Every
Disney Hero Has a Voice
Pinocchio
~ Dickie Jones
February
25th, 1974
Dick Jones was 10 years old and a
veteran actor in Hollywood when Walt Disney cast him as the voice of Pinocchio
in 1939. The young actor, whose screen name was "Dickie" Jones, had
already appeared in nearly 40 motion pictures, including "Stella
Dallas" with Barbara Stanwyck, "Wonder Bar" with Al Jolson and
Dick Powell, and "Daniel Boone" with George O'Brien and John
Carradine.
He later recalled, "At the
time, 'Pinocchio' was just a job. Who knew it would turn out to be the classic
that it is today? I count my lucky stars that I had a part in it."
Born February 25, 1927, in McKinney, Texas, Dick had been discovered by western film star Hoot Gibson by age three. Gibson was appearing in a rodeo in the youngster's hometown.
Born February 25, 1927, in McKinney, Texas, Dick had been discovered by western film star Hoot Gibson by age three. Gibson was appearing in a rodeo in the youngster's hometown.
"Hoot told my mother I ought
to be in pictures and sponsored our trip to Hollywood," said Dick, who
went on to work with practically every cowboy actor, including Buck Jones, Ken
Maynard and Bill Elliott.
Among his memories of
"Pinocchio," Dick recalled donning a puppet costume and acting out
scenes for a live-action film study to which animators could refer. And when
there was a lull in recording lines, "Mr. Disney would take an old
storyboard drawing, pin it up on a four-by-eight celotex sheet and start a dart
game with me using pushpins," said Dick. "He was good at throwing
pushpins, underhand, and making them stick with fantastic accuracy. He always
won the game."
During the 19 months Dick worked
on "Pinocchio," he also managed to complete roles in "Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington" and "Destry Rides Again," both starring
James Stewart, among other features.
In 1944, he was drafted into
World War II. By the time he finished training, the war was over. After his
Christmas Day discharge in 1946, Dick appeared in a few more films, including
his favorite, "Rocky Mountain," starring Errol Flynn, which, as he
pointed out, "marks the first time in motion picture history the United
States Cavalry arrived too late - we all died."
In 1949, he debuted in television
when Gene Autry hired him as a stuntman for his Flying A Productions. During
this time, Dick played Jock Mahoney's sidekick in "The Range Rider,"
a western series, which led to his own series "Buffalo Bill, Jr." He
went on to guest star on other television shows, including
"Gunsmoke," "Annie Oakley," and "The Lone
Ranger." In all, Dick worked on nearly 100 films and more than 200
television episodes.
By 1959, he retired from show
business and began his new career in real estate. In 1992, Dick founded his own
agency, White Hat Realty.
Dickie
Jones (born February 25, 1927) is
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. The same year he appeared
in Mr. Smith goes to Washington as Senate page Richard (Dick) Jones. 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 in
syndication. 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 in the title role of Confederate
Major John Singleton Mosby. In 1958, during the filming of the film The Cool
and the Crazy, he and fellow actor Richard Bakalyan were arrested for vagrancy
in Kansas City, Missouri. 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 early 2009,
Jones did promotional events for the Platinum Edition DVD and Blu-Ray release
of Pinocchio.
In March 2009,
Jones was a guest star at the Williamsburg Film Festival in Virginia.
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