Dickie Jones

Look at the year 1939 on this page. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, Young Mr. Lincoln, On Borrowed Time. Dickie Jones was a child then, and in most of those films he is uncredited: a boy in a tree, a boy in a crowd, Claggett Boy. Hollywood used children the way it used furniture, and he was in the room for one of the greatest years the studios ever had.

A year later he did the thing he is remembered for, and he went uncredited for that too. He is the voice of Pinocchio in the 1940 Disney film, one of the most famous pieces of child performance in American animation, and his name is not on the picture.

The rest of the child work is steady and mostly small: a schoolboy in Babes in Toyland (1934), Lee Morrison in Stella Dallas (1937), Cobby in Virginia City, Matt Howard at twelve in The Howards of Virginia, a scared marine in Sands of Iwo Jima. He also played Artie Peters in the Hopalong Cassidy western The Frontiersman, which is not among the credits listed here.

Then television arrived at exactly the right moment for a young man who could ride. He worked on The Gene Autry Show and starred as the title character in Buffalo Bill Jr., which is where the B-western career the reference books mention actually lives. The last credit on this page is archive Pinocchio audio in a Disney anniversary special in 2023, which is a fair summary of how long that one job lasts.