Buck Jones, cowboy hero, dies of nightclub burns
Boston, Massachusetts (UP) –
Charles “Buck” Jones, cowboy movie star and idol of millions of American boys. was dead today, a victim of the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire disaster.
Attending physicians said they “had abandoned all hope of Jones’ recovery immediately after examining his burns.” He died alone yesterday afternoon in Massachusetts General Hospital from what doctors described as “smoke inhalation and burned lungs, and from third and second-degree burns on the face and neck.” His wife was reported speeding to his bedside when death came.
A checkup showed that of about two dozen guests at the testimonial dinner for the 50-year-old actor, 13 were known dead, seven – mostly women – were recorded as missing and presumably dead, and the others were in hospitals with burns or injuries that may prove fatal.
Jones’ manager near death
In another ward of the crowded hospital, Jones’ Boston representative, Martin Sheridan, lay in critical condition. Mr. Sheridan’s wife, who also attended the Jones party at the Cocoanut Grove, was dead.
An early report listed Scott R. Dunlap, one of Hollywood’s leading producers of Westerns and Jones’ personal manager, among the dead, but City Hospital reported that Mr. Dunlap was still alive, although near death.
Jones became a cowboy star because he couldn’t become an Army aviator. Born Charles Gebhart in Vincennes, Indiana, he went to Red Rock, Oklahoma, as a small boy, there his father bought a small cattle ranch and when Charles reached his late teens, he got a job on the famous Wild West show, Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch, as a cowhand at $30 a month and chuck.
Joins U.S. Cavalry
Regularly every month, he would lose his payback to George Miller at poker. He decided that joining the Army might improve his poker playing, so he signed up in the Cavalry and was promptly sent to the Philippines. He was back home again in 1912, after a Moro’s bullet in one hip all but made a cripple of him.
Assigned to the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps, he became disgusted because they wouldn’t let him fly without a commission, so he went back to punching cows. World War I came along and he went back in the Army, in the remount service, breaking broncs to be sent to the British and the French. When the war ended, he became a rodeo rider.
While riding in New York’s Madison Square Garden, he met Miss Odille Osborne, a horsewoman. They married in the arena during a performance in Lima, Ohio.
Dunlap offers movie job
One day, standing on a street corner in Los Angeles, penniless Buck was approached by a man who asked him if he wanted a job. The man was Scott Dunlap, pioneer producer of Westerns.
That’s how Jones rode in his first Western picture. He insists this horse opera was titled A Tale of Two Cities, and that in some fantastic way, it was based on Charles Dickens’ stirring novel on the French Revolution – transferred to California!
In the picture, Jones had a closeup of himself rolling a cigarette with one hand while mounted. It was sensational: he was a star overnight. From then on, he made Western after Western, and a few dramatic pictures, including one hit, Just Pals, in which he played opposite Helen Ferguson. The late Carole Lombard was his leading lady when she was 16.
Eight pictures a year
The coming of sound slowed him up, but only temporarily, and in recent years, Jones was making a regular schedule of eight Westerns a year.
Ironically, Jones had visited another hospital to cheer a sick child only a few hours before he suffered the burns that cost his life.
Other Jones party guests who perished in the panic and flames were:
- Edward I. Ansin, president of the Interstate Theaters Corp., which operates a New England movie chain;
- Philip Seletsky, chief film booker for the M&P Theaters of Boston;
- Charles Stearns, manager of United Artists Corp.;
- Fred Paul Sharby and his son Fred Jr., Keene, New Hampshire, showmen;
- Eugene Goss of Cambridge, one-time associate of Cecil B. DeMille;
- Harry Asher of Boston, president of Producers Releasing Corp.;
- Moses Grassgreen of Universal Pictures,
- Bernard Levin of Columbia Pictures.
