“Listen, David. Don’t start.”
I can hear Ruth Aarons’ voice now, silencing me when I tried to say I wasn’t too interested in a proposed situation comedy being developed over at Screen Gems, the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, that she wanted me to audition for. It was something about a widow and her five kids who had a rock band. It sounded contrived. She said, “By next year you’ll be asking me if I think two swimming pools in the backyard is a little much.”
I’d known Ruth since I was a young boy. She was really part of my family. A complex person, she was bright, well-read, witty, and extremely loyal to people. She also impressed me as lonely and vulnerable. I never wanted to disappoint her. I really loved this woman. And wanted her to be proud of me.
At age nineteen I did not see that Ruth could also be manipulative. Everyone Ruth represented became very successful—they won Oscar and Tony awards; they made lots of money. Many other aspiring young actors in Hollywood would have died to have someone as savvy as Ruth Aarons take an interest in them. And I certainly respected her judgment. Still, I could not quite understand why she seemed to be pushing me toward this fluffy-sounding sitcom. My instincts told me I should be doing more sophisticated work; my television appearances to date had all been on dramatic shows. No comedy. No music. I was building up a reputation with casting directors as a serious young actor. Ruth wanted me to try out for this show. She never mentioned to me who else might be trying out for a role in it.
I read for the part a couple of times. I went into Screen Gems and met Renee Valente, who headed casting; Paul Witt, one of the show’s producers, who was just beginning his career; and Bernard Slade, the writer of the pilot, who’d created a lot of the studio’s TV half hours, like The Flying Nun and Love on a Rooftop. He later would write the hit Broadway plays Same Time, Next Year and Tribute. They felt this could become a popular, family-oriented show. They said it was about a rock group; Screen Gems, they noted, had had considerable success in this field with the Monkees. When they mentioned rock, I started telling them about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, where my musical tastes were, as if that really mattered to them.
But the scenes they had me read seemed awfully thin. I had lines like: “Gee, Mom …” and “Can I borrow the keys to the bus?” I said, “This really doesn’t seem like any kind of a part for me.” Their position was: “Well, you’re not a big star; what do you want?” I said, “I want to be an actor, eventually in the movies. I want to be deep and real and serious. I’ve already done some weighty roles on TV. On Bonanza I played a killer.”
I told Ruth I wasn’t interested in the show. I knew from my father that turning down the wrong roles is very important for an actor’s career. My father had turned down plenty of roles he didn’t feel were quite right, and rarely ever regretted his decisions. In fact, he’d just turned down a role that was actually written with him in mind—a vain, shallow, buffoon-like newsman on a proposed sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore. Ruth said that as a newcomer in Hollywood, I was not in a position to turn down any potential opportunities for work. And there was that dark cloud hanging over my head called “the rent, boy!”
She convinced me to do a screen test on the following Monday morning. And who was the first person I saw there? Shirley Jones. Genuinely puzzled, I looked at her and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m playing your mother!” she told me. And I nearly fell over. She explained that she’d been talking to them about this role—the lead in the proposed sitcom—for weeks. And the night before, she’d been told that the producers had in fact chosen her for it. Ruth Aarons, who was, of course, Shirley’s manager as well as mine, had told Shirley that I was auditioning for the role of Shirley’s son, but hadn’t told me anything at all about Shirley’s involvement. I was happy to find Shirley there; I really liked her and always respected her acting ability.
That same morning I also met Susan Dey, who would be playing my sister Laurie on the show. She was fifteen then, a teenage model who’d appeared in Seventeen magazine. Her skin was almost translucent. Very beautiful. Very skinny. Very naive. And seemed, somehow, very alive. She’d never been to California before. She lived in a little town in upstate New York, Mount Kisco. I remember the first time we did a scene: when they said they were going to do a close-up, she came over to me and said (I later reminded her about this many times, which irked her to no end), “What’s a close-up?”
