Dean Jones

Dean Jones started at MGM in the fifties, in the sort of small parts a studio handed to good-looking young contract players: Ollie in Tea and Sympathy, Teddy Talbot in Jailhouse Rock, servicemen in Torpedo Run and Never So Few. He got a television lead in Ensign O'Toole in 1962 and might have stayed a jobbing light comedian if Disney had not found him.

From That Darn Cat! onward he was the studio's dependable leading man, the sane adult standing next to whatever the special effects department had built that year. The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost, The Love Bug, Snowball Express, The Million Dollar Duck, which brought him a Golden Globe nomination, and The Shaggy D.A. all run on the same engine: Jones reacting with total sincerity to something ridiculous. The reactions are the performance, and they are much harder to do well than the films let on. He was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1995.

The late work has a nice sting to it. He came back as Jim Douglas in the 1997 television version of The Love Bug and appeared in the 1997 That Darn Cat, but the best of the later roles is Beethoven, where he plays the vet with designs on the dog. Casting Disney's most trustworthy face as the villain of a family film about a St Bernard is the funniest decision anyone ever made about his career. He also played Judge Moore in Clear and Present Danger and a corporate lieutenant in Other People's Money. Jones died in 2015.