David Bruce Cassidy (April 12, 1950 – November 21, 2017) was an American actor, singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was best known for his role as Keith Partridge, the son of Shirley Partridge (played by his stepmother, Shirley Jones), in the 1970s musical-sitcom The Partridge Family. This role catapulted Cassidy to teen idol status as a superstar pop singer of the 1970s. 　　Cassidy was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City, in 1950, the son of singer and actor Jack Cassidy and actress Evelyn Ward. His father was of half-Irish and half-German ancestry, and his mother was of mostly Colonial American descent, along with smaller amounts of Irish and Swiss.Some of his mother's ancestors were among the founders of Newark, New Jersey. 　　As his parents were frequently touring on the road, he spent his early years being raised by his maternal grandparents in a middle-class neighborhood in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1956, he found out from neighbors' children that his parents had been divorced for over two years and had not told him. David's parents had decided because he was at such a young age, it would be better for his emotional stability to not discuss it at that time. They were gone often with theater productions and home life remained the same. 　　In 1956, his father married singer and actress, Shirley Jones, and three half-brothers were born: Shaun (1958), Patrick (1962) and Ryan (1966). In 1968, after completing one final session of summer school to obtain credits necessary to get a high school diploma, David moved into the rental home of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones in Irvington, New York, where his half-brothers also resided.David remained there seeking fame as an actor/musician while simultaneously working half-days in the mailroom of a textile firm.He moved out when his career began to flourish. 　　Cassidy's father Jack is credited with setting his son up with his first manager. After signing with Universal Studios in 1969, Jack introduced him to former table tennis champion and close friend Ruth Aarons, who later found her niche as a talent manager, given her theater background. Aarons had represented Jack and Shirley Jones for several years prior, and would later represent Cassidy's half-brother Shaun. Aarons became an authority figure and close friend to Cassidy, and would prove to be the fighting force behind his on-screen success. After making small wages from Screen Gems for his work on The Partridge Family during season one, Aarons discovered a loophole in his contract and renegotiated it with far superior terms, and a four-year duration, a rare stipulation at the time. 　　On January 2, 1969, Cassidy made his professional debut in the Broadway musical The Fig Leaves Are Falling. It closed after four performances but a casting director saw the show and asked Cassidy to make a screen test. In 1969, he moved to Los Angeles. 　　After signing with Universal Studios in 1969, Cassidy was featured in episodes of the TV series Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Adam-12 and Bonanza. In 1970, he took the part of Keith Partridge, son of Shirley Partridge, who was played by Cassidy's real stepmother and series' lead, Shirley Jones. The Partridge Family series creator Bernard Slade and producers Paul Junger Witt and Robert "Bob" Claver did not care whether Cassidy could sing, knowing only that his androgynous good looks would guarantee success. But shortly after production began, Cassidy convinced music producer Wes Farrell that he was good enough and he was promoted to lead singer for the show's recordings. Once "I Think I Love You" became a hit, Cassidy began work on solo albums as well. Within the first year he had produced his own single, "Cherish" (from the album of the same title), which reached No. 9 in the US, No. 2 in the UK and No.1 in Australia and New Zealand. He began tours that featured Partridge tunes and his own hits. Though he strove to become a respected rock musician along the lines of Mick Jagger or Alice Cooper, his channel to stardom launched him into the ranks of teen idol, a brand he loathed until much later in life when he managed to come to terms with his bubblegum pop beginnings. 　　Ten albums by The Partridge Family and five solo albums were produced during the show with most selling more than a million copies each. Internationally, Cassidy's solo career eclipsed the already phenomenal success of The Partridge Family. He became an instant drawcard with spectacular sellout concert successes in major arenas around the world. These concerts produced mass hysteria resulting in the media coining the term "Cassidymania". By way of example, he played to two sellout crowds of 56,000 each at the Houston Astrodome in Texas over one weekend in 1972. His concert in New York's Madison Square Garden sold out in one day and resulted in riots after the show. His concert tours of the UK sold out and included six sellout concerts at Wembley Stadium over one weekend in 1973. In Australia in 1974, the mass hysteria was such that there were calls to have him deported from the country, especially after the madness at his 33,000 audience concert at Melbourne Cricket Ground. 　　