Dean Jones, the star of such Disney movies as The Love Bug and That Darn Cat!, recently passed away due to the Parkinson’s disease, according to reports from Hollywood.
Mr. Jones died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 84.
The son of construction worker Andrew Guy Jones and Nolia Elizabeth White Jones, Dean Carroll Jones was born in Decatur on 25 January, 1931. He attended Decatur’s Riverside High School and had his own local radio show in Decatur, “Dean Jones Sings.”
Jones left home at 15 to become a singer, according to his bio on the Turner Classic Movies website, and he worked as a coal loader,timber cutter, cotton picker and dishwasher before he made his debut as a blues singer in a New Orleans nightclub. He later served in the US Navy during the Korean War.
He made his motion picture debut with a small part in the 1956 film “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” and he later appeared as a disc jockey in the 1957 Elvis Presley movie “Jailhouse Rock.”
His additional movie credits included “Under the Yum-Yum Tree,” “The Shaggy D.A.,” “The Million Dollar Duck,” “Snowball Express,” “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo,” “Beethoven” and “Clear and Present Danger.”
Jones also appeared in five Broadway shows, making his debut with Jane Fonda in “There Was a Little Girl” in 1960 and starring with Jack Lemmon in the Broadway version of “Under the Yum-Yum Tree” later that same year.
He is honoured with a star in the Alabama Walk of Fame along the sidewalk outside the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham.
