'Partridge Family' Manager Dave Madden Dies at 82

In addition to Russell Johnson, the Professor from "Gilligan's Island," another familiar face from vintage TV departed this week. Dave Madden, who portrayed Reuben Kincaid on "The Partridge Family" between 1970 and 1974, died this week at a hospice in Florida. He was 82 years old.

"The Partridge Family" was built around actress Shirley Jones and her real-life son, teen heartthrob David Cassidy. Jones played Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children. The sextet—Shirley, eldest son Keith (Cassidy), teenage daughter Laurie (Susan Dey), young teen Danny (Danny Bonaduce), and tweens Chris (Jeremy Gelbwaks and Brian Forster) and Tracy (Suzanne Crough)—performed as a pop band, touring in their brightly painted bus. Madden's Kincaid was the band's manager, and although his character despised children, he was often caught up in the misadventures of the Partridge kids; he and Danny had a particularly fraught relationship.

Before "The Partridge Family," Madden appeared regularly on the sketch comedy show "Laugh-In." He was born in 1931 in Canada, and he grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana.

All of the other regular cast members of "The Partridge Family" still survive, although David Cassidy, 53, was in the news this week after his arrest in California for DUI, his third such brush with the law. He could, perhaps, benefit from Reuben Kincaid's steadying influence.