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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

This Partridge is still slightly out of his tree


Danny Bonaduce
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Gina Piccalo Los Angeles Times

Danny Bonaduce growls and purrs more than he speaks, carrying his tightly wound self as if spring-loaded.

He’s doing his best impersonation of a game-show host, lobbing questions at a trio of contestants about the melodramas of some of his friends and neighbors – Ozzy Osbourne, Courtney Love, Janice Dickinson – looking far more executive than usual in a dark suit.

This is the Bonaduce of “Starface,” a new celebrity-gossip challenge on the GSN channel.

It’s a striking shift from the vodka-guzzling, wrist-slashing, tantrum-throwing train wreck of a man depicted in last fall’s VH1 reality series “Breaking Bonaduce.”

Bonaduce, who turns 47 today, is perpetually in comeback mode, rebounding from drugs and alcohol or his own bad judgment.

But nothing has stalled his career for long. Show business has an insatiable appetite for self-destruction, and Bonaduce has learned how to make that work in his favor.

“People seem to be willing to give Danny chance after chance,” says his wife and manager, Gretchen Bonaduce. “I think for some reason he just brings that out in people. You want him to succeed.”

His life story has become Hollywood legend. He was world famous by age 12 for his role as the red-haired wiseacre Danny Partridge in the 1970s show “The Partridge Family,” but his home life was so bad that screen mom Shirley Jones often brought him to her house to spare him abuse.

There were the lean years, spent living out of his car, hawking autographs on Hollywood Boulevard. Ultimately, Bonaduce landed a radio DJ gig and turned it into a respectable career.

“Breaking Bonaduce 2,” set to air in October, was filmed during yet another rocky period for him – so much so that Bonaduce said he insisted that VH1 keep a crew on standby so any new melodrama could be added to the finale.

For one thing, he developed online relationships with about 20 women he’d met on MySpace.com. It got “very personal,” he says, and his wife likened it to yet another infidelity.

Says Bonaduce: “Several of the women asked if we could meet, and I said, ‘No. No. Never. Of course not. First of all, people don’t really speak like this in real life. You know, how awkward would it be for us to talk this way in public? And second, I’m married! I can’t talk like this to you and meet you! This is a thing on the computer!’ “

He’s been sober for about a year now, he says, and he and Gretchen are in counseling.

But, Bonaduce adds, all the therapy hasn’t given him any more self-awareness.

“I would be very comfortable doing some type of show about this crazy, drug-addled guy that flirts and does all this stuff,” he says.

“If you want to do a television show about a guy who does none of that stuff – which currently I do not – I have almost limited knowledge about that guy. I have no idea what my current life looks like. I just know what it’s not.”

The birthday bunch

Actor Pat Harrington (“One Day At A Time”) is 77. Singer Don Ho is 76. Actress Gretchen Corbett (“The Rockford Files”) is 59. Singer Dan Fogelberg is 55. Country singer Andy Griggs is 33.