- Dean Jones (actor)
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Dean Jones Born Dean Carroll Jones
January 25, 1931
Decatur, Alabama, U.S.Occupation Actor Years active 1956–2009 Spouse Mae Entwisle Jones (1954-1970) (divorced)
Lory Patrick Jones (1973-present)Dean Carroll Jones (born January 25, 1931) is an American actor. Jones is best known for his light-hearted leading roles in several Walt Disney movies between 1965 and 1977, most notably The Love Bug.
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Early years
Jones was born in Decatur, Alabama to Andrew Guy Jones and his wife Nolia Elizabeth White.[1] His father was a traveling construction worker.[2] As a student at Decatur's Riverside High School he had his own local radio show, Dean Jones Sings.[3] Jones served in the United States Navy during the Korean War, and after his discharge worked at the Bird Cage Theater at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.
He attended Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, as a member of its Class of 1953 but did not graduate. However, the university awarded him an honorary degree in 2002, and he spoke at the ceremonies for the dedication of Asbury's Andrew S. Miller Center for Communications Arts on March 4, 2011.[4]
Stage
After appearing in minor film and television roles, Jones made his Broadway debut (along with Jane Fonda) in the 1960 play There Was a Little Girl. He stepped into the role in Boston on only one day's notice.[5] Later that year, he played Dave Manning in the Broadway comedy Under the Yum-Yum Tree, a role he repeated in the 1963 movie version starring Jack Lemmon.
After achieving success in film and television, Jones was set to return to Broadway as the star of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's new musical Company. Shortly after opening night, Jones withdrew from the show, allegedly due to illness, but actually due to stress he was undergoing from ongoing divorce proceedings. Director Harold Prince agreed to replace him with Larry Kert if Jones would open the show and record the cast album. Jones agreed and his performance is preserved on the original cast album (although it was Larry Kert who received the Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical).
In 1986, Jones, by then having become a Christian, starred in Into the Light, a musical about scientists and the Shroud of Turin, which closed four days after it opened. He had far more success touring in the one-man show St. John in Exile.[6] In this production, Jones portrayed St. John, the last surviving Apostle of Jesus Christ, reminiscing about his life while imprisoned on the Greek island of Patmos. A performance was filmed in 1986. He made one more Broadway appearance, in 1993, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, in a special two-day concert staging of Company featuring most of the original Broadway cast.
Television and film
Jones started his film career by signing a contract at MGM, beginning with a small role as a soldier in Somebody Up There Likes Me and he latter played disc jockey Teddy Talbot in the 1957 Elvis Presley smash hit, Jailhouse Rock. He portrayed a soldier in both 1957's Imitation General with Glenn Ford and 1959's Never So Few with Frank Sinatra.
He then moved to television, starring in the NBC television sitcom Ensign O'Toole from 1962–63, produced by Four Star Television, portraying an easy-going very green officer on a US Navy destroyer, his co-stars included Jack Mullaney, Jack Albertson, Jay C. Flippen, Harvey Lembeck, and Beau Bridges. He also recorded a singing album, Introducing Dean Jones, for Valiant Records.
As Ensign O'Toole was the lead in show on NBC to Walt Disney's The Wonderful World of Color Disney ordered a print of Jones' latest film Under the Yum Yum Tree to study [7]. Disney signed Jones on and he became known for a string of Disney films he made in the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with That Darn Cat! (actress Hayley Mills' last film at Disney). His performance was so well-received that Disney used him for future movies including The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost and Snowball Express.
Jones' signature Disney role would be as race car driver "Jim Douglas" in the highly successful The Love Bug series. He appeared in two feature films (The Love Bug and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo), as well as a short-lived Herbie television series produced in 1982 and the made-for-TV movie, The Love Bug in 1997.
He also co-starred with Jane Fonda in a popular 1966 romantic comedy, Any Wednesday.
In 1978, Jones took a dramatic turn starring as Ed Cooper in the NBC television movie When Every Day Was the Fourth of July. In the film, Jones played an attorney in the 1930s who agrees to defend a man accused of murder after urging from his daughter. The film received critical acclaim and in 1980, Jones again reprised the role of Ed Cooper in the ABC television sequel The Long Days of Summer.
In 1991, Jones co-starred with Gregory Peck and Danny DeVito as Bill Coles the president of Peck's company, which was fighting a hostile takeover by DeVito in Other People's Money.
