight build—standing at 5’8 ¼"—weighing about 125 to 135 lbs. He had a hairless torso and flat chest. He had a slight trace of acne that came and went. Without makeup, David’s face tended at times to look oily.

Exercise two: What did you like about him? Here are the seven reasons that came off the top of my head when I was trying to figure out what I liked about David. When I narrowed it down, I finally realized why I fell in love with him.

1. He’s baby faced and adorable: I already included a description of Mr. Right, earlier. I already included a description of David that could have gone in this section.

I think the baby face type is attractive because it’s appealing to a much younger woman (the adolescent female). The older man looks like he’s closer to the girl’s young age. He has had more experience and is more mature than the boys closer to the adolescent female’s age. The baby faced man brings out the maternal nurturing qualities of the female.

2. I have a brother with a similar physical type: Does the reason you like the way a particular celebrity looks, have to do with him reminding you of someone in your own life? Back in 1979, I started questioning my attraction to celebrities. I have a particular brother in mind. The younger of my two older brothers was an older and experienced man to a kid sister. We both shared the quality of looking a little younger than our years. It was rough to be fourteen-years-old and given a children’s menu in a restaurant because I looked twelve. I really hated being taken for younger than my years. My brother was taken for younger than his years when my dad took my brother into a men’s shop to get a suit for high school graduation. My brother had some muscle on him but not overpowering. My mother always thought he was too thin. Remember, I hated weightlifter and wrestler types. Someone in the store commented that my brother had quite a build on him for someone getting barmitzvahed. My brother liked that comment about as much as I liked the children’s menu, years later. My dad corrected the man.

I think my brother has influenced me a lot. He affects my reason for liking handsome baby faced men. None of my brothers looked like David.

3. Athletic: The first sport I was aware of David liking was SCUBA diving (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus). Tiger Beat magazine sent along a photographer who had captured beautiful pictures of David and his best friend, Sam, during their Hawaiian winter holiday. David didn’t wear a wetsuit for the camera. He just strapped the tank on his bare back and dived in off the side of the boat, wearing nothing but a snorkel, diver’s mask, and his white swim trunks.

As a teenager, despite his height, David was on the basketball team. I think he was on the neighborhood community team because the tank top said, Westwood on it. David didn’t attend a high school called Westwood. He continued to play basketball, as an adult. The fan magazines showed David throwing a basketball into a hoop, located at his house. By the way, 16 magazine ran a contest; some lucky girl could win his basketball tank top. I never entered the contest.

At age twenty-one, David took up skiing. Being a major star towards the end of the year, he decided the only real vacation he could have at the time was in Europe. David went skiing in Europe.

By the strangest coincidence, my married brother, the younger one, happened to like SCUBA diving and skiing. His wife even broke her arm the first time they took lessons.

There were times on Columbia Ranch, where The Partridge Family backlot was located, when David could be seen during breaks, picking up a football and tossing it around to another person.

I remember when I was a little girl, my father brought home a football for my brothers to play with. There was also a helmet and one of those football stands, used to prop up a football in order to kick it if you don’t want to use your hand.

I read tennis was the sport of the celebrities out in California, and David was no exception. I want to close this part of David’s life by saying his love of skiing, SCUBA diving, and tennis inspired me to take those sports up. Although I only really got to try tennis, I never became any good at it.

This is the perfect time to explain what athletic men mean to me. It’s very rare I’ll find something suitable for me to talk about both of my brothers. They are two years apart, and I average a ten year age difference with both of them. I grew up around very athletic brothers. They used to play badminton, ball catch, and croquet in the backyard. My brothers were both avid gymnasts. I can remember them doing handstands, somersaults, and pole vaulting. My brothers were swimmers and divers. When I got a little older, my brothers took up track and tennis. I learned from an early age, boy or man isn’t really macho if he isn’t an athlete.

Unconsciously, many little girls begin to learn athletic guys are very sexy. The concept of athletic guys being hot doesn’t emerge until junior high or middle school. Junior high or middle school is when the girls become sports fans, hanging out by the bleachers during a game or becoming cheerleaders—cheering the team on. Sometimes girls, themselves, became team players in tennis, lacrosse, swimming, etc. Do girls take up sports to become attractive to the guys? It depends on the girl. Whether the girl is involved in sports or not, she knows how macho the athlete is. In my case, the answer was yes. Even though I took up tennis because of David, I don’t think anything was wasted. I think the girl, who takes up a sport because she likes a celebrity and hopes to meet him someday, is not wasting her time. There will be plenty of guys in her own life who will appreciate her new sport. I suppose athletics will always be an important quality in a man, to me.

