David Cassidy, the 1970s heartthrob who starred in TV’s “The Partridge Family,” is in critical condition with organ failure.
Cassidy, 67, is being treated at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area hospital, a rep told Page Six on Saturday. “He is conscious now and surrounded by family,” the rep said.
Cassidy was in pain and taken to the hospital on Wednesday, the spokesman said, providing no additional details.
Cassidy — the stepson of actress and fellow “Partridge Family” star Shirley Jones — said earlier this year that he was battling dementia and memory loss, and would be ending his 50-year career.
The move was precipitated by a concert in Los Angeles last February, when he fell on stage and appeared to struggle to find his words. He couldn’t remember the lyrics to some of his own old hits.
The performance prompted speculation that Cassidy, who had long battled alcohol abuse, had begun drinking again.
But the following week, the former teen idol later revealed that he was battling dementia.
His mother, actress Evelyn Ward, and his grandfather had also suffered from the condition.
“I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming,” Cassidy told People magazine of his condition, and his decision then to stop touring and concentrate on his health.
“I want to focus on what I am, who I am and how I’ve been, without any distractions,” he told the magazine.
“I want to love. I want to enjoy life.”
With bubblegum-pop hits including “Cherish” and “I Think I Love You,” Cassidy, who portrayed eldest family member Keith Partridge on the hit ABC sitcom, had millions of teenagers swooning.
Pictures of the wholesome heartthrob — with his winning grin and meticulously tousled “shag” haircut — graced many an adolescent’s scrapbook and bedroom wall.
His face was on magazine covers, bubble gum cards, school notebooks, and reams and reams of posters.
Exhausted by age 21 — just a year after the debut of “The Partridge Family” — he was hospitalized, and his gall bladder was removed.
“My body just broke down,” he later told People.
But he’d keep performing full throttle for another four years.
In his glory days, Cassidy played some 350 concerts in 17 countries, producing ten Partridge Family albums and five solo albums.
At his peak, the West Orange, NJ, native — son to singer and actor Jack Cassidy — was the highest-paid solo performer in the world.
In New York for a concert, fans tore apart two limos thinking he might be in one of them.
“He had to be smuggled to performances in laundry trucks,” People noted.
“Cassidy, a diminutive, extremely mobile young man who looks 16 but who actually is in his early 20s, moved around the Garden’s massive stage like a wind-up version of an updated Elvis Presley, gyrating his pelvis, leaping into the air in wide spreading splits and trying, with all his might, to project an image of writhing sensuality,” The New York Times wrote in a review of Cassidy’s sold-out March 1972 matinee concert at Madison Square Garden.
His voice?
“Pleasantly bland,” the reviewer huffed.
“A G-rated Mick Jagger,” People sniffed.
As early as 1972, Cassidy told Rolling Stone that the touring was wearing on him.
“I’ll feel really good when it’s over,” he said of the concert, recording and publicity grinds, and of having his life ruled by agents.
“I have an image of myself in five years. I’m living on an island. The sky is blue, the sun is shining. and I’m smiling, I’m healthy, I’m a family man. I see my skin very brown and leathery, with a bit of growth on my face. My hair is really long, with a lot of grey.
“I have some grey hair already.”
By age 24, in 1975, “The Partridge Family” — killed by plummeting ratings — had been off the air for a year, and he announced he was quitting showbiz and would stop performing.
Three years later, he tried to make an acting comeback with a doomed-from-the-start crime series, “David Cassidy — Man Undercover.” The show was a flop.
“It was like: ‘Who are you? Goodbye,’” Cassidy recalled to People in 1983.
“I was yesterday’s news. I felt a lot of pain about that, for having to almost apologize for having been a teen idol.”
Subsequent years would be filled with occasional successes — in 1983, he was cast as Andy Gibb’s replacement in the Broadway hit musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
But mostly, the years have been hard. The father of two navigated three costly divorces.
He dragged himself through the regional theater and concert circuit for decades.
In 2008, he publicly admitted he had an alcohol problem. He was plagued with drunken-driving offenses and financial problems.
There were DUI arrests in Florida in 2010 and in Schodack, NY, in 2013, during which he learned that the name of his arresting officer was Tom Jones.
“What’s New, Pussycat?” the drunken Cassidy asked.
In 2014, he was sentenced to do 90 days of in-patient rehab after a DUI arrest near LA Airport.
In 2015, when he was 65, the Los Angeles Times ran this headline: “David Cassidy facing hit-and-run charge in crash on the day his home was auctioned.”
His 7,000-square-foot waterfront Fort Lauderdale mansion sold for $1.8 million at a court-ordered bankruptcy auction.
“I put so much time and love and energy into this,” Cassidy had proudly told The Associated Press.