He then appeared as Herman Varnick, the evil veterinarian in the family film Beethoven in 1992. Coincidentally he also did the voice of George Newton in TV version of Beethoven. He also appeared in a small role as Director of Central Intelligence Judge Arthur Moore in 1994's film adaptation of Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger starring Harrison Ford.
Personal life
Jones' first marriage to Mae Entwisle ended in divorce in the 1970s. He has two children from that union. He has been married since 1973 to actress Lory Patrick Jones and has a third child from that marriage.
Dean Jones became a devout born-again Christian in 1973–1974, before his father's death in 1979. He had a history of suffering from depression. His wife Lory said, "One night he got down on his knees and prayed that God would free him from the miserable depression that he had always suffered. He told me that in an instant it was gone and he felt peace."[8] Jones has appeared in several Christian films. A noted conservative, Jones also testified in favor of an amendment to the United States Constitution that would define marriage between one man and one woman.
In 1998 Jones founded the Christian Rescue Committee (CRC), an organization that helps provide a "way of escape to Jews, Christians, and others persecuted for their faith."[9]
He is semi-retired and currently lives in California.
Filmography
- Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
- These Wilder Years (1956)
- Tea and Sympathy (1956)
- The Opposite Sex (1956)
- The Rack (1956)
- The Great American Pastime (1956)
- Slander (1956)
- Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957)
- Designing Woman (1957)
- Until They Sail (1957)
- Jailhouse Rock (1957)
- Handle with Care (1958)
- Imitation General (1958)
- Torpedo Run (1958)
- Night of the Quarter Moon (1959)
- Never So Few (1959)
- Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963)
- The New Interns (1964)
- Two on a Guillotine (1965)
- That Darn Cat! (1965)
- The Ugly Dachshund (1966)
- Any Wednesday (1966)
- Monkeys, Go Home! (1967)
- Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)
- The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968)
- The Love Bug (1969)
- Mr. Superinvisible (1970)
- The Million Dollar Duck (1971)
- Snowball Express (1972)
- The Shaggy D.A. (1976)
- Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)
- Once Upon a Brothers Grimm (1978)
- When Every Day Was the Fourth of July (1978)
- Born Again (1978)
- The Long Days of Summer (1980)
- Herbie the Matchmaker (1982)
- St John In Exile (1986)
- Other People's Money (1991)
- Beethoven (1992)
- Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style (1992)
- Clear and Present Danger (1994)
- Beethoven (voice)
- Getting Around in Time (1996)
- Acts (1996)
- That Darn Cat (1997)
- The Love Bug (1997)
- Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998) (voice) (direct-to-video)
- Scrooge and Marley (2001) (TV)
- Lavinia's Heist (2007)
- You Know the Face (2008) (documentary)
- Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (2008)
Broadway appearances
- There Was a Little Girl (February 29 – March 12, 1960)
- Under the Yum Yum Tree (November 16, 1960 – April 15, 1961)
- Company (April 26, 1970 – January 1, 1972) (replaced by Larry Kert on May 29, 1970)
- Into the Light (October 22–26, 1986)
- Company (Concert Staging) (April 11–12, 1993)
References
- ^ Social Security Death Index
- ^ Dean Jones Biography (1931?-)
- ^ "Man at Work--Finally", People, November 11, 1991
- ^ http://www.kentucky.com/2011/03/05/1658791/actor-dean-jones-helps-open-asburys.html
- ^ theatermania.com Peter Filichia article, "How Now, Dean Jones?"
- ^ "St. John in Exile" in the Internet Movie Database
- ^ A Conversation with Dean Jones Herbie Mania
- ^ "Man at Work--Finally", People, November 11, 1991
- ^ "At Home with Dean Jones", Christianity Today, Jan/Feb 2004
External links
- Dean Jones at the Internet Movie Database
- Dean Jones at the TCM Movie Database
- Dean Jones at the Internet Broadway Database
Categories:- 1931 births
- Actors from Alabama
- American Christians
- American film actors
- American military personnel of the Korean War
- American television actors
- American stage actors
- American voice actors
- Asbury University alumni
- Liberty Records artists
- Living people
- People from Decatur, Alabama
- People from the Greater Los Angeles Area
- United States Navy sailors
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