Suzanne Crough Movies

Originally made for television, the film concerns three divorces and the effect on the varied economic level present in each family. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

The fourth and final season of The Partridge Family finds the familiar players still in their familiar roles: Shirley Jones as Shirley Partridge, widowed mom and lead singer of the musical Partridge aggregation; David Cassidy (by now a full-fledged teen idol) as oldest son Keith Partridge; Susan Dey as oldest daughter Laurie Partridge; Danny Bonaduce as middle son Danny; Brian Foster as youngest son Chris; Suzanne Crough as youngest daughter Tracy; and Dave Madden as the Partridges' long-suffering agent, Reuben Kinkaid, who with each passing year has more and more trouble sustaining his self-proclaimed "I hate kids" policy. Season four heralds the arrival of three new semi-regulars. In the opening episode, Ricky Segall is introduced as four-year-old Ricky Stevens, a neighbor kid who occasionally performs with the Partridges. Later in the season, Reuben's neurotic nephew Alan Kinkaid (Alan Bursky) moves in with his uncle, almost immediately losing his shyness and self-loathing when, at the Partridges' urging, he launches a career as a standup comic. And finally, Jackie Coogan takes over from Ray Bolger in the role of Shirley Partridge's fun-loving dad. The season's best episodes include the one in which Reuben becomes convinced that he doesn't have long to live, the one where Laurie enjoys a shipboard romance with a self-proclaimed aristocrat during a working cruise to Acapulco, the episode in which Danny drops out of school, and the one where he contemplates converting to Judaism. Among the guest stars appearing during The Partridge Family's final season are Cheryl Ladd (then billed as Cheryl Jean Stopelmoor) as one of Keith's several objects of affection, Richard Mulligan (Soap) as an international diplomat and notorious ladies' man who develops a yen for Shirley, and, in the series' very last episode, Academy Award winner George Chakiris as Shirley's old flame "Cuddles" (aka Captain Charles Corwin). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season two of The Partridge Family is significant for two reasons: number one, the role of Chris Patridge, played during season one by Jeremy Gelbwaks, is taken over by Brian Foster, who would remain with the series until its cancellation two years later; number two, the series' theme song, "When We're Singin'," is given new lyrics and a new title, the now-familiar "Come On, Get Happy." This season's crop of episodes (which includes the classic installment in which Danny Partridge [Danny Bonaduce] worries about losing his singing voice due to tonsillitis) is graced by a number of prominent guest stars. Rob Reiner is seen as a motorcycle hippie named Snake, who falls in love with Laurie Partridge (Susan Dey). Howard Cosell shows up as himself (as if there was any other part he could play) in an episode filmed at Marineland of the Pacific. Dean Jagger appears as a grizzled old prospector who becomes a proxy Santa when the Partridges are stranded in a Nevada ghost town during Christmas, while in another episode with a desert setting, Harry Morgan plays a garage mechanic who gently persuades the family to perform a free concert for a local Native American tribe. Meredith Baxter-Birney is cast as a free-spirited millionairess who may or may not be able to provide the Partridges with lifetime financial security. Arte Johnson goes into his foreign-accent mode as a Russian émigré who offers his services as a jack of all trades to a "typical middle-class American family" (guess who?). And in the season finale, former Hogan's Heroes co-star John Banner, who died in 1972, delivers his final TV performance, as a retired vaudeville mind reader. And, of course, we must not forget the Partridges themselves, led by Shirley Patridge (Shirley Jones), with teen heartthrob Keith Partridge (David Cassidy) writing the songs, younger kids Laurie, Danny, Chris, and Tracy (Suzanne Crough) doubling as vocalists and instrumentalists, and grouchy, kid-hating agent Reuben Kinkaid (Dave Madden) ever seeking out newer and greater methods of enriching himself and his clients. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Investigating the strange noises coming from her garage, widow Shirley Partridge (Shirley Jones) discovers her five children -- Keith (David Cassidy), Laurie (Susan Dey), Danny (Danny Bonaduce), Chris (Jeremy Gelbwaks), and Tracy (Suzanne Crough) -- performing an impromptu rock concert, complete with instruments. Spontaneously joining her kids' makeshift band as lead vocalist, Shirley has a lot of fun, but never imagines that this little performance could lead anywhere. But thanks to the machinations of agent Reuben Kinkaid (Dave Madden) -- whose love of money supersedes his hatred of children -- the Patridges' recording of "I Think I Love You" is soon topping the charts, leading to the "official" formation of that celebrated traveling singing aggregation, the Partridge Family. Thus begins season one of the ABC sitcom bearing the name of that selfsame singing group. Piling into the family's dilapidated, brightly painted bus, the Partridges embark on a steady progression of adventures in a variety of locales, never failing to deliver at least one tune per episode.

Several guest stars grace The Partridge Family during its inaugural season, beginning with a young Farrah Fawcett in the second episode. In subsequent weeks, Ray Bolger and Rosemary DeCamp make their first joint appearance as Shirley's lively parents; Pat Harrington Jr. plays a gangster who puts the muscle on wheeler-dealer Danny Partridge when the ten-year-old starts giving stock tips to the gangster's fiancée; Morey Amsterdam is cast to type as a gag writer brought in to "juice up" the Partridge's act; Dick Clark shows up as himself in another episode, while in a story centering around Keith Partridge, Keith's prom date is played by Annette O'Toole. Other first-season highlights include the classic episode in which Danny is mistakenly drafted, and the one in which Keith arranges for his family to perform in front of a controversial feminist group, just so he can score points with his latest sweetheart. On two separate occasions, episodes of The Partridge Family did double duty as the pilot episodes for potential spin-off series. The first, starring no less than Richard Pryor and Louis Gossett Jr. as a pair of Detroit nightclub owners, failed to yield a series of its own; the second, in which teen idols David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman meet face to face, had better luck, resulting in the weekly half-hour sitcom Getting Together. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide