Dick Jones

Dickie Jones (born February 25, 1927, died July 7, 2014) was an American actor who achieved some success as a child and as a young adult, especially in B-Westerns and television. He is best known as the voice of Pinocchio in the 1940 Walt Disney film.

Early life
Jones was born in Snyder, the seat of Scurry County on the South Plains in Texas. The son of a newspaper editor, Jones was a prodigious horseman from infancy, billed at the age of four as the "World's Youngest Trick Rider and Trick Roper".

Career
At the age of six, he was hired to perform riding and lariat tricks in the rodeo owned by Western star Hoot Gibson. Gibson convinced young Jones and his parents that there was a place for him in Hollywood, so the boy and his mother moved there.

Gibson arranged for some small parts for the boy, whose good looks, energy and pleasant voice quickly landed him more and bigger parts, both in low-budget Westerns and in more substantial productions. Although often uncredited, he was usually known as Dickie Jones. A well known early film role is the film A Man to Remember (1938). Jones also appeared as a bit player in several of Hal Roach's Our Gang (Little Rascals) shorts. In 1939, Dickie Jones appeared as a troublesome kid named 'Killer Parkins' in the film, Nancy Drew-Reporter. In the film he did a good imitation of Donald Duck.

In 1940, he had one of his most prominent (though invisible) roles, as the voice of Pinocchio in Walt Disney's animated film of the same name. Jones attended Hollywood High School and at 15, took over the role of Henry Aldrich on the hit radio show The Aldrich Family.

He learned carpentry and augmented his income with jobs in that field. He served in the Army in Alaska during the final months of World War II. Gene Autry, who before the war had cast Jones in several Westerns, put him back to work in films and particularly in television, on programs produced by Autry's company.

Now billed as Dick Jones, the handsome young man starred as Dick West, sidekick to the Western hero known as The Range Rider, played by Jock Mahoney, in a television series that ran for seventy-six episodes in 1951 (and for decades in syndication).

Autry gave Jones his own series, Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955), which ran for forty-two episodes on National Broadcasting Company. In 1957 Jones appeared twice as Ned in the episodes "The Brothers" and "Renegade Rangers" of the syndicated American Civil War series Gray Ghost, with Tod Andrews (1914-1972) in the title role of Confederate Major John Singleton Mosby. In 1958, during the filming of the The Cool and the Crazy, he and fellow actor Richard Bakalyan were arrested for vagrancy in Kansas City. They were standing on the corner between takes in "juvenile delinquent" outfits and the police thought that they were actual gang members. It took several hours for the film crew to get it all straight and them released from jail.

In 1960, he guest starred as Bliss in the episode "Fire Flight" of another syndicated series The Blue Angels, about the elite air-show squadron of the U.S. Navy. In 1962, he appeared as John Hunter in the episode "The Wagon Train Mutiny" of NBC's long-running western series Wagon Train starring John McIntire. That same year, he appeared in the television short The Night Rider starring Johnny Cash as Johnny Laredo and Eddie Dean as Trail Boss Tim.

Jones' last acting role was as Cliff Fletcher in the 1965 film, Requiem for a Gunfighter.

In 1959 Jones retired from acting and began his new career in real estate. In 1992, he founded White Hat Realty.

Recent activity
In 2000, Dick Jones was named one of the Disney Legends.

In March, 2009, Jones was guest star at the Williamsburg, VA Film Festival.

Death
Jones died after a fall at his home on the evening of July 7, 2014, at the age of 87. Jones is survived by his wife, four children, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving cast member of the 1940 animated film Pinocchio.