David Cassidy's Sense of Humor

I've always wanted to write an entry about it. It's not easy and rather risky thing to do, writing about the sense of humor of someone so complex and sophisticated like DC was. And of course I've never met him personally,  English is not my first language, and last but not least a sense of humor is an individual matter, and not everyone is entertained by the same thing.

But I'm going to try. This is a very broad topic. Today part 1. I will use 'humor' as it it's preferred in American English.

We all agree that David Cassidy had a great, wicked sense of humor, or as I prefer to call it - self-enchancing humor, it helped him to cope with stress and difficult situations. Shaun Cassidy said once about DC '..he has our father's great humor and great charm and great charisma when he wants to.'

Exactly. When he wanted to. DC used humor in a very conscious way. As his defensive shield behind which he hid, but also as a tool of his acting workshop (if I can put it this way).

Recently Jane has published interesting interwiew with David Cassidy, from 1973. The title, 'The Growing Pains Of An Aging Teen-Age Idol'. The author of the article stated that David was prematurely cynical. DC was asked about Keith Partridge, and he said, 'In the show I'm so unreal, such a dummy. I play a chauvinist pig - a guy who's totally hung up on feeding his own ego. He's always trying to do some girl or to command a situation. So I made him funny ; I'd do comical things and make nutty expressions. Pretty soon they began writing me that way."

This is the whole article

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/News1973Dec9_ThePittsburghPress.pdf

And Davd Cassidy as Keith Partridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1W_ap6VCHk&t=1s

Not everybody understood his sense of humor. We can read about it in many articles from the 70s.  Of course there were also a lot of people who liked him very much and appreciated his witty remarks, who even pitied him. 

In October 1973, Nick Kent wrote for New Musical Express an article called 'Real Cool Cassidy'.  He described a press conference in London, and how journalists wanted David to reveal some revelations about his private life, wanted to know what he thought about the bad press he had in the US after RS article, or they just wanted him to say something unpleasant about his fans. This is a fragment:

"Another typical Fleet Street question, 'David, your publicity always makes you out to be a perfect character. Do you have any vices you'd like to tell us about?' 'Well, I do bite my nails." 
And another fragment, Nick Kent writes, "It was also around this point that I realised that I was captive in a room full of total creeps and I suddenly felt extremely sorry for Cassidy. Here was what seemed, on the surface anyway, to be a nice enough guy surrounded by hordes of absolute parasites desperately trying to suck a bit of scandal and sensation out of him..'

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/Mag1973Oct13NewMusicalExpress.html

I want to finish this first part with something not so serious. David Cassidy loved a good joke, was very witty and funny man, and after some years he embraced his past and loved laughing at himself and..Keith.

The video of this program is also on YT, but we have a slightly better copy on The David Cassidy Official Website.

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/TvFilmPages/1999July24RandomPlay.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robyn Millan

Love Is All That I Ever Needed. A David Cassidy Biography. Chapter 1

'He Was So Pretty You Couldn't Look Away..'