Because we were close in age—she was almost sixteen and I was nineteen—we instantly got along. There was definitely a physical attraction, too. But because of her sweetness and her naivete and the fact that she was fifteen, I just couldn’t take advantage of her. Well, to be honest, she also had her agent with her, to chaperon her. We went on a couple of dinner dates, but it was always the three of us—her agent watching me like a hawk. Susan and I became friends. I didn’t really date girls who were that young, anyway; I dated girls ranging in age from about nineteen to twenty-six.
Susan and I hung out a lot, though. Susan confided in me about her life, I confided in her about mine. We came to know each other really well. I met her family. I came to find out much later she had a pretty distressing background. She always had depth, a kind of soul, which is why I think I always liked Susan. There was a song that was out by the Buckinghams in ’66 that I really felt was cool, with a line, “Susan, looks like I’m losin’. I’m losin’ my mind.” So every time I would call her, for many years, I’d start with singing that line.
We filmed The Partridge Family pilot in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I remember they showed us the outfits they had designed for us—these velvet suits and shit. And I looked at this velvet and thought, I wouldn’t fucking wear this. I mean, I was a guy who lived like a hippie in Laurel Canyon. But I put on these supposedly hip costumes like they asked me to; I told myself the pilot would probably never lead to anything, anyway. In Hollywood, you know, they shoot countless pilots that never actually become TV series.
The pilot was called “The Family Business.” In it, Shirley Jones, playing a widow, hears a racket in the garage one day. It’s her five wholesome but high-spirited kids, who are forming a band. The kids decide that Mom’s soprano voice is just what they need, and they decide to add her to their band. (The story was inspired by the Cowsills, a family group consisting of a mother and her six children, which in 1967 and ’68 recorded such hits as “Indian Lake,” “Poor Baby,” and “The Rain, the Park, and Other Things.”) The family then tape-records a number. The smart-alecky middle son (played by Danny Bonaduce) forces a hapless agent (Dave Madden) to listen to their music by shoving a tape recorder under a bathroom stall. The agent then books the family into Las Vegas. They drive there in a bus that they’ve painted in psychedelic colors, don their stunning velvet suits, and—after uplifting words from Mom to get them over their stage fright—proceed to wow the crowd. Everyone loves their music. They’re a hit. The proposed series was expected to track the family’s adventures in show business, as well as the kids’ antics offstage. For me, the biggest thrill of making the pilot was seeing Las Vegas for the first time in my life, although I was bummed out that they wouldn’t let me in the casinos; at nineteen I was too young.
Even if the series ever became a reality, I didn’t see how it could do much for me. After all, I wasn’t the star of it—Shirley had top billing; I was just one of the kids. And in scenes with six of us around the dinner table, I figured we’d each get a line or two. After the various dramatic guest shots I’d done, the part seemed like a real comedown. I mean, how much could an actor do with a line like, “Hi, Mom, I’m home from school”? Or “Please pass the milk”? But we soon got word that ABC had decided to buy the show. It would air Friday nights at 8:30. Screen Gems didn’t offer me a great deal of money for doing it—just $600 a week—but I accepted that; I heard they didn’t pay anyone much money. (Three years earlier they had hired the Monkees for $400 a week apiece.) I figured I’d have steady work for a while. Even if the series just lasted thirteen weeks, it would mean I’d be able to hold on to the house Sam and I had.
If the Partridge Family show clicked, I’d be contractually obligated to do it for seven years—but I’d had too many disappointments to dare assume the show was going to click. This seven-year contract also had something in there about their owning the rights to my name, voice, likeness, and blah-blah-blah. I couldn’t really imagine why they’d want rights to my name, voice, likeness, and all that. I was just some struggling unknown actor.
In the summer of 1970, after ABC had bought the pilot, things felt really fine. I had a job. I was making a good living. I had a nice house—particularly for someone who was barely twenty years old. My career was just about to break. It was kind of all set up for me. ABC was beginning to crank up the publicity machine. Although I hadn’t yet filtered into the mainstream of America, my face was starting to appear in teen magazines.
