Claude Earl Jones

Claude Earl Jones was an American actor.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jones studied acting at Phoenix College and the Pasadena Playhouse. After earning his master's degree in theater from Cal State Los Angeles in 1966, Jones taught theater at Ganesha High School in Pomona, California, from 1969 to 1972.

Jones’s favorite stage role was that of lawyer Henry Drummond in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Inherit the Wind. Jones also directed several productions of the courtroom drama.

Jones’s film work includes roles in Thunder and Lightning (with David Carradine), Used Cars (with Kurt Russell), Impulse (with Tim Matheson), No Man’s Land (with Charlie Sheen), and director Robert Zemeckis’s first film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

His television work includes appearances on Kojak, Police Woman, Battlestar Galactica, Diff’rent Strokes, WKRP in Cincinnati, Little House on the Prairie, The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, Who’s the Boss?, Matlock, 21 Jump Street, Dallas, Quantum Leap, and Seinfeld.

Jones died November 25, 2019, in Claremont, California. He was 86.