TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

By: Lynn Peril
June 2, 2023

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of heartthrobs from our adolescences). Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

DANNY BONADUCE

The ad in Tiger Beat leapt out at me. It was the summer of 1971, and I was ten years old.

You’ve watched him on the ‘Partridge Family’ . . . Now Read All About Him in a SPECIAL NEW BOOK!

DARING DANNY BONADUCE

These tantalizing words arced over a photo of Danny, dressed in a wide collared shirt and vest, pointing at the camera in an “Uncle Sam Wants You” pose. The booklet promised to reveal “all the fax,” including “what Danny thinks about… talks about… where he hides… how to you can meet him and make him your friend!”

I couldn’t fill out the accompanying coupon fast enough! Danny, the raspy-voiced, bass-playing, preternaturally adult second son of TV’s Partridge Family was my completely nonsexual crush. I probably hit up the same adult I talked into buying me the magazine for the dollar plus postage I needed to place my order.

Why Danny Bonaduce? At ten, I was incapable of separating the actor from his character, and, speaking for the grade-school set, Danny Partridge was hip. He was a snarky financial savant who frequently came out on top when he went toe-to-toe with the band’s child-hating manager, Reuben Kincard. I wasn’t the only kid fascinated by Danny. According to a syndicated news story, a “random sampling of children in West Los Angeles” showed that almost all of those “under the age of 12 – male and female” watched the show “not for David Cassidy but for Danny Bonaduce.”

Alas, I can’t share all the fax or where Danny liked to hide because my fandom evaporated so quickly and thoroughly that DARING DANNY BONADUCE became an embarrassing reminder of youthful indiscretion. It’s long gone from my files, but I imagine it contained similar info to that peddled to fans via newspaper television columns. “He is a fifth grader at a San Fernando Valley, Calif., grammar school. He plays the guitar, but his great love is riding — minibikes and horses. He has a horse named Patience, and… a basset hound named Samantha,” reported “TV Topics Mailbox.”

This was Hollywood stardust. The real Danny was infinitely more complicated. According to screen mom Shirley Jones’s 2013 memoir, he was a “wild child” from “an unhappy home” who could be “snotty at times.”

He displayed this quality in more than one 1971 interview. “I’ve got an idea…,” he told a reporter. “You tape all your questions leaving some blank spaces then I’ll take the tape to the men’s room and fill in some fabulous answers.“

Asked about autograph hounds by another columnist, he said: “I hate ’em… I think they’re stupid just to want your autograph just because you come out of a little box.” Not necessarily untrue, but definitely impolitic for a rising star on a press junket.

In fact, Danny B. sounded a lot like Danny P., and maybe this is why we young fans liked him so much. He got away saying things to adults we only wished we could.

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TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

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