4. He could sing and was musically inclined: Explanations: David not only has a wonderful tenor voice, he was blessed with multimusical talent. Most people are aware of David’s ability to play the guitar, but he has also had training in piano and drums. Evelyn Ward, his mother, and Elliot Silverstein, his stepfather, became friendly with actor Sal Mineo, a neighbor. David was in junior high, at the time. In 1955, Sal Mineo (1939-1976) played a meek fifteen-year-old boy named Johnny, in the film Rebel Without a Cause. Sal Mineo still had the drum set he used in the film, The Gene Krupa Story. David loved the drums. During a dinner with David and his father, Sal learned David adored drums. Sal Mineo gave David the drum set. Actually, Sal gave David’s stepfather the drums to give to him.

David proved to be a wonderful influence. David could have inspired me to expand my musical appreciation. I could have learned to like jazz and the blues, not just rock n’ roll, some country, rhythm and blues, and some show tunes. As of 2005, I started teaching myself how to play classical guitar and read music. I think I have a phobia about changing the strings on my guitar. I’ll have to work on that.

When I was a teenager, I started playing guitar. If I had David in my life, he would have instilled in me the same type of discipline he had to acquire in order to become accomplished in piano, drums, and guitar. Discipline in music was missing in my life. In other words, I didn’t have the type of friends who were disciplined. They weren’t bad people. David would have disciplined me in the musical area, by inspiring me.

I never became an accomplished musician, but when I was trying out for choir in my second high school, I did try David’s hot tea, honey, and lemon concoction. I didn’t get into choir, but I did get the A I wanted in girl’s chorus. I usually got B’s.

Saturday September 7th

I was one of the disabled children who attended Variety Club Camp. Every so many years, a twenty-hour telethon was held. When I was twelve, the telethon was held at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. There must have been twelve of us, in all, who were scheduled to sing on the stage. We sat on the far right side of the theatre, in a balcony. The view wasn’t great. Not even cleaning my plastic caramel-orange sort of leopard print glasses would have helped my vision. All we saw were left profiles of the performers, as they performed on stage.

At least we could see Joey Bishop (1918-2007), the emcee, sit facing us at his desk. He was a big star to us. He was an actor, comedian, and a singer. The actor-comedian also liked to be on game show panel shows such as Match Game and What’s My Line. He had his own late night show with Regis Philbin, who I had never heard of at that time. I knew Joey Bishop from the situation comedy he had several years earlier, when he played a variety show host, married to actress Abby Dalton. Joey’s catch phrase was "Son of a Gun." Joey was originally from South Philadelphia and he had come home to Philly to host the telethon.

A black, male, rhythm and blues singing group called the Temptations began to perform. One of our counselors came into the box seat to tell us to leave it and get ready to go on. I remember everything about it. We got backstage by leaving the box seat through the rear. My short light golden brown Sassoon hairstyle was beginning to grow over my ears. I was dressed in a mini dress that gave a skirt and blouse illusion. It was a white short-sleeved blouse with phony gold buttons down the front (real shirt-like buttons were in the back). The dark orange-wide cloth belt around my waist had a large gold buckle. The brown A-line mini skirt had two white thick horizontal stripes, several inches apart. Across them were two vertical white stripes, several inches apart. I wore the dress with my white fishnet stockings and black and white saddle shoes. I must have stepped down the two steps of the box seat balcony to get backstage. The hardwood floor had several cable wires on it. One of the crewmen asked us to watch out for the cable wires or we would trip over them. I was in heaven over the possibility of tripping over television cable wires.

We watched from offstage as the Temptations did their act. They looked great in their bold solid colored button-down shirts. Each performer wore a different solid colored shirt, such as blue, red, purple, and yellow with brown or black slacks. When the singers were finished, they sprinted towards us, shirts completely soaked in sweat. When we first noticed the singing group coming towards us, some of us, including I, commented about their soaked shirts.

Then it was our turn. Joey Bishop stood in front of us as he announced our act to the audience. We were introduced as, Some of the campers formed a singing group and are now going to perform for us. And here they are. We must have sung four songs.

(1) Can’t Help Falling in Love (somehow that song became known as Wise Men Say, but that’s not the proper title). I heard Elvis Presley liked to end his concerts with that song.

(2) Girl in the Woods

(3) One Little Candle

(4) I Won’t Grow Up (From Peter Pan)

I never saw myself on television before, and so, I took a glance to my right, at the monitor for a second. I saw the whole group facing front except for one person. I quickly took it as my first lesson as a performer, and turned my head back around. I also lost my place in the song. We reprised the songs the next day. I had learned my lesson and feel I not only kept up with the rest of the group but also faced front. I think I wore a pink mini dress that day, but I didn’t remember it very well. I wouldn’t have my next public performance until a little more than two years later.