A turning point in his live concerts (while still filming The Partridge Family) was a gate stampede which killed a teenage girl. At a show in London's White City Stadium on May 26, 1974, 650 were injured in a crush at the front of the stage. Thirty were taken to the hospital, and one, 14-year-old Bernadette Whelan, died on May 30 from injuries.The show was the penultimate date on a world tour. A deeply affected Cassidy faced the press, trying to make sense of what had happened. Out of respect for the family and to avoid turning the girl's funeral into a media circus, Cassidy did not attend the service, although he spoke to Whelan's parents and sent flowers. Cassidy stated at the time that this would haunt him until the day he died. 　　Cassidy's 1994 autobiography, C'mon Get Happy: Fear And Loathing On The Partridge Family Bus, provides an account of most aspects of his fame, including contracts, money and his fanatical worldwide fan following. 　　“I'm exploited by people who put me on the back of cereal boxes. I asked my housekeeper to go and buy a certain kind of cereal and when she came home, there was a huge picture of me on the back. I can't even eat breakfast without seeing my face.”--New Musical Express, October 1972. 　　By this point, Cassidy had decided to quit both touring and acting in The Partridge Family, concentrating instead on recording and song-writing. International success continued, mostly in Great Britain, Germany and Japan, when he released three well-received solo albums on RCA in 1975 and 1976. Cassidy became the first recording artist to have a hit with "I Write the Songs", a Top 20 record in Great Britain before the song became Barry Manilow's signature tune. Cassidy's recording was produced by the song's author-composer, Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys. 　　In 1978, Cassidy starred in an episode of Police Story titled "A Chance To Live," for which he received an Emmy nomination. NBC created a show based on it, called David Cassidy: Man Under Cover, but it was canceled after one season. (A decade later, the successful Fox series 21 Jump Street used the same plot, with different youthful-looking police officers infiltrating a high school.) 　　In 1985, music success continued with the Arista release of the single "The Last Kiss" (#6 in the UK), with backing vocals by George Michael, which was included on the album Romance. These went gold in Europe and Australia and Cassidy supported them with a sellout tour of the UK, which resulted in the Greatest Hits Live compilation of 1986. Michael cited Cassidy as a major career influence and interviewed Cassidy for David Litchfield's prestigious Ritz Newspaper. 　　Cassidy returned to the American Top 40 with his 1990 single "Lyin' To Myself," released on Enigma Records. In 1998, he had an AC hit with "No Bridge I Wouldn't Cross" from his album Old Trick, New Dog. His 2001 album Then And Now went platinum internationally and returned Cassidy to the Top 5 of the UK album charts for the first time since 1974. 　　Cassidy has performed in musical theatre. In 1981, he toured in a revival of a pre-Broadway production of Little Johnny Jones, a show originally produced in 1904 with music, lyrics, and book by George M. Cohan. (The show is excerpted in the biographic film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), when James Cagney sings "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy".) However, Cassidy received negative reviews, and he had been replaced by another former teen idol, Donny Osmond,by the time the show reached Broadway.Cassidy, in turn, was himself a replacement for the lead in the original 1982 Broadway production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.He appeared in London's West End production of Time and returned to Broadway in Blood Brothers alongside Petula Clark and his half-brother, Shaun Cassidy. In concert performances in 1990, Cassidy hired his recalcitrant TV brother Danny Bonaduce as his warm-up act. In 1995, he hosted the VH1 show 8-Track Flashback, which ran until 1998. In 1996, he replaced Michael Crawford in the Las Vegas show EFX, re-writing it into one of the Strip's favorite shows – although Cassidy was forced to resign after he injured his foot during a performance. He also created The Rat Pack is Back, in which he made guest appearances as Bobby Darin, which ran successfully. In 2000, he wrote and appeared in the Las Vegas show At the Copa with Sheena Easton, as both the young and old versions of the lead character, Johnny Flamingo. In 2005, Cassidy played the manager of Aaron Carter's character in the film Popstar. In 2006, as well as performing with Peter Furniss and Thomas Bowles, he made a guest appearance for BBC Children in Need performing live, then assisting Terry Wogan collecting donations from the studio audience. 　　He co-starred alongside his brother Patrick in a 2009 ABC Family short-lived comedy series titled Ruby & The Rockits, a show created by his half-brother Shaun. 　　Cassidy was one of the contestants on Celebrity Apprentice in 2011,in which his daughter Katie Cassidy made a brief appearance at her father's request. He was the first to be fired. In the years since then, Cassidy has maintained a regular tour schedule with concert appearances across the USA and the UK. 　　In 1989, he co-wrote the song "Prayin' 4 a Miracle" with John Wetton and Sue Shifrin. Wetton released the song on his band Asia's album Then & Now the year after. 　　Cassidy has written a memoir that was published in the UK in March 2007.