Jones made her Broadway debut as a replacement in the chorus of the original run of South Pacific. Coming under the wing of composer Richard Rodgers, she appeared in the ensemble of Me and Juliet on Broadway before being tapped to play both Laurey in the 1955 film of "Oklahoma!" and Julie Jordan in the 1956 film of "Carousel." She worked steadily in movies, TV and occasionally Broadway for decades afterward, though she is probably most widely known as the mother on the TV series "The Partridge Family."
As a happy birthday from Playbill, here she is as Marian the Librarian with Robert Preston singing "Till There Was You" in the 1962 film of The Music Man. The song starts at the 1:14 mark. Note the casual reference to Broadway operetta composer Rudolph Friml at the very end.
