page_title: Carolyn Jones
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Carolyn Jones / Career
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Carolyn Jones and John Church from the Broadway play The Homecoming.
context_page_description: Carolyn Sue Jones was an American actress of television and film. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising new actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for another 20 years. In 1964, she began playing the role of Morticia Addams in the original black and white television series The Addams Family.
context_section_description: After being spotted by a talent scout at the Playhouse, Jones secured a contract with Paramount Pictures and made her first film, The Turning Point (1952). In 1953, she married aspiring filmmaker Aaron Spelling. She appeared in several episodes of Dragnet, credited as Caroline Jones in several episodes; had an uncredited bit part as a nightclub hostess in The Big Heat (1953), and a role in House of Wax (also 1953) as the woman who is converted by Vincent Price's character into a Joan of Arc statue. She played Beth in Shield for Murder (1954), earning $500 per day for playing the role.
  Jones was cast in the film From Here to Eternity (1953) in the role of Alma "Lorene" Burke, which was written for her. However, a bout with pneumonia forced her to withdraw; the role earned Donna Reed the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
  Jones made her television debut on the DuMont series Gruen Playhouse in 1952. She appeared in two Rod Cameron syndicated series, City Detective and State Trooper, as Betty Fowler in the 1956 episode, "The Paperhanger of Pioche". She made five appearances on the crime drama series Dragnet, starring Jack Webb, between 1953 and 1955. Jones appeared on the CBS anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the episode "The Cheney Vase" (1955), as a secretary assisting her scheming boyfriend Darren McGavin in attempting an art theft, and opposite Ruta Lee.
  Jones appeared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and in Alfred Hitchcock's remake of his own film, The Man Who Knew Too Much. In 1957, she had the lead in the episode "The Girl in the Grass" on CBS's Schlitz Playhouse, with once again Ray Milland and Nora Marlowe.
  Jones guest starred three times on the television series Wagon Train:  in first-season episode "The John Cameron Story" (1957) and in later color episodes "The Jenna Douglas Story" (1961) and "The Molly Kincaid Story" (1963). Also in 1963 she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best TV Star - Female for portraying quintuplets and a psychopathic killer in the Burke's Law episode "Who Killed Sweet Betsy?"
  In 1958, Jones was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957), and she also shared the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress with Sandra Dee and Diane Varsi, and appeared with Elvis Presley in King Creole (1958).
  Jones played opposite Frank Sinatra in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head, Dean Martin in Career, and Anthony Quinn and Kirk Douglas in Last Train from Gun Hill (all 1959). She guest-starred in CBS's The DuPont Show with June Allyson, with James Best and Jack Mullaney, in the episode "Love on Credit" (1960).
  In the 1962–1963 season, Jones guest-starred on CBS's The Lloyd Bridges Show, which Spelling created. While married to Spelling, she appeared on the NBC program Here's Hollywood.
  In the epic Western, How the West Was Won (1963), she played the role of Sheriff Jeb Rawlings' (George Peppard) wife. She appears with Peppard and Debbie Reynolds in the last speaking/singing scenes of the film.
  In 1964, using a long coal-black wig, the brunette Jones began playing Morticia Addams on the television series The Addams Family, a role which brought her success as a comedian and a Golden Globe Award nomination. She guest-starred on the 1960s TV series Batman, playing Marsha, the Queen of Diamonds, and in 1976 appeared as the title character's mother, Hippolyta, in the Wonder Woman TV series. In Tobe Hooper's movie Eaten Alive (1976), she played a madam running a rural whorehouse. The film also featured Neville Brand, Roberta Collins, and Robert Englund. Her last role was that of Myrna, the scheming matriarch of the Clegg clan, on the soap opera Capitol from the first episode in March 1982 until March 1983, though she already knew that she was dying of cancer. During her occasional absences, veteran actress Marla Adams subbed for her.
caption: Carolyn Jones and John Church in the Broadway play The Homecoming (1967)[9]
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