Sam Hyman and Steve Ross, my old friend from garage-band days, planned a day for us all to hang out and get back to nature, up at Tuna Canyon. Steve arrived at the house around 5 A.M. with a couple of girls he knew. They brought peyote buttons and we all took this peyote, drinking it in blended shakes that tasted awful, really nauseating. In fact, I threw up in Venice, before we got to Tuna Canyon. We drove out there in my 1968 Mustang. At the time there was nothing around the canyon—maybe four homes. The area was a wilderness. We parked on Tuna Canyon Road and hiked up into the mountains. We took off our clothes, stripped down to underwear. Actually, I was in a little loincloth I’d made specifically for the occasion. I kept referring to myself as “Soaring Eagle”—saying things like, “Soaring Eagle see such-and-such” and “Soaring Eagle want to fly.” Sam I called “Running Deer.” Steve was “Bircher Boots”—because he was wearing these black military boots that made me think of the John Birch Society. I don’t really remember what we called the girls; I addressed one of them as “you little forest creature.” And she’d say things like, if her boyfriend ever found out she was spending the day with us guys, he’d kill us. Nice guy. The peyote created a wonderful natural high; it didn’t feel chemical, like speed or acid. It was just an inspiring, blissful high.
We were out there for six hours, from about 8 A.M. to 2 P.M. My nervous system was tumbling. It felt really good. It was a magnificent day, blue sky, seventy-five degrees, perfect. We’d brought a joint with us, too—some really strong pot—and we enjoyed that. The girls were with us, but there wasn’t any sex going on; this wasn’t an orgy. We were just all hanging together. It was completely being in tune with nature, feeling like a wild animal. We barely even noticed it when the girls left, saying they had to go find some water; their throats were parched.
In the midst of this perfect afternoon, Sam, Steve, and I are sunning ourselves, with our clothes lying on some rocks, and suddenly we hear this whirring, and this really loud, amplified voice from above us: “Dave, Sam, and Steve. Go back to the road. We are the sheriffs.” We look up and there’s a whirlybird. Then we started running, to escape—but how do you escape a helicopter? We’re stoned. We’re confused. Our mouths feel like camel dung. We haven’t had any water in God knows how many hours. We can’t find the girls; all we know is, they’d wandered off somewhere. One minute, we’re in paradise. The next, it’s like Apocalypse Now. The cops in those days were always hassling younger people. And this was to be the quintessential hassle.
We got our clothes together. But we’re hallucinating. “Can you handle it?” Sam asks me. His eyes are saucers.
“I can handle it,” I say, but I can hardly speak.
Our hearts are pounding. We hike back to the road, maybe a mile and a half. And we’re hearing, “This is One Adam-12. I have three Caucasian males …” Cops are tearing my car apart. The girls had wandered back to it. Our car was illegally parked, we’ve been on private property, and the cops have already questioned the girls. The girls look scared; they’re worried that we’ve blown it by giving our names.
Those cops were classic pigs—butch haircuts, military swagger. And to them, we were just some freaky hippie scum—the antithesis of everything they stood for. In those days there was a real line drawn. They pulled everything out of my car—the seats, the floor mats, the spare tire, my guitar. They spent hours looking for some sign of drugs, saying, “We know you’ve been smoking pot. We can see it in your eyes.” I was shaking. All I could think of was my manager. How would I be able to explain being busted for drugs to Ruth Aarons? I was thinking that if I got busted, my whole career would fall apart. It really scared the shit out of me because I realized there was a morals clause in my contract. I could easily lose my job. Screen Gems would hire someone else to play Keith Partridge in a second. This was a lot more serious fucking-up than getting kicked out of some high school.
But the cops found no drugs in the car—nothing stronger than my bottles of aspirin and vitamins. They let us go with just a ticket. Just a mind-fuck. I was still shaking. I was in no shape to drive home. And too wired to sleep for almost two days, once I got there.