David Cassidy, an actor and singer who became a teeny-bopper heartthrob in the early 1970s, starring as shaggy-haired guitarist Keith Partridge on the musical sitcom "The Partridge Family," died Tuesday at a hospital near Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 67.
He had been hospitalized with liver and kidney failure, his publicist said. Cassidy announced earlier this year that he was suffering from dementia and would stop touring.
At the height of his popularity, Cassidy commanded a rabid fan base that drew comparisons to those of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. For several years, his likeness was emblazoned on posters, push-out cards, coloring books and lunchboxes, as the band he led on TV — the Partridge Family, a true family outfit that featured his stepmother Shirley Jones — became one of the decade's defining pop music acts, beloved by a mostly female audience and derided by critics who heard only bubble-gum blandness.
The show was loosely inspired by a six-sibling pop band called the Cowsills.
Jones, an Oscar-winning dramatic actress who was better known for her wholesome star turns in the movie musicals, played a widow who performs with her five musical children, traveling aboard a psychedelic bus.
Cassidy was the lead singer and guitarist. The quintet sported matching vests and shoulder-length hair, and scored its first chart-topper with "I Think I Love You" (1970), a breezy pop song written by Tony Romeo.
The son of divorced show business parents — his father was Tony-winning actor Jack Cassidy — he nurtured a love of rock music and artistic pretensions, hoping to parlay his TV work into more serious acting.
In later years, Cassidy wrote books about the toll stardom had taken on him, and about his own struggles with substance abuse.
