Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Sue Jones was an American actress born on April 28, 1930, in Amarillo, Texas, to homemaker Chloe Jeanette Southern and barber Julius Alfred Jones. After her father abandoned the family in 1934, Jones and her younger sister, Bette Rhea, moved with their mother into their maternal grandparents' Amarillo home. Severe asthma frequently limited her childhood activities, and when her condition kept her from attending movies, she turned to Hollywood fan magazines, which fueled an early ambition to become an actress. At eighteen, she enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, with her grandfather, Charles W. Baker, covering her tuition. Jones appeared on Broadway between 1967 and 1978, with credits including the play California Suite and The Homecoming.

A talent scout discovered Jones at the Pasadena Playhouse and secured her a contract with Paramount Pictures. Her earliest film appearances included an uncredited role in The Turning Point (1952), an uncredited bit part as a nightclub hostess in The Big Heat (1953), and a role in House of Wax (1953) as the woman whose character Vincent Price transforms into a statue of Joan of Arc. She played Beth in Shield for Murder (1954), earning $500 per day. Although she was cast as Alma "Lorene" Burke in From Here to Eternity (1953), pneumonia forced her withdrawal, and the role went to Donna Reed, whose performance earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Jones received her own Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957), directed by Delbert Mann. That same year she shared the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year–Actress with Sandra Dee and Diane Varsi for her work in Marjorie Morningstar, and won a Laurel Award for Top Supporting Female Performance. In 1958 she appeared alongside Elvis Presley in King Creole. The following year brought three additional notable film roles: opposite Frank Sinatra in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head, with Dean Martin in Career, and alongside Anthony Quinn and Kirk Douglas in Last Train from Gun Hill. In How the West Was Won (1963), she played the wife of Sheriff Jeb Rawlings, portrayed by George Peppard, and appeared with Peppard and Debbie Reynolds in the film's final speaking and singing scenes.

Jones made her television debut on the DuMont series Gruen Playhouse in 1952 and subsequently appeared in multiple episodes of Dragnet from 1953 to 1955, credited as Caroline Jones. Her television work in the 1950s included appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the episode "The Cheney Vase" (1955), two Rod Cameron syndicated series — City Detective and State Trooper — and CBS's Schlitz Playhouse, where she led the 1957 episode "The Girl in the Grass." She guest-starred three times on Wagon Train, in episodes airing in 1957, 1961, and 1963. In 1963 she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best TV Star – Female for her portrayal of quadruplets in the Burke's Law episode "Who Killed Sweet Betsy?" Jones also appeared on The Lloyd Bridges Show during the 1962–1963 season, a series created by her second husband, television producer Aaron Spelling, and appeared on NBC's Here's Hollywood while married to him.

Beginning in 1964, Jones took on the role that would define much of her public identity: Morticia Addams in the black-and-white television sitcom The Addams Family. The part earned her a Golden Globe nomination and established her reputation as a comedian. She later guest-starred on the 1960s series Batman as Marsha, the Queen of Diamonds, and in 1976 played Hippolyta, the title character's mother, in the Wonder Woman television series. That same year she appeared in Tobe Hooper's film Eaten Alive, playing a madam, alongside Neville Brand, Roberta Collins, and Robert Englund. In the miniseries Roots she played Mrs. Moore, the wife of a plantation owner. Her final role was Myrna Clegg, the scheming matriarch of a political family, on the CBS daytime soap opera Capitol, which debuted in March 1982. During absences from the series, actress Marla Adams substituted for her.

Jones was married four times and had no children. While at the Pasadena Playhouse she married fellow student Don Donaldson; the couple soon divorced. Her second marriage, to Aaron Spelling, lasted from 1953 until their separation and divorce in 1964, and she converted to Judaism upon marrying him. In 1968 she married Herbert Greene, a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical director, vocal arranger, co-producer, and her vocal coach; she left him in 1977. Her fourth and final marriage, to Peter Bailey-Britton in 1982, lasted until her death.

Shortly after Capitol debuted, Jones was diagnosed with colon cancer and played many of her scenes in a wheelchair. She continued working while telling colleagues she was being treated for ulcers. After a period of apparent remission, the cancer returned in 1982 and spread to her liver and stomach. In July 1983 she fell into a coma at her home in West Hollywood, California, and died on August 3, 1983. Her body was cremated the following day, and a memorial service was held on August 5 at Glasband-Willen Mortuary in Altadena, California. Her ashes were interred in her mother's crypt at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park and Mortuary in Anaheim, California. Jones donated her Morticia costume and black wig to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Bailey-Britton donated a collection of The Addams Family scripts to UCLA.