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Philip Cary Jones (May 5, 1904 - July 12, 1983) was a gay actor, director and stage manager who worked in theater, on- and off-Broadway, for over 50 years.
Jones is believed to have last appeared on stage at Occidental College in a 1976 production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”
Born in 1904 in New Hsven, CT, Jones' first professional acting role came in 1922 working in summer stock with Jane Darwell. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Jones worked mostly on the east coast, with people such as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Walter Huston, Dame Edith Evans and Eva Le Gallienne. "His stages ranged from the posh theaters of Broadway to the makeshift auditoriums converted to drama houses for the Works [Progress] Administration during the Depression."
He was in "Hamlet” with Le Gallienne, played Capt Dronsky, Mae West’s foil in "Catherine Was Great” and portrayed Stuart Finchley when appearing with Mariam Hopkins in Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy.”
Jones moved to Los Angeles, where he became associate director of the Pasadena Playhouse from 1952-1955. He continued to work as a stage manager and director at the Shakespeare Society and Theatre 40, and he was a producer and board member for Equity Library Theatre West. He was also a longtime member of ONE Incorporated.
Jones was an early member of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles. How Paul Benard came to the Mattachine is disputed. Timmons writes that Ruth Bernhard brought him in, but Harry Hay, writing in 1986, said it was the reverse. Since Bernhard was teaching at a radio and television school when she is said to have come to the Mattachine via Philip Cary Jones, she and Benard could have met at the school, Benard having taught radio production in Arizona just before his move to Los Angeles. It’s also quite possible that Benard had come to know Jones via their work in Vanguard Stage in 1945.
In 1954 Jones staged a season of one-hour plays broadcast over radio station KRLA.
Jones died of cancer at the age of 80 in Los Angeles, in 1983.
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