Davy Jones (actor)

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Davy Jones
Born	December 30, 1945 Manchester, England

Davy Jones (born David Thomas Jones December 30, 1945) is an English-born actor and singer, best known as a member of The Monkees.

[edit] Career

Jones was born in Manchester, England. His father had hopes for him as a jockey, but Jones was more interested in being in show business, and as a teenager he appeared on British TV soap operas, including Coronation Street. He appeared to great acclaim in the musical Oliver! as the Artful Dodger, playing the role both in London and on Broadway, where he was nominated for a Tony Award. (When the film of the musical was made in 1968, Jones was at the height of his TV success and too heavily committed to take the part. He was also 22 years old.) He then toured in another musical adaptation of a Charles Dickens classic, Pickwick, and did some American television as well as recording three singles. As part of the Oliver! cast, Jones appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on the same night that the Beatles made their American TV debut on the show.

From 1965 to 1970, Jones was a member of The Monkees, a pop-rock group formed expressly for a TV show of the same name. He sang lead vocals on many of the group's songs, including "I Wanna Be Free" and "Daydream Believer". After the show went off the air and the group disbanded, he continued to perform solo, later joining with fellow-Monkee Micky Dolenz and songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as a short-lived group.

In recent years, Jones has performed with his former bandmates in reunion tours and has appeared in several productions of Oliver! as Fagin. He has also continued to race horses with some success in his native England, United Kingdom, while residing in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, United States.

In the summer of 2006, Davy recorded "Your Personal Penguin", written by children's author Sandra Boynton as a companion piece to her new board book of the same title.

[edit] Trivia

• David Bowie's original name was David (Robert) Jones: he changed his name to avoid confusion with the then-more famous Davy Jones.

• In the fall of 1967, both The Monkees and Star Trek were beginning their second seasons on NBC. While the former was quite successful, Star Trek's ratings were sagging. In an attempt to add "teen appeal" to Star Trek, NBC asked Gene Roddenberry to add a new character that looked like one of the Monkees. The result was the role of Pavel Chekov, played by Walter Koenig, who bore a resemblance to Davy Jones at the time.

• Davy Jones guest starred in an episode of the television series "The Brady Bunch", as well as the spin-off film, The Brady Bunch Movie.

• In an interview segment aired on the Monkees TV show, Jones claimed that when he had recently flown home to visit his gravely ill father in England, his father had refused to let him in the house due to Jones' long hair. Jones said that he had gotten two haircuts, neither of which satisfied his father. Finally, Jones bought his father a house so his father could not turn him away!

• In another interview from the show, Jones said he had been touring continuously for six years, since he was 14.

• Davy Jones shares the same birthday, 3 years apart, from Monkee bandmate Michael Nesmith

[edit] External links

• Official Web Site
• Davy Jones (actor) at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
NAME	Jones, Davy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	actor, singer
DATE OF BIRTH	December 30, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH	Manchester, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH