He's Not Tom Ewell

“Spot the character actor” was a fun game to play when watching TV in the 1960s. There were plenty of them who worked on different shows but would be on the screen regularly.

“There’s Henry Jones!” was one exclamation from young me. I saw him in the films Support Your Local Sheriff (he appears to have filmed a string of Westerns in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s) and The Girl Can’t Help It. Where I spotted him first in the ‘60s, I really don’t remember. Offhand, I remember him on Bewitched. Oh, and Lost in Space.

Besides a pile of guest character shots, there was one series where he was actually a co-star. There was a short period of “relevant” TV dramas in the early ‘60s that tackled issues of the day. One of them was Channing. No, it was not about a “Hello, Dolly” star playing a daffy blonde. It was about issues surrounding a college.

Alan Patureau of Newsday wrote about it in the paper’s Sept. 18, 1963 issue.

Racial discrimination, exam cheating, Communist influences and all sorts of meaty subjects COULD be treated on ABC-TV’s new college campus series, “Channing” debuting tonight—and perhaps they will, says star Henry Jones, if some good scripts can be found.
“Our first purpose is to be entertaining,” Jones chuckled the other day on a trip East. “As the great George S. Kaufman said, ‘If nobody comes, who gets the message?’”
Not that “Charming” is to be a retread of the treacly old “Halls of Ivy” series, Jones said. “We’ll have no rah-rah stones, no panty raid capers; some of the scripts are real rockers.”
“Channing,” which is the name of a small, mythical Midwestern university, bows tonight at 10 PM on Channel 7, and Jones has the top role as kindly Dean Fred Baker.
“Negroes have taken two speaking parts in the series so far, and are seen in every classroom shot, so ‘Channing’ definitely intends to portray campus life—outside the South—as realistically as possible, with no more cowtowing to timid Sponsors,” Jones said.
“Channing” is rara avis in TV-land. It has been in production a full year and there are 15 one-hour episodes in the can. None of the too-common, frantic last-minute filming and script patching here. The series was spun off from Fred Astaire’s “Alcoa Premiere,” where it appeared as a one-hour drama in March, 1962, with its current stars, Jones and Jason Evers.
How was Jones lured into a TV series after 28 years on Broadway and in movies?
“Simple,” he said, peering over big bifocals. “In show business I’m known as the guy who looks like Tom Ewell. With weekly exposure in a major TV series, I hope to gain true star status—become a boxoffice draw. Ewell can be the guy who looks like Henry Jones. I’ve gone as far as I can go in the theater without a boost from another medium.”
“Channing” is being shot at Revue Studios, one of Hollywood’s busiest TV mills. In one corner is a small-scale reproduction of World War II (for the “Combat!” series) and in the other is the set for Channing U., replete with quadrangle, football stadium, the whole works.

The comparison to Ivy is a little unfair, as it was mainly a comedy show, though there was one marvelous episode on radio where it attacked racism very straight, something completely unexpected in a 1950s sitcom.

The syndicated column below published Nov. 9, 1963 delves into Jones’ career.

