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. Son of actress Evelyn Ward and actor Jack Cassidy. 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. He appeared in the music video and sang in the choir on the song "Voices That Care." Half-brother of Shaun Cassidy, Ryan Cassidy, and Patrick Cassidy. Stepson of Shirley Jones. Has a daughter, Katie Cassidy, a.k.a. Katherine Evelyn Benedon, born 25 November 1986, from a previous relationship. Starred in the play "Time" in London with Laurence Olivier in 1987. It was Olivier's final stage performance (although he was only seen via a previously filmed segment). 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. In an attempt to break from his Keith Partridge persona, he posed nude for Annie Leibovitz for a photo in the 11 May 1972 "Rolling Stone" magazine. 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. Allergic to garlic. 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. Out of the approximate $500 million that The Partridge Family made from his image in merchandising, he was allegedly only paid around $15,000. Made his Broadway debut in 1969 in the musical "The Fig Leaves Are Falling" at the same time his father and stepmother, Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, opened on Broadway in their only play together, "Maggie Flynn". Both shows were notorious flops, the former closing in less than two weeks. Ranked #1 in TV Guide's list of "TV's 25 Greatest Teen Idols" (23 January 2005 issue). 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).