David Cassidy was born on April 12, 1950 to Jack Cassidy, a very skilled actor, and actress Evelyn Ward. By the time he was five, his parents were divorced and Jack had married actress Shirley Jones, an actress who in 1955 had just made Oklahoma!. When David was about 10, his mother moved to California from New Jersey. A few years later, she got married to a director and, like Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, the marriage ended in divorce. David was thrown out of schools and hardly made it through one year of college. When he was 18, he went east to New York to perform in a play called "The Fig Leafs are Falling." He did some other spots on TV, but in 1970 he got the opportunity to play Keith Partridge on the TV show The Partridge Family. (He did not know until he got the part that his real life stepmother Shirley Jones was to play his mother Shirley.) The show ended in 1974, but not the close relationship he had with his "sister" Susan Dey, who played Laurie Partridge. In 1976, David's father Jack died when his apartment caught on fire. That year, David got married to Kay Lenz, but they later divorced. He got married again to a horse trainer in 1984, but it did not last either. In 1990, he married again, to Sue Shifrin. (He has a son from Sue named Beau Devon.) In 1994, he wrote a book about his years being Keith Partridge. He still performs updated songs from the Partridge Family years.


David's son, Beau, with Sue Shifrin was born in 1991. Had an operation at age 11 on his left optical nerve which was wrapped around a blood vessel, sometimes resulting in a "lazy" eye when he's over-tired, and had his gall bladder removed in 1972 after a concert in Wildwood, New Jersey. Older half-brother of Shaun Cassidy, Ryan Cassidy, and Patrick Cassidy. Has a daughter, Katie Cassidy, a.k.a. Katherine Evelyn Benedon, born 25 November 1986, from a previous relationship. Daughter Katie Cassidy is a singer who recently covered her father's song "I Think I Love You." She was featured in a VH1 five-part documentary series on the last forty years of teen music performers, Bubblegum Babylon (2002) (TV). 14 year-old fan Bernadette Whelan died of heart failure on 30 May 1974, from injuries sustained while attending a 26 May Cassidy show at London's White City Stadium. 650 fans were injured in a crush. Cassidy was so affected that he quit both touring and "The Partridge Family" (1970). At his peak, Cassidy was the world's highest paid live entertainer, and his official fan club was the largest in pop history - exceeding Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Made his Broadway debut in 1969 in the musical "The Fig Leaves Are Falling" at the same time his father Jack Cassidy and stepmother Shirley Jones opened on Broadway in "Maggie Flynn". Both shows were notorious flops, the former closing after four performances. Claimed in his 1994 autobiography that he turned down an offer in the early '70s to record an album of songs written by Lou Reed and produced by David Bowie (who wanted to experiment with his teenybopper image). His hit song "I Think I Love You" was featured and sung on the album "You and Me" by Declan Galbraith. Best known by the public for his role as Keith Partridge on "The Partridge Family" (1970).