Channing’s Dean, Henry Jones, Has A Sense of Humor
By RUTH E. THOMPSON
It’s a tossup who has to deliver a longer list of credits to rate his job, a real university dean, or Henry Jones — actor — who’s starring as Dean Fred Baker in ABCs “Channing” (Wednesdays, 10:00 PM).
“Incidentally I certainly would not have taken the role.” Henry says cheerfully, if by any chance they’d gone in for the stereotype of a stuffy, pompous dean. As a matter of fact every one I’ve known has had a considerable sense of humor and problems.
“But I’m not really a dean, remember, I’m no authority on education. I’m art actor.” A pretty well-educated actor, however, and definitely an authority in his field (500 television shows, a dozen films, countless Broadway appearances). He’s also an authority on sense-of-humor. He started developing his own early through his some quixotic schooling.
“My mother sent me to boarding school in Canada for the seventh grade so I could learn French . . . but none was spoken there at all. She’d neglected to check. It was an English language institution.”
He thereafter also went to Georgetown Prep and to St. Joseph’s College in his home town of Philadelphia. Though he admired his surgeon-father, he had no desire to emulate him and hot-footed off instead to Jasper Deeter’s legendary Hedgerow Theatre where he swept floors, worked as a stage hand, learned the switchboard and — against his wishes — honed the sense of humor some more.
“For a while, in fact, it looked as though I was doomed to be a comedian. No matter what I did on stage, people laughed.”
His first speaking part was in the grim war epic, “Journey’s End.” “Since it was about Englishmen, I worked on an English accent then in my role as a coward I chirped out, ‘I cawn’t go on.’ The audience broke out laughing and nearly broke my heart.”
But along came another role (again a coward, the locale a submerged submarine. Came his moment, tense, dramatic. He snarled, “If you don’t let me go. I’ll kill every one of you with my hare hands.” Comments Henry further, “Only trouble was they looked like a bunch of football players. I’m five-ten. Unintentional comedy again.”
During the winter he thought maybe he’d try his hand at business and sell oil-burners door to door. The firm’s star salesman was resting. Finally he shared his wisdom. “Nobody has ever sold a heater here in this season.”
Henry was actually relieved. Business was not for him. The theatre life had its own challenges and rough spots, but this was really his dish, this he could handle and back he went to Hedgerow to learn both acting technique and show business.
This time he also house-managed. “In fact I did every job at that theatre except box office. There were about six kinds of tickets; regular, subscription, students, press. Some were subject to federal tax, some to local, some to none.” His head for business being what it was it was agreed the theatre would be money ahead if somebody else handled the arithmetic and the cash.
Then in 1938 he debuted on Broadway in a minor role in Maurice Evans’ five-hour “Hamlet.” Successive role grew bigger, then in 1942 he was drafted into the Army which promptly drafted him into its camp show (later a movie) “This Is The Army” which played bases the world over.
“Solid Gold Cadillac” with Josephine Hull was his first lasting post-war role. Then came “Bad Seed” in which he was so good as the sneaky janitor he was afraid for a while he’d be typed as a psychotic. However, that blooming new medium television saved his “sanity” as well as his reputation for flexibility.
“I played 50 different roles in one year, then I realized,” he says with a smile that lighted up his sage humor again,” that the greater the exposure, the less they were paying! So, I started appearing less often and in longer programs.”
Meanwhile, back on Broadway Henry Jones was becoming more and more a name to reckon with. He walked off with the 1958 Tony award for best supporting actor for his Louis McHenry Howe role in “Sunrise at Campobello;” and in 1960 he got star billing in the Broadway production of “Advise and Consent.”
Though he suttled [shuttled?] back and forth for a time between New York and Hollywood for movie commitments, the “Channing” schedule keeps him in Hollywood except for an occasional trip East on network business or to visit his children 17-year old David and 13-year-old David [sic, it should read Jocelyn]. Divorced now, Jones lives a bachelor life when he is in California.
“Any series is very hard work but I find ‘Channing’ satisfactory all around. And you know, I like our not limiting our stories just to the campus. By going afield in flashbacks, or by following a crisis in a person’s life and tieing in with his days at Channing University we are able to show the long range influence of education and of college memories.
“Then too we have good guest stars. It was good to work with Wendell Corey again, he was Hedgerow, too, you know. And Gene Raymond was just great.”
And where is Channing University? “In the mythical town of Channing of course.” And with an interesting guy like Henry Jones as its leading light, it’s a school and town we should keep hearing about.

ABC had a decent Wednesday night line-up that season: Ozzie and Harriet, Patty Duke, The Price is Right, Ben Casey and then Channing. But this was CBS’ year and Channing ran 26 episodes. Howard Heffernan of the North American Newspaper Alliance wrote at the time that Jones “was permitted in the earlier episodes to drift in and out,” suggesting TV producers wanted to go with the more photogenic Evers to attract an audience. But ratings fell and Jones was shoved to the forefront. It didn’t help and the show was replaced over the summer with reruns of 77 Sunset Strip (featuring the photogenic Kookie and his comb).

So it was that Channing did not give Jones “true star status.” He went back to character parts (and a regular role on the sitcom Phyllis) and acted until the early 1990s. He died May 17, 1999 at age 86.