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Smithton balks at Marty Ingels plans to honor wife Shirley Jones
Wednesday, March 31, 1999 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
Oh, what a beautiful morning it might have been today in Smithton, and what a surprise birthday party the town might have hosted for its most famous citizen.
Instead, there's trouble with a capital T in this Youghiogheny River town of about 400 people, most of whom apparently aren't aware of the flap between civic leaders and the man who dreamed of a hometown tribute to his wife, the Oscar-winning actress and singer Shirley Jones.
Marty Ingels got the idea last year, after Jones received the Harvey Award from the Jimmy Stewart Museum, located about 60 miles northeast of Smithton in the late actor's hometown of Indiana. Ingels commissioned the man who sculpted that town's Stewart statue to make a bust of his wife and contacted Smithton about finding a place in town to put it.
"I was trying to get them to give a little piece of city land for a Shirley Jones park," Ingels says over the phone from Beverly Hills, where the couple lives.
He envisioned it as a birthday surprise for Jones, who turns 65 today. She became a star at age 21 in the movie version of the musical "Oklahoma." She played Julie in the film version of "Carousel" and Marian the Librarian in the movie of "The Music Man." She won her Academy Award going against type by playing a prostitute opposite Burt Lancaster in the drama "Elmer Gantry." Nowadays, most people know her as Mrs. Partridge from the 1970s TV show "The Partridge Family." She also had a recurring role this season on ABC's hit comedy "The Drew Carey Show."
Ingels, who married Jones in 1977, planned to get her somehow to Smithton without letting her in on his plans, "and there would be a band there and the sculpture would be unveiled. What a moment!"
But it didn't happen, seemingly through a combination of miscommunication, misunderstanding, personality conflicts and a cultural gulf separating Ingels, a Brooklyn-born comic turned high-powered Hollywood talent agent, and Smithton, a town of four square blocks about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh in which the pace of life seems as easygoing as in Andy Griffith's fictional Mayberry.
"I am so [miffed] at Smithton," Ingels says. "I've been working with them for over a year to muster up some enthusiasm. I've gone from one council member to another.
"We went back and forth with insane things. They said I should put $10,000 in an escrow account, like I might run away," he says. Ingels, who won't use airplanes, contacted two of Jones' friends to have their relatives living in Smithton act as his eyes and ears. He didn't like what they saw and heard.
"One piece of land was no good. It was in an alley. The next thing was adjacent to a sewer system. Then they said, 'We don't have any money and we can't raise any.' "
He says no one from Smithton would return his calls. "It took me two weeks to get someone on the phone to tell them, 'I don't need your money.' I told my lawyer to do whatever it takes." But he has become so fed up that he is ready to scrap his plans for Smithton and find another location - possibly Westmoreland County Community College, more than 10 miles away in the town of Youngwood.
"The people in Smithton don't know I've given up," he says. "What started out to be a lovely, joyous thing had become Vietnam, Hiroshima - a nightmare for me."
But some people in Smithton say Marty Ingels is the bad dream.
"Everybody wants to work on the project as long as they don't have to work with Marty," says Fred Foster, president of Smithton council and proprietor of the local auto-repair shop.
Foster considers himself the peacemaker in all this, trying to get Ingels and the town back on track. But, he says, "I was left in a tough position. I had to contact the people on the other side of the bridges he'd burned.
"Marty's a unique individual. He's kind of an emotional person. He thought the people in Smithton didn't care about Shirley. We love her dearly. But our entire city budget is $35,000. I know the car Marty drives is worth more than that."
Smithton's financial concerns about the project include the issue of maintenance "in perpetuity" of a tribute to Jones. That's one reason civic leaders asked Ingels to set money aside.
He acknowledges that Smithton's size, or lack of it, posed difficulties in finding a proper site. Two parcels owned by the town were offered but one, Foster says, is too small and the other does not have a uniform shape.
"We were prepared to make a gift of them," Foster says. But the Lions Club donated another site, where the town's war memorial used to stand near the local ball field.
However, Foster says Ingels may have wanted more. "Mr. Ingels was hoping to do something on the level of what Indiana did for Jimmy Stewart," he says. "He had these big plans. Then he went on a cruise and I haven't heard from him since. The ball's in his court."
Debbie Lori, a Smithton councilwoman, doesn't like the way Ingels plays.
"He wanted us to do everything, and he would reimburse us later. That's not possible for a small town like Smithton," Lori says.
The main problem, she says, is that Ingels "was making enemies right and left. He would call me at work, call late at night and leave messages on my answering machine saying, 'Why aren't you getting back to me?' 'Wait until Shirley finds out you don't want to be part of this.' 'Why are you worried about money? You know I'll come through.' "
Smithton wanted a secure account set up at the local bank so they knew the money was in place before the project began. They're still waiting, Foster says.
"He wanted everything from a full bust of her to a gazebo to a fountain. That's not Smithton. That's too Hollywood. Shirley's a hometown girl. When she comes home, she doesn't want to see that. I wonder if she wants this?"
Townspeople say Jones comes back to visit Smithton once or twice a year, even though she has no immediate family in town anymore. The family home at Second and Center streets has been replaced by the office of dentist Ed Hogan, who happens to be Jones' cousin. She stays with her old friend Dot Axel and doesn't let other people know she's coming. "That's the way she wants it," Lori says.
But Smithton residents run into her at places like Jack's Supermarket, operated by Jack Fabean, who graduated from high school with Jones in 1952. He had no idea the town was talking about finding a way to honor her and, he says, "It never entered my mind."
Lori says Jones can walk down the street in Smithton and blend right in. Even Ingels says that he could drop her off in town and "she'd pick right up where she left off without missing a thing."
Dot Axel's sister, Betty Maxwell, who now lives in Monticello, Ga., and remains close to Jones, prefers that any tribute to her be located at the college rather than in Smithton. "It's not a place where everyone will see it. If the money's going to be spent, it should be someplace where people will see it and appreciate it."
But, she says, "don't condemn the people of Smithton. They've done what they can do. Marty has dropped the ball and jumped the gun.
"Smithton is not Beverly Hills. You don't talk to people in Smithton the way you would in Beverly Hills."
Another of Jones' girlhood friends, Charlotte Lynn of Rochester, N.Y., says, "The town should do something. She is an international star and an Academy Award-winner. At least, they should enable Marty to have a smoother path.
"I think they would be sincere in honoring a native, but my impression is that they don't want to be stuck with the expenses. They are interested and they want to do it, but they are concerned about money."
Meanwhile, Westmoreland County Community College has offered a site for the Jones sculpture.
"We had [Jones] here two years ago when we dedicated our new theater," located in a building called Science Hall, says college president Daniel Krezenski.
"If [Ingels] provided the bust, we'd make arrangements to locate it in the courtyard with a nice plaque, and we'll set up a reception for whoever wants to attend."
But he made it clear that Ingels will have to pay for the bust. "As a public, county college, we're not in a position to do that."
As yet, he says, nothing is definite. The next step involves a discussion between the college and the sculptor, Todd Andrews of Grass Valley, Calif., over the location and exact configuration of the tribute. Once he begins work on the piece, Andrews says, it will take at least four months to finish.
So maybe Ingels will have to wait until Jones' 66th birthday, and maybe he won't have that marching band. Maybe he won't even have a surprise, although he insists he can keep it a secret from Jones even after it becomes public knowledge.
"I wasn't putting it in Smithton because of the flow of tourists there. I was doing it because Shirley loves Smithton. And I would think Smithton would love her."
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