Friday December 18th

During the year when I wasn’t singing with the Variety Club Camp singers, I was singing in the Widener chorus. Every year the high school singers were invited to sing at Central High School. As a fourteen-year-old, I now had brown framed glasses. My wavy hair was parted in the middle and grown down to about my chest. I still had some of those illusion dresses. I wore one dress that had a white blouse with a golden yellow velvet vest. Flung over my left shoulder, was my rust colored woolen hooded coat. Over the other shoulder, my shoulder bag, as I moved though the halls. The vest covered the top of my black and white tweed, mini straight–line skirt part. I wore sheer pantyhose and gray suede/black smooth leather saddle shoes with it. The saddle was smooth black leather.

In those days, Central High School was an all boys school. The school didn’t go co-ed until 1983. I even knew a junior and a senior who had gone to Central, at the time. When they saw me, as they passed by on the stairs, going to classes, they didn’t hesitate to say hello to me, and I to them.

My brothers had attended that school when I was a little girl. I really felt something being there. I had never been there before, to my knowledge. It was an exciting experience going to a luncheon there, partly because it was my brothers’ alma mater. The party took place in the large lunchroom. The boys on the gym team entertained us. They wore uniforms—white—trimmed in crimson and gold. The team did flips and cartwheels on long narrow mats. The gym team’s entertainment especially meant something to me, since my brothers used to be on the gym team, too. Later on that evening, at home, my brothers told me they used to entertain the Widener High School chorus. The younger of my two brothers was visiting us over the holidays.

Back at the luncheon, the chorus gathered around a black grand piano that stood near the Christmas tree. We belted out Christmas songs, such as Silver Bells, Silent Night, Winter Wonderland, and several others.

We were blindfolded. We took turns hitting a piñata with a stick. This went on until the entire pastel multicolored, plastic donkey-like structure split apart. All sorts of penny candy fell down to the floor. We all took some of the candy, like I needed it. I needed to lose a few pounds. We dined on egg salad and tuna fish sandwiches with a side of potato chips, coleslaw, and baked beans. We drank soda, such as, ginger ale, orange, cola, and root beer.

No matter how much you learn about your favorite celebrity, you’ll never learn everything.

5. I came from parents who were married for 30 years: Someone once asked me what I had to offer David, but the question was asked as if that person already had an answer, a negative answer. I knew what I had to offer, but I couldn’t think of it for that moment. I never tried to verbalize it. I wish I had.

Before I go on, I would like to add something. For those of you who are obsessed with any celebrity, and research all the information you can, I have some bad news. The bad news is, some of the information is kept hidden or you are given partial truths. This was the case here. We were told Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward divorced when David was five, and Jack married Shirley Jones when David was six. In the year 2000, I had learned that wasn’t entirely the truth, according to Biography Shirley Jones. You see, Jack and Evelyn’s divorce wasn’t finalized until June 1956, after eight years of marriage, and Jack married Shirley that August. When I learned about it, I was much older. It still bothered me. I think I understand, telling the complete truth would have cost Shirley Jones a career and ruined The Partridge Family. She had enough problems offending some people because she was dating Jack when he was legally separated from his wife. He and Shirley were doing the play Oklahoma. You need to work hard to earn the right to be a part of things that are kept from the public for various reasons. I have a few other examples that will come later. In the words of former President Bill Clinton, I feel your pain! This is one of the times when it’s better to be advised by a former obsessed fan, than anyone else. I didn’t care if Shirley Jones was dating David’s father when Jack was still legally married to Evelyn. You’ll soon understand that later on in this section.

One of David Cassidy’s fan club presidents had her own fan magazine about David, back in the 1990s. I was a fan club member for about a year. In the magazine, David said that from the time he was three until the time he was four, his father had abandoned him. David was heartbroken and used to think it was his fault.

This is the time when I am sure you will understand why I describe my feelings towards David as love and nothing else. I felt it was wrong for Jack to tell David his parents were divorced, and then in the next breath, talk excitedly about Shirley Jones and their recent marriage. I never came from a broken home, but let’s have a little mercy on a six-year-old. I think David needed some time. Break the news of the divorce, and then a month or so later, at least tell him that Daddy is dating. Within a few months Jack could have brought Shirley around. Sometimes when Jack had visitation rights, he could have included Shirley in some of their time together. Perhaps a year later, Jack could have married Shirley, instead of two months after the divorce. Give a six-year-old a break. Have some feelings. Don’t have him deal with the news of his parents’ divorce and his father’s new marriage, all in one dose. I forgive Jack and Shirley, but come on. I really think they were being selfish. If Jack’s first marriage had not created a child, maybe things would have been different. Evelyn knew there were problems, and she knew a divorce was coming. She could take care of things herself, but a little boy? Do I have the right to call my adolescent feelings towards David, love?

This brings us to what I had to offer David. The first thing would have been a stable family life he had never known. While