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SHIRLEY AND MARTY: An Unlikely Love Story by Shirley & Marry Ingels with Mickey Herskowitz Jones

SHIRLEY AND MARTY: An Unlikely Love Story

By

Pub Date: Sept. 7th, 1990
Publisher: Morrow

An American sweetheart from Hollywood and former Miss Pittsburgh marries a failing Jewish comic stricken with agoraphobia. Shirley Jones, singing star of Oklahoma! and Carousel and Oscar-winner for Elmer Gantry, was the mother of three sons when her husband, alcoholic actor Jack Cassidy (John Barrymore in W. C. Fields and Me), left her in the middle 70's. Jack had a new girl--and he also had problems facing up to Shirley's success and teen-age son David's big earnings as a rock idol. Stand-up comic Marry Ingels, on the steep downslide after temporary TV success on the sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster and then suffering a nervous breakdown on-camera on The Tonight Show, began pursuing her, slyly moved into her apartment shirt by shirt, and captured her. However, winning over David and the two sons still at home took longer. A year later, Jack lost his gift, dated Shirley three times, with Marty's permisssion, and asked her to take him back. But Jack had periods when he thought himself Christ and talked with God--and then he died in a fire in his penthouse apartment. Then came the day when Shirley could not explain Marty's presence in her apartment to a plumber; Marty said it was time to marry--and they did. But Marry was crippled by anxieties springing from agoraphobia, would bolt from parties, and could not pursue his career. His symptoms drove Shirley to tears, but the phobia turned out to be based on a chemically correctable blood imbalance. Then Marry discovered a new skill and set himself up as a talent broker who connected the right celebrities with the right advertisers for TV spots, and thus was born Ingels, Inc. When Marty--all comedic ambitions gone--became a millionaire, even young David was appreciative. Wacky moments as Marry reels under his illness--and never a dull page.