Gordon Jones (actor)

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Gordon Jones
University of California at Los Angeles[1]
OccupationActor
Years active1931–1963
SpouseLucile Van Winkle (1935–1940)[2]

Gordon Wynnivo Jones (April 5, 1912 – June 20, 1963)

old-time radio program.[4][5]

Career

Iowa-born Jones had been a student athlete and star football guard ("Bull" Jones) at

RKO Radio Pictures. In 1940, Jones had the title role in The Green Hornet
but did not reprise the role in the sequel.

Jones held a reserve commission in the Army and was called into the service after filming his roles as "The Wreck" in My Sister Eileen (1942) and "Alabama Smith" in Flying Tigers (1942), a John Wayne vehicle that was one of the most popular action films of the war. This picture began Jones' 20-year onscreen association with Wayne, who was also a former football player at the University of Southern California.

Jones remained associated with the service after the war, encouraging college students to consider the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. After resuming his acting career in the late 1940s, Jones appeared in prominent roles in the John Wayne features Big Jim McLain (1952) and Island in the Sky (1953).

By the end of the 1940s, Jones had aged into a beefier screen presence and into very physical character roles. He was no longer a leading man but he had developed a comic villain persona which meshed with the work of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Jones' association with the duo began in The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947) with the role of the film's heavy, Jake Frame, and continued through their television series The Abbott and Costello Show. Jones played "Mike the Cop", Costello's hulking, loud-voiced antagonist. The program was produced for only two seasons, but ensured continued recognition for Jones via frequent reruns and a 21st Century DVD release.

Jones also remained busy in films and on television throughout the 1950s, in pictures that ranged from the sci-fi chiller

TV sitcom So This Is Hollywood (1955), and had a recurring role as neighbor Butch Barton during the early years of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

Jones returned to the John Wayne stock company portraying Douglas, the bureaucrat antagonist to Wayne's G.W. McLintock in the Western comedy McLintock! (1963). Jones unexpectedly succumbed to a heart attack on June 12, 1963, five months before the release of that movie.

Jones has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the West side of the 1600 block of Vine Street.

Selected filmography

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Famous Iowans - Gordon Jones | DesMoinesRegister.com". data.desmoinesregister.com.
  2. ^ "Hollywood Gossip Covers Very Wide Field, It Seems". St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent. February 22, 1940. p. 8. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  3. ^ Longden, Tom. "Famous Iowans - Gordon Jones". demoinesregister.com. Des Moines Register. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  4. New York Times
    . Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  5. ^ "The Green Hornet". DVD Talk. Retrieved 2011-03-28.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gordon Jones.
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