NewsPhoto Archive: Celebrating the Career of Stage and Screen Star Dean JonesDean Jones, the comic actor who made his mark in a series of Disney films, but who earned a place in Broadway history for originating the role of the vacillating bachelor Bobby in Stephen Sondheim's Company, died Sept. 1. He was 84 and suffered from Parkinson's disease. Playbill.com celebrates Dean with a look at his stage career.
By
Joseph Marzullo
September 07, 2015
0
of
Celebrating the Career of Stage and Screen Star Dean Jones
Celebrating the Career of Stage and Screen Star Dean Jones
Dean Jones, the versatile actor who earned a place in Broadway history for originating the role of the vacillating bachelor Bobby in Stephen Sondheim's Company, died Sept. 1. Playbill.com celebrates Dean with a look at his stage career.
28 PHOTOS
Jane Fonda and Dean Jones in There Was A Little Girl, at the Cort Theatre in 1960.
Gig Young, Sandra Church, Nan Martin and Dean Jones in Under The Yum-Yum Tree, at The Henry Miller's Theatre in 1960.
Dean Jones and Nan Martin in Under The Yum-Yum Tree.
Sandra Church, Gig Young and Dean Jones in Under The Yum-Yum Tree.
Gig Young, Nan Martin, Sandra Church and Dean Jones in Under The Yum-Yum Tree.
Jones, for whom Sondheim wrote "Being Alive," famously left the show within weeks of its opening. He was going through difficulties in his personal life during the show's tryouts, and wanted to leave the show. Hal Prince agreed to let him out of his contract if he would just stay until the opening night, April 26, 1970, and give a great performance to launch the show. Jones wound up playing the role for only a month, though he recorded the original cast album.
His replacement, Larry Kert, joined the show May 29, 1970 — so quickly that he was ruled eligible to compete for the Tony Award that year. Kert was nominated, but did not win.
Jones had appeared twice on Broadway earlier in his career: There Was a Little Girl and Under the Yum-Yum Tree, both in 1960. He returned to Broadway once after Company, to star in Into the Light, a musical about the Shroud of Turin, which ran just six performances. Other notable theatre appearances include playing “Cap’n Andy” in the national tour of Harold Prince’s Show Boat, playing opposite Florence Henderson in Bells Are Ringing and touring in the one-man play, St. John in Exile.
The Alabama-born actor is probably best known to the general public for his work on light comedies, many for Disney, including "That Darn Cat!," "The Love Bug," "The Shaggy D.A.," "The Million Dollar Duck," "Snowball Express," "Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo," "Beethoven" and the film versions of the Broadway hits Under the Yum-Yum Tree and Any Wednesday. Several films took him outside the comedy zone, including "Jailhouse Rock" with Elvis Presley, Tom Clancy's "A Clear and Present Danger" and the Western TV series "Stagecoach West."
Jones' emotional performance of "Being Alive" was captured in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the making of the original Broadway cast album of Company. Watch it below.
Filmed in 2023, the one-night-only event featured Brian Stokes Mitchell, Audra McDonald, Peter Friedman, and more from the Ahrens and Flaherty musical's original cast.
