Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Shirley Jones, as Aunt Eller, at rehearsal for Pittsburgh CLO's "Oklahoma!" at the Benedum. Click photo for larger image. 'Oklahoma!' Where: Pittsburgh CLO at the Benedum Center, Downtown. When: June 19 through July 1; Tues.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. 2 p.m.; June 21, 1 p.m. Tickets: $16.50-$46.50; 412-456-6666. Listen in Hear excerpts from Shirley Jones's conversation with the PG's Mackenzie Carpenter: When she sang as a child Growing up in Smithton in her grandmother's home, and her family's business, Jones Brewery When she was 18, she successfully auditioned for Rodgers and Hammerstein for the role of Laurey in the film "Oklahoma!" Playing Aunt Eller in the upcoming Pittsburgh CLO production of "Oklahoma!" Related coverage Shirley Jones dishes on Hollywood heyday

It's a mob scene in the Pittsburgh Hilton's Commonwealth Suite way up in the 23rd floor. On this recent mild June evening, women of all ages -- although mostly of a certain age -- are tripping over their ballgowns trying to get as close as possible to the night's guest of honor, a petite woman in diamonds and black sequins and a cap of short-cropped, snow-white hair.

They feverishly clutch her hand, nudge their slightly embarrassed-looking granddaughters forward to pose for a picture with her, or blurt out secrets probably not revealed to anyone since the Kennedy administration: "I loved you in 'The Music Man.' " "My mother just loved you." "When I was a little girl, I sat next to you once at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and I couldn't stop touching you. My mother told me to leave you alone. "

There's something about Shirley Jones that brings out the 9-year-old girl in every woman who remembers seeing her, impossibly blond and pert and pretty, sing her heart out in those giant Technicolor musicals of the 1950s and 1960s. And despite the chaos on this particular night -- the Pittsburgh CLO's annual Pink Frolic Ball fund-raiser -- Jones nonetheless looks completely delighted about the fuss.

She is, after all, back home in Western Pennsylvania, where she grew up. This will be a longer-than-usual visit to Pittsburgh -- she is coming full circle, opening with the CLO June 19 in the musical that launched her Hollywood career at the age of 21: "Oklahoma!" In that 1955 screen version, she played Laurey, the young ingenue. Now, at 73, she'll be playing, for the first time, Laurey's Aunt Eller.

Plus, on this particular night she is receiving the CLO's Richard Rodgers Award -- whose previous recipients include Mary Martin, Julie Andrews and Stephen Sondheim -- recognizing her contributions to musical theater. Mary Rodgers Guettel, Rodgers' daughter and an accomplished author and composer herself, has flown in from New York for the occasion.

Still, when Jones' Rodgers award is mentioned the next day in USA Today and Pravda, the wire story's lead describes her as "the matriarch of TV's 'The Partridge Family.' "

When informed a few days later that that particular '70s show will not be taking up much space in an article about her career, Jones' reaction is swift and sure.

"Thank God," she says, and then lets out a big smoky guffaw of a laugh.

'The gift'

Jones is curled up in a large easy chair in a Downtown apartment where she'll be staying for the show's run, looking less the screen legend and more like someone training for a marathon -- barefoot, wearing a black track suit with a hot pink stripe down each side and matching pink visor partially obscuring her wide blue eyes.

Shirley Jones as Laurey in "Oklahoma!" in 1955.

"Oklahoma!" rehearsals are to begin in just a few days, and Ms. Jones is already busy working out, not just her body but her voice -- THE voice, "the gift" she's had all her life, a gift she accepted as naturally as the air she breathed, the gift that made a summer camp counselor call her mother up when she was 12 and say, "I don't know if you're aware that your daughter has something extraordinary, and you should do something about it."

"I used to be able to get up at 3 in the morning and sing a high C," Ms. Jones says, with a sigh. "Not anymore. I have to vocalize every day now if I'm going to be in a show."

That voice took her places she'd never dreamed of going. In 1952, during a New York stopover on her way to college, Jones called her former voice teacher, working as a rehearsal pianist for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who told her they were holding replacement tryouts for "South Pacific" and that she should come to one of the open auditions.

Never mind that she couldn't read music. It was "the gift" again. A perfect ear -- she could hear a song once and sing it by heart. And yes, she knew "Oklahoma's" songs, she just didn't know the words, the 18-year-old brightly told the writer of those words, Oscar Hammerstein II.

