Buck Jones

Buck Jones

He gave permission for his name to be used in a comic book series that was later taken over by the Dell Publishing House. The series ran roughly until 1953 and was a needed source of revenue for his wife Odille.

His body had been so badly burned in the Cocoanut Grove fire that skin from his fingers had been pulled off onto the fingerprint card sent to the Technical Section of the FBI's Identification Division. It took nearly 48 hours to identify the prints because so many fingers had to be searched in so many different places.

His daughter Maxine Jones was born in 1918; she married actor Noah Beery Jr..

His mother, Mrs. Eva R. McCammon, died in an Indianapolis nursing home on October 29, 1954. She was 80 years old.

In 1928 he formed his own production company but the stock market crashed the following year and took him for everything. In response, he formed his own 'Wild West' show performing on his white steed Silver. His wife, Odille Osborne, rode her own horse "Bumper" and their 11-year-old daughter Maxine rode her little pony. The tour was also a failure, and he returned to the movies after being off screen for over a year.



Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1973.

On his World War I draft registration filed on May 28, 1917, he gave 24 years as his age.

On the night of the tragic Cocoanut Grove fire, a large number of guests and close friends was at the club for a combination testimonial dinner in honor of Buck and a promotional event for his "Rough Rider" series for Monogram Pictures. Although the story is that Jones managed to escape the fire but returned back inside to help rescue people, the truth is that he was trapped inside along with all the others and never made it out. Monogram's studio head Scott R. Dunlap was one of those critically injured in the fire that killed over 500 people. Buck died two days later in a hospital before his wife, who luckily was out of town that night, could reach him.

Profiled in "Back in the Saddle: Essays on Western Film and Television Actors", Gary Yoggy, ed. (McFarland, 1998).


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