R.I.P. Dean Jones

Anyone who knows me, knows my love for all things movies. I was bitten by that particular bug early in life because my parents liked movies and sometimes took my brothers and me to the movies.  But the very first time I went to the movies without my parents (I went with my brother and some other kids in our neighborhood.) was to see a DOUBLE FEATURE (remember those?) on the 2 Disney films: The Jungle Book, and The Love Bug. I was 6 or 7. The double feature cost us 75  cents and the popcorn and Coke another 75 cents.  And with that inexpensive entry drug, an addict was born.  Dean Jones played Jim, Herbie's driver in The Love Bug. And just at a moment when I was beginning to grasp the difference between characters and the actors who played them on television and the movies, Dean Jones became my favorite! He showed up a lot in on television, most notably on the movies that Disney brought into our living room on Sunday night's The Wonderful World of Disney and The Wonderful World of Color. Dean Jones did a lot of acting (IMDB has 88 acting credits for him) but all my life I could never see him without thinking of the whacky antics of the willful Volkswagen that kept Jones so befuddled in that wonderfully funny and innocent film from my childhood. Whether his costar was That Darn Cat, That Ugly Dachshund, The Million Dollar Duck, or The Shaggy D.A., or he was trying to make a a bunch of Monkeys, Go Home, he had amazing comic timing and facial expressions and was always, always funny.  R.I.P., Mr. Jones and thanks for the childhood laughter!