It sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie.

A fresh-faced, 18-year-old songbird from western Pennsylvania comes to New York City in 1953, on vacation with her family, and is talked into auditioning by a piano-playing friend for chorus parts in Rodgers and Hammerstein productions.

The teenager performs for the casting director, who is so impressed he calls in Richard Rodgers, who just happens to be working with an orchestra across the street, to hear the girl sing.

Rodgers, in turn, is so impressed with the undiscovered talent that he calls Oscar Hammerstein at home and tells him that he needs to hear this girl.

Around this time, the piano-playing friend has to leave to catch a plane and the teen says she can't audition without accompaniment. Rodgers tells her it's OK, she can just sing with the full orchestra assembled across the street.

She had never sung with an orchestra before, but she decides to go for it. When the songsmiths both hear her, they offer her a role on the spot in the Broadway production of "South Pacific." She takes the part and within a year is starring in the Hollywood production of "Oklahoma!"

It may sound too good to be true, but the principal in the story is Shirley Jones, an entertainer who had the talent, and, she said, the luck, to make this fantastic tale a reality.

Jones told the story of her discovery at the beginning of an hour-long question and answer session she held at the Gertrude Krampert Theater on Friday.

The star of "Carousel," "Elmer Gantry" - for which she won her Oscar - and "The Partridge Family" is in town for a performance tonight at the NCHS Auditorium to raise money for a new civic auditorium.

Besides telling how she got into show business, Jones fielded questions from the audience of college students and fans, and waxed on her favorite co-stars, her favorite directors and her 50 years of fame.

"Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda," Jones said in response to a question regarding her favorite co-stars. "I adore Jimmy Stewart," she said.

But the best kisser she ever locked lips with on screen was no doubt Richard Widmark, with whom Jones costarred in John Ford's "Two Rode Together," Jones said.

Ford was one of the many famed Hollywood filmmakers Jones had a chance to work with, she said.

"He always had a handkerchief in his mouth," Jones said of Ford, to the laughter of the audience. "It was like a night-night."

She said she had been warned against asking Ford about the handkerchief.

Jones also spoke of Vincent Minnelli, "a taskmaster"; "Fred Zinnemann, her "Oklahoma!" director; and Richard Brooks, who did "Elmer Gantry" and who drove Jones harder than any other director, she said.

As an entertainer who has performed on the concert stage, on television, in motion pictures and in the theater, Jones said she is fortunate to have worked in so many aspects of show business.

But her favorite arena is motion pictures, she said.

"I'm a fan," she said. "My favorite thing to do in the world is to sit in bed all day and watch Turner Classic Films," she said.

Sitting in bed, however, is not something Jones seems to do too often, as she is still active as she nears her 70th birthday.

Besides performing concerts like the one she will do tonight, Jones is also starring in "Come to Papa," a sitcom due to premier on NBC in March, she said.

On the show Jones plays a retiree who decides, along with her husband, played by Hal Lindon, to become a lounge singer, she said.