Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 18, 1995 TAG: 9502240012
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN KING LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Medium
Now Jones, a youthful 59, is back in the Disney fold. He's appearing with Kirk Cameron in ``The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes,'' Disney's TV remake of its popular 1970 feature that starred Kurt Russell. The slapstick comedy premieres Saturday as ``The ABC Family Movie'' (at 8 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13).
This time around, Jones is the baddie - Hale University's aggressive Dean Carlson, who tries to woo Medfield College student Dexter Riley (Cameron) to his college. Thanks to a lightning surge at his computer terminal, Riley h:wq! as a megabyte computer brain.
Jones is relishing playing the bad guy. Over the last few years, he's played villains in the films ``Other People's Money'' and ``Beethoven.''
``I'm really going back to my roots,'' Jones explains between scenes at Pasadena's Ambassador College.
``When I first started in movies, before I did [the comedy] `Under the Yum Yum Tree' on Broadway, I played drug addicts, pimps, hard-cased killers, ex-cons and angry young men.''
Dean Carlson, Jones says, is evil, but not a threat to Dexter ``because there is no physical violence involved. There is nothing I can do to Dexter. I am offering something. I am giving him money and a three-bedroom suite. Will he sacrifice his character is what I am asking him to do.''
For his role as dean, Jones has altered his voice into sort of a raspy snarl. He decided to disguise his more mellow tones for a reason. ``Maybe I am a little coward,'' he says with a smile. ``I hate to spoil the image that's in a lot of older people's minds about the things that I did. I have made 34 pictures, 10 of them for Disney, and none of them for Disney were really bad characters. So I think that recently I have kind of begun to hide behind certain actor's devices in order to make a dividing line between what I used to do and the characters I have been asked to do today.''
For the 1992 hit ``Beethoven,'' Jones donned thick glasses to play the evil veterinarian. ``I asked to have made very thick glasses,'' he says. ``I consciously was aware that I was doing that so the kids who are still watching `The Love Bug' and `The Shaggy D.A.' would not be confused. `Isn't that the same guy who played the nice individual?' I know it is a cowardly kind of approach, but I think that's what I do.''
Besides, Jones says, playing evil is more fun than always being the good guy. ``You have more real truth to draw from if you are playing evil,'' he explains. ``We see so much of it around us in our culture, and we also have so much of it in our nature, which we are always warring against, as it were. I want to be a man who serves my family, a man who increases justice in my community. I want to be all of those things and yet it is just below the surface that I want to strangle somebody when they cut in front of me on the freeway.''
Jones had just finished the title role in the short-lived NBC sitcom ``Ensign O'Toole'' more than 30 years ago when Walt Disney called him about starring with Hayley Mills and D.C. the feline in ``That Darn Cat.'' At the time, Jones thought he had caught Disney's eye repeating his Broadway role in the 1963 film version of ``Under the Yum Yum Tree.''
``I understood that he had called Bill Walsh, who was producing and had written [``That Darn Cat''], for `Under the Yum Yum Tree.' But years later, Walt said something at lunch that made me think it wasn't `Under the Yum Yum Tree.' We were eating and he said, `You had some good endings on that `Ensign O'Toole' show. I didn't take it any further. But in my mind later, I thought, `Ah. `The Wonderful World of Disney' followed `Ensign O'Toole' on NBC. Walt must have been warming up his TV and had seen the endings of `Ensign O'Toole.' It's the only explanation.''
by CNB