{"id":106426,"date":"2015-09-03T07:24:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T11:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106426"},"modified":"2015-09-03T07:56:43","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T11:56:43","slug":"r-i-p-dean-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106426","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Dean Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/am8qrrZAtP4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nDean Jones was a Disney star who appeared in all of the movies I watched as a kid. He was a familiar face by the time I was 7 years old. <i>Herbie the Love Bug<\/i>, I mean, come on. <i>That Darn Cat<\/i> with Hayley Mills! I was obsessed with Hayley Mills as a child, even though her heyday came before I was born (the awesome <i>Flame Trees of Thika<\/i> notwithstanding, which I watched with my parents). I wanted to BE Hayley Mills. A child star.  I adored <i>That Darn Cat!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280.jpg\" alt=\"tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280\" width=\"923\" height=\"664\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-106433\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280.jpg 923w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280-100x72.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280-200x144.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/tumblr_lrhmj4wxsx1qiceiuo1_1280-400x288.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 923px) 100vw, 923px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/09\/03\/movies\/dean-jones-star-of-disneys-the-love-bug-dies-at-84.html\" target=\"blank\"><i>The New York Times<\/i> has a very nice obituary.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But I will love Dean Jones forever for his stunning version of &#8220;Being Alive&#8221; from Stephen Sondheim&#8217;s musical <i>Company<\/i>. First of all, the song itself is an anthem of hope and pain and striving. The lyrics are too piercing to bear, if you have experienced loneliness (as we all have). The yearning for someone to be there, to love you, to experience &#8220;being alive&#8221; with you. The song has that classic Sondheim difficulty: it&#8217;s &#8220;talk-y&#8221;, the lyrics are conversational and yet poetic. There&#8217;s not a typical rhyme scheme. You have to really act it. Otherwise it won&#8217;t come off, it&#8217;ll just sit there as a melody. There is no way to fake this one. No way to phone it in. Your awesome singer pipes will not save you if you can&#8217;t FILL the song. Dean Jones&#8217; version, captured forever in the cast recording, is definitive, and the one we all know. Young Raul Esperanza came along in the Broadway revival and breathed new life into the song, approaching it with the same passion and emotional understanding that Dean Jones had. We heard it anew.  <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a fascinating documentary about the recording of the cast album for <i>Company<\/i> in 1970. The most famous bit is Elaine Stritch working on &#8220;Ladies Who Lunch&#8221; in the recording booth, and putting herself through hell to get it right. (If you haven&#8217;t seen it, look it up. It&#8217;s on Youtube. It is one of the clearest portrayals of true PROCESS that I have ever seen in my life.)<\/p>\n<p>But the clip above is also excellent. It&#8217;s the same thing, only it&#8217;s Dean Jones, working on &#8220;Being Alive&#8221; in the booth, with his cast members. <\/p>\n<p>Rest in peace, Dean Jones. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dean Jones was a Disney star who appeared in all of the movies I watched as a kid. He was a familiar face by the time I was 7 years old. Herbie the Love Bug, I mean, come on. That &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106426\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,17,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106434,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426\/revisions\/106434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}