page_title: Duane Jones
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Duane Jones / Career
caption_attribution_description: Actor Duane Jones as Ben gives actress Judith O'Dea, playing Barbra, her slippers in a scene from the movie Night of the Living Dead
context_page_description: Duane L. Jones was an American actor, best known for his leading role as Ben in the 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead. He was director of the Maguire Theater at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and the artistic director of the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art in Manhattan.
context_section_description: His role in the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead marked the first time an African-American actor was cast as the star of a horror film, and one of the first times in American cinema where a person of color was given an important role when the script did not explicitly call for one. At the time, casting a black man as the hero of a film where all the other characters were white was potentially controversial. While some saw the casting as significant, director George A. Romero states "Jones simply gave the best audition."
  He continued working in film after Night of the Living Dead in Ganja & Hess (1973) and Beat Street (1984), among others. Despite his other film roles, Jones worried that people only recognized him as Ben.
  Jones was executive director of the Black Theater Alliance, a federation of theater companies, from 1976 through 1981 and continued working as a theater actor and director, until his death in 1988. As executive director of the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA), he promoted African-American theater. He also taught acting styles at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.  After leaving the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he taught a select group of students privately in Manhattan, by invitation only. His hand-selected students were of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The students were picked from his Acting Styles classes at American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
caption: Jones alongside Judith O'Dea in Night of the Living Dead.
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