Shirley Jones (4 page)

After Lou and I took a stroll around the neighborhood one night, we ended up in front of my house, as usual. Only this time, I leaned against the old oak tree and Lou kissed me. As he did, I was overcome with a mixture of passion and revulsion.

Chivalrous and polite, Lou quickly said good-night and left me standing there in the moonlight. Confused, and torn between my burgeoning desire and my revulsion, feeling momentarily bereft, I stripped a piece of bark off the old oak tree and sequestered it inside my little memory box as a souvenir.

I was given that box at my third-birthday party and right away hid an artificial flower and a dog’s collar, both presents from my friends, inside the box. In time, more of my childish souvenirs joined those first two in my memory box, but this, the bark from the oak tree under which Lou had given me my first kiss, was the most evocative.

The night of my first kiss, I dallied outside, under the oak tree, long after he left. Partly because I felt as if I were floating high above myself, partly because I was afraid that if I went back inside the house straightaway, my mother would sense just by looking at me that Lou Malone had kissed me, and she would get mad at me. Even though Lou was a straight-A student, a football star, and went to a local high school, he was a Catholic, and I knew my mother wouldn’t be happy about that.

Fortunately, Red was dating Lou’s best friend, which seemed to make it all right when the four of us went to the movies together on one special Saturday night. After a few more Saturday-night double dates like that, my mother grudgingly accepted that Lou and I were an item for keeps.

By the time I was fifteen, Lou became a West Point cadet, and I only had eyes for him. I was his girlfriend, and everyone in Smithton knew it. It probably seemed to them that our marrying one day was a foregone conclusion.

Lou was at the top of his class, and in his plebe year he invited me to West Point for the weekend and presented me with his pin. He was in love with me, he said, and he wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives.

Although Lou’s declaration did not come as a surprise to me, I still went very quiet, didn’t commit to anything, and on the way home to Smithton gave my future a great deal of thought. I remember ultimately concluding with regret that although Lou was a wonderful man and would become a wonderful doctor when he graduated, being married to him was not the life for me. I wanted more.

I wanted to be in show business because I could sing, to go to college, to star on Broadway, and not to be a wife. Besides, I’d already met another man. . . .

Lou was stable and strong and conventional, but young as I was, I knew that those qualities did not set me on fire. I wanted something else. I wanted adventure. And adventure I would later get in my marriages, both to Jack Cassidy and to Marty Ingels. But even way back then, when I was still in my early teens, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted a challenge, an unconventional man. And, boy, did I find him!

Bill Boninni was not a Smithton boy. Far from it. He was Italian, with thick, black, curly hair; he wasn’t tall; he drove a red Cadillac convertible; and his wealthy father owned a restaurant in Pittsburgh. More important to me than any of that, he had a sense of humor just like my father had, and sadly, when all was said and done, Lou didn’t have one at all.

I was just sixteen years old on the day when Bill and I first met. He was nineteen years old. My friend Red and I were sunbathing on the beach by Conneaut Lake, where my aunt had a cabin, and Bill and a friend, Roy, came over and introduced themselves to us.

Soon the four of us were speeding along in Bill’s Caddy, bound for a nearby restaurant. He was so charming, so citified, so different from all the Smithton boys I knew, that when he asked if he could see me again, I agreed.

Only when he pulled up in front of my house in his red Cadillac convertible a couple of days later did word of my new gentleman caller spread all over Smithton. Fortunately, Lou was away at West Point and the news did not reach him at that early stage. But I knew that it was just a matter of time before it did.

Nonetheless, I was enthralled by Bill. When he kissed me for the first time, I suddenly understood what a kiss really felt like and melted. Besides, he was fun, outrageous, and would do anything to get attention. (A bit like Marty, really.)

One time, he even drove his Cadillac right into the lake. After I took him to my senior prom, that same night he actually asked me to help him clean up the bar in his father’s restaurant because he had promised his father that he would.

So Red and I and Bill and Roy all ended up cleaning Bill’s father’s bar with scrub buckets and mops, laughing, playing the jukebox, joking and falling all over the place, still dressed in our formal prom gowns and elegant tuxedos. That same evening, I tasted my first glass of wine, and Bill and I had a great time together. Every single moment I was with Bill, we had a great time together.

That great time didn’t include sex, though. Sure, we petted, but there wasn’t any question of my jumping into bed with Bill. I wasn’t that kind of girl. Casual sex just didn’t interest me. I was determined to wait until I fell in love and got married and then lost my virginity with my husband.

None of which didn’t mean that I wasn’t sexy. Quite the reverse. I was born highly sexed, even though I didn’t realize it at that time. I was that and more, but I would only discover the truth about my supercharged sexuality much later, with my first husband, Jack Cassidy.

But Bill and I had so much fun together. I was attracted to him physically, he was funny and sophisticated, and everything about him intrigued me. Red and I often double-dated with Bill and Roy, all in a whirl of theaters and fancy restaurants.

I fell for Bill quickly, but there was still the matter of Lou, and I felt guilty. So I sat down and wrote Lou a classic, heartfelt Dear John, telling him how much I respected him, and how I knew that he was going to become the most worthy citizen ever and win all kinds of awards, but that I thought that show business was going to be my life.

