Wissenswertes

On the night of the tragic Cocoanut Grove fire, a large number of guests and close friends was at the club for a combination testimonial dinner in honor of Buck and a promotional event for his "Rough Rider" series for Monogram Pictures. Although the story is that Jones managed to escape the fire but returned back inside to help rescue people, the truth is that he was trapped inside along with all the others and never made it out. Monogram's studio head Scott R. Dunlap was one of those critically injured in the fire that killed over 500 people. Buck died two days later in a hospital before his wife, who luckily was out of town that night, could reach him.

His daughter Maxine Jones was born in 1918; she married Noah Beery Jr..

He gave permission for his name to be used in a comic book series that was later taken over by the Dell Publishing House. The series ran roughly until 1953 and was a needed source of revenue for his wife Odille.

His body had been so badly burned in the Cocoanut Grove fire that skin from his fingers had been pulled off onto the fingerprint card sent to the Technical Section of the FBI's Identification Division. It took nearly 48 hours to identify the prints because so many fingers had to be searched in so many different places.

In 1928 he formed his own production company but the stock market crashed the following year and took him for everything. In response, he formed his own "Wild West" show performing on his white steed Silver. His wife, Odille Osborne, rode her own horse "Bumper" and their 11-year-old daughter Maxine rode her little pony. The tour was also a failure, and he returned to the movies after being off-screen for over a year.

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1973.

On his World War I draft registration filed on 5/28/1917, he gave 24 as his age.

Sued Republic Pictures for making Lone Ranger movies, saying it stole his idea. He was making movies in the '20s and into the '30s where he played a Texas Ranger who rode a white horse named Silver and he claimed he originated the yell; "Hi-Yo Silver". He lost the case.

It's the Buck Jones Daisy Rifle that has the compass and sundial, not the Red Ryder Daisy Rifle, as shown in Fröhliche Weihnachten (1983).

Profiled in "Back in the Saddle: Essays on Western Film and Television Actors", Gary Yoggy, ed. (McFarland, 1998).

Co-founded, with Trem Carr and Scott R. Dunlap, Great Western Pictures, a production company.

His mother, Mrs. Eva R. McCammon, died in an Indianapolis nursing home on 10/29/54. She was 80 years old.

May have been the namesake for comic strip hero Buck Rogers.

In 1997, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.

Jones was also a consultant for Daisy, which issued a Daisy "Buck Jones" model pump-action air rifle. Incorporating a compass and a "sundial" into the stock, it was one of Daisy's top-end air rifles and sold well for several years.

In 1960, Jones was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry. The star is located at 6834 Hollywood Blvd.

In 1937 Jones starred in Hoofbeats, a syndicated 15-minute radio program. The 39 episodes could be broadcast daily, weekly, or multiple times a week by individual radio stations. The stories were narrated by "the Old Wrangler" and told the adventures of Buck Jones and his horse Silver.[3] The program was produced in the studios of Recordings, Inc., with Grape Nuts Flakes as sponsor.

On "Merv Griffin's '60s Retrospective" DVD, John Wayne in 1970 stated that Buck Jones was his hero, and that Jones did go back into the Cocoanut Grove fire to help rescue additional victims after escaping it himself.

On his album When I Was a Kid, Bill Cosby performed a routine in which he described seeing Jones' movies as a child. He commented on some of the mannerisms displayed by Jones' characters, such as not drinking or smoking and chewing gum to signal that he was getting angry.

His star waned in the late 1930s when singing cowboys became the rage and Jones, then in his late 40s, was uncomfortably cast in conventional leading-man roles. He rejoined Columbia in the fall of 1940, starring in the serial White Eagle (an expansion of his 1932 feature of the same name). The new serial was a hit and Jones was again re-established.