One of Dean Jones's movies was on TV, and I thought to myself: "Ah, Dean Jones. The classic staple actor from my childhood. I wonder what he's up to now?" And so I Googled his name and...found out he died this past September.
Why am I just hearing about this now?
Probably because I'm living abroad I guess. Without constant access to NPR and CNN, you tend to miss these smaller news stories.
Still....Why wasn't this bigger news on the Internet? I try to keep up on these things. I read Yahoo news. I even went through the trouble of reading:17 Celebrities You Didn't Know Died In 2015 from Cracked.com [Links: Part 1 and Part 2]. And there was no mention of Dean Jones.
Dean Jones was a staple of my childhood.
Growing up, we weren't allowed to watch regular TV at my house, so we were restricted to just the Disney Channel and PBS.
The Disney Channel had a much different format in the 1980s than it does today. Back then, it was largely just a dumping ground for Disney to re-run all their old movies and TV shows from the 50s, 60s and 70s. So I grew up on all those old Disney movies starring Dean Jones.
And I mean all of them:
That Darn Cat!, The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Love Bug, The Million Dollar Duck, The Snowball Express, The Shaggy D.A., Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, The Love Bug 1982 TV series (which was also re-run on the Disney Channel in the late 80s).
Just reading his IMDB page is a trip down memory lane.
(The only Disney Dean Jones movie that I don't remember seeing is Monkeys, Go Home! But I suspect I probably saw it at one point, and just don't remember it.)
So, I guess it's time for another belated obituary. (I've been late with these things a few times before, when it takes me a while to hear the news. I've never been half a year late before, but I wanted to chime in with my thoughts just the same.)
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2 comments:
I did mention Jones' passing on my FB feed -- adding that I'd probably only seen 95% of his Disney fare, the missing 5% being the last ten minutes of the second instalment, when we kids were hustled out of the basement rumpus room and sent off to Sunday evening church. FB is a weird beast, of course -- a mention on the blog is a better bet for people who appreciate the same stuff catching it the first time around.
Huh....strange, I don't remember that at all in your FB feed. But my FB habits are somewhat erratic. I'll go for weeks sometimes without really checking in on the thing.
Still, I'm puzzled by how little I heard about all of this at the time. Those Disney Dean Jones movies always played to a limited niche market, but several of them were modest hits back in their day. But by the time he passed away, he was completely forgotten. Such is the nature of fame I guess.
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