She doesn't remember much about that audition -- "I was lucky to get through the music and lyrics" -- although she ended up singing for both men in front of a full symphony orchestra. They promptly signed her -- the only person ever under personal contract to Rodgers and Hammerstein -- put her in the chorus, then gave her the second lead in the road show of "Me and Juliet," until the call came: Would she fly to Hollywood to test with Gordon MacRae and director Fred Zinnemann for the role of Laurey in the film version of "Oklahoma!"?

It must have taken one mightily self-possessed young woman to walk onto that stage set to screen test with her idol, the dashing MacRae, whom she had faithfully listened to on "Teen Timers Club" every Saturday on the radio just a few years earlier.

Actually, it wasn't that terrifying.

"I thought this is how everyone went into show business," Jones says with a trace of deadpan humor. "You tried out an audition first, and they put you in the chorus to get you some seasoning before you went into films."

There was something else, too, that helped her keep her wits about her: the fact that fame wasn't necessarily something she dreamed about or obsessed over all her life.

Here to Hollywood

Many people go into show business to fill a hole in their psyche, so the psychologists say, but Ms. Jones' childhood in Smithton, was a happy one. An only child, she grew up in a 14-room house on the corner of Smithton and Second streets, surrounded by cousins and doted on by her parents, Marjorie and Paul Jones, and her beloved grandmother, Louise Dorman Jones, the mother of eight children herself, most of whom went on to work in the Jones Brewery.

The pretty young blonde grew up grounded and sensible, commuting to Pittsburgh for voice lessons, although with no desire to sing opera, even though she was a coloratura soprano.

Her family supported her. "There was no dysfunction, no major disagreements," she said. "My husband, who comes from a large dysfunctional family in Brooklyn, can't get over that."

She's been married to Marty Ingels, her second husband, for 30 years. They wrote a book together, "Shirley and Marty: An Unlikely Romance" -- he's a neurotic Jewish comedian from Brooklyn, she's a corn-fed Methodist from a town of 800 people near Pittsburgh.

They've been periodically separated, but the union seems solid again. "He makes me laugh," she said, noting that she always distrusted handsome men. "I was always attracted to men who were funny."

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Shirley Jones rehearses with Matt Bogart, who plays Curly in Pittsburgh CLO's "Oklahoma!" Click photo for larger image.

Her first husband, singer Jack Cassidy, was both. She met him when they were both cast as the leads in a State Department "good will" production of "Oklahoma!" that ran in Paris after she starred in the film. Rod Steiger, who played Jud on screen, was in that production, too, "but Rouben Mamoulian [the director] fired him because Rod was trying out all this stuff he'd learned at the Actors Studio. He'd play a scene chewing on an apple, then toss it away, which made Rouben hit the ceiling. I'll never forget it, 'You're fired!' he screamed at Rod. And he'd been in the film!"

Jones credits her education as an actress to Zinnemann, who, on the set of "Oklahoma!," "treated me like an actress. He was incredible. He'd talk to me about the character, and her feelings."

Rodgers and Hammerstein were also on the set every day in "Oklahoma!" But by the time it came to film "Carousel," they had wearied of Hollywood and left the film's production up to 20th Century Fox and Henry King, a veteran but pedestrian director. Critics loved the music but panned its stodgy direction.

"'Carousel' was not well directed," Ms. Jones says. "It needed much more than it got, but it's still my favorite,"

Neither film made much money, and by 1956, Hollywood had stopped making musicals. Unable to get film parts, she worked in television dramas with some good directors, which led to Burt Lancaster choosing her to play against type in "Elmer Gantry," as vengeful prostitute Lulu Bains. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the role, and two years later, her movie musical career flamed brightly one last time, when she played Marian the Librarian in "The Music Man," with Robert Preston.

Jones' film career would peter out after 1965, although she'd work steadily in television -- and, yes, "The Partridge Family" made her a household name with a whole new generation who had never heard of Rodgers or Hammerstein.

Circle complete

Today, Jones is proud that she's appeared in every one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's productions, either on stage or on film. In 2004, she appeared with her son, Patrick Cassidy, on Broadway in "42nd Street" which gave her the confidence to say yes, when the CLO called a month or so ago suggesting she consider Aunt Eller.

Suddenly, curled up in the chair, under the pink visor, there's a glimpse of that preternaturally self-possessed 19-year-old girl from Smithton with that voice -- the "gift" -- telling Richard Rodgers she'd be happy to wait until his partner came to hear her sing, and what did he say his name was again?

"The gift" has dimmed perhaps, but not the gumption.

"The thing I was happy about, to be honest with you, was that I didn't have to sing a lot of songs. ... I wasn't sure I could handle a part like Aunt Eller, you know, in a two-week daily performance. But now I think I can do it. I think I really can."