Hello, "Howdy" I should say...

Welcome to my journal! I'll just start... My name as you should know is Shirley Mae Jones. I was born in Smithton, Pennsylvania on March 31, 1934. I always say that right from the second I was born, I was born with a singing talent. I was the youngest in the church choir, with the age of six years old. I have no younger or older brothers and sisters. Let's get with the show-biz... I was on my way to collage at eighteen years of age when my father found that they were doing try-outs in New York for the filming of Oklahoma! and the character, Laurey Williams. Father told me that I should go just for fun and I did and when I got there, there were huge lines of young ladies trying out for the part of Laurey and when it came to my turn, there was a man and he asked if I knew the lyrics to People Will Say We're In Love. I said "no" not knowing that the man I was speaking to was the man that wrote those lyrics! He said, "Well nevermind" and he handed me the music. I sang and when I was through, the man said,

Richard Rodgers: You're just lovely, young lady. You have a beautiful voice. My partner is at home and I would like to have him hear you. Can you wait a while longer?
Me: Well, no, that's fine. But... who are you?
Richard Rodgers: I'm Richard Rodgers.

I gasped and of course the whole time, I had no clue it was him! Then his partner, Oscar Hammerstein heard me sing and then I was under contract with Rodgers and Hammerstein. They wanted me to develope poise and experience so they cast me as a chorus girl in their Broadway production of South Pacific. Soon after that, they made me the understudy for the leading lady in the Broadway play, Me and Juliet. Soon they found me good enough and I got the biggest surprise of my life. My agent called me and she said, "Hello, Laurey"! Everyone was so excited for me, celebrating and everything! I was thrilled and at the age of nineteen, I met the leading man of Oklahoma!, the great Gordon MacRae. I was a fan of his, listened to his radio show every Saturday morning at ten o'clock and even had pictures everywhere on my bedroom wall of him! Just being able to sing with him was a dream come true for me. So now we still are working on the filming of Oklahoma!, and everything's going just splendidly. Well, almost. Gloria Grahame, cast as Ado Annie Carnes is a little jealous of me playing the role of Laurey Williams. Going on my diet is sometimes annoying but, this is great fun and I wanted to get roped into this show business stuff, I should do my best to at least stay in it!:) Well, I'm getting sleepy, all that rehearsing is making me tired so, I'll get back as soon as possible:)

~Shirley