Then I took a deep breath and wrote more, confessing the rest of the truth:
I’ve met a young man that I’m dating now.

I had been honest in my letter to Lou and braced myself to face the consequences of my words. Sure enough, Lou was devastated. He wrote back,
I am so sorry you feel this way,
and much, much more, all in the same vein, which made me feel extremely guilty.

Worse still, a few days after Lou received my letter, his mother stormed over to our house and said, “How dare you do this to my son! He’s trying to make his way in the world and he’s doing so well, and you absolutely devastated him. How could you do it?”

I felt awful. From that moment on, whenever Lou’s mother saw me walking down the street (which was often, as we lived across from each other), she walked the other way. It was dreadful, but that’s how it was.

Through the years, though, I watched Lou’s professional progress from afar with great pride and affection. He served with honor in Vietnam, won medals, then married and later had six children, became a doctor, the assistant to the Surgeon General, and even operated on former President Eisenhower.

During the early eighties, I was booked to perform in Maryland, and Lou got wind of it and wrote to me, asking me to visit. So I called him when I arrived, and we met at a little outdoor restaurant and reminisced about old times together.

Although I’d jilted Lou all those years ago, he was still lovely to me and said how proud he was of me. In return, I told him how proud I was of him, of all the things he had achieved, and how heroic he had been in Vietnam.

Soon after, I found out that he had terminal cancer. I was utterly devastated. A while later, I was scheduled to be in Washington, so I called Lou’s wife and arranged to stop by and see him.

When I arrived at his house, he came out to meet me dressed in full military uniform and invited me in. His wife left us alone together. He introduced me to two of his children, then he brought down lots of scrapbooks and showed me pictures of his family.

We didn’t have long together, as I had a plane to catch, and I told Lou that I was so sorry about his condition and that I wished I could stay with him longer.

He walked me to my car but, in the middle of the driveway, stopped short and said, “Before you go, Shirley, I have something to tell you. I have never stopped loving you.”

The tears flowed for both of us.

I kissed him good-bye, then left.

He passed away two weeks later.

Afterward, I sent his wife back the plebe pin along with a note telling her that I felt it belonged to her.

She sent me a long note, along with a scrapbook he had kept about me, and all the letters I had written to him through the years.

I thought you should have this scrapbook, so that you will always have it as a memory of how he felt about you,
she wrote.

Back when I was dating Bill, my relationship with him had grown hotter (but it still didn’t include sex). Consumed by passion and a sense of adventure, one crazy day when I was sixteen years old, I suggested to him that we drive across the border to Maryland and get married there.

My suggestion wasn’t as romantic as it sounded, though. Red and Roy were with us, and my plan was that all four of us would take the plunge and get married over the border, together.

We drove across the state line and were just fifteen minutes away from arriving at the justice of the peace’s office when, fortunately for my future and theirs, Bill, Red, and Roy talked me out of my madcap idea, and we turned around and drove back to Smithton.

Soon after, Bill and I broke up. My suggestion, not his. Preceded, of course, by my Dear John. I was getting quite good at these letters and felt quite in control of my loves and my life. But pride, as they say, comes before a fall. For I was yet to meet my Waterloo, my first husband, the love of my life, Jack Cassidy.

Bill Boninni and I stayed in touch through the years, and when I was performing at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh in 1958, he turned up at the stage door after my first show. We talked about our past together, and Bill told me he was happily married, and I was glad. Three years later, he died.

In 1952, while Bill and I were still dating, my singing teacher, Ralph Lewando came up with a revolutionary idea. Or so it seemed to me at the time. He suggested that I enter the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, and sing an aria as my talent.

It wasn’t that he considered me to be “cheesecake” material. His suggestion was motivated by the pageant’s prize: a two-year scholarship to the drama school at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

So I followed Ralph’s advice, gritted my teeth, and entered the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, which was the preliminary contest leading to Miss America. And, despite my misgivings, my parents, who, as always, were solidly behind my career choices, encouraged me.

I never dreamed that I had any chance of winning the contest. I didn’t have a model-girl figure, or high cheekbones, so I didn’t think that I was a beauty-queen type at all. I was just an all-American girl, not a smoldering, sultry beauty like Marlene Dietrich. Apart from which, I was the youngest girl entering the contest that year.

I sang Arditi’s beautiful aria “Il Bacio” and, to my everlasting amazement, won the contest, the two-year scholarship to the Pittsburgh Playhouse drama school, plus $500 and a gold charm bracelet. After that, I made some personal appearances and then entered the Miss Pennsylvania competition and came in second.

Winning the Miss Pittsburgh pageant, then getting the opportunity to study at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, should have been a dream come true for me. But strangely enough, I had mixed feelings about spending two years studying singing and drama; sure, I wanted to be a Broadway star. But more than that, I still wanted to be a veterinarian.

In the summer of 1953, after my high school graduation, I was still torn between my Broadway ambitions and my dream of becoming a vet. At which point, my mother gave me the best advice she had ever offered me: go to junior college and then make up your mind which career path to follow.