William Frank Jones, stage name Christopher Jones (August 18, 1941 – January 31, 2014), was an American stage, movie, and television actor. Early life He was born in Jackson, Tennessee, where his father was a grocery clerk and his mother, Robbie, was an artist. Jones's father and aunt admitted her to the state hospital in Bolivar, Tennessee, in 1945. Jones and his brother were then placed in Boys Town in Memphis, where he became a fan of James Dean after being told he bore a resemblance to him. He then joined the Army, but went AWOL, and after serving a sentence in a military prison, he moved to New York City, where he began his acting career. His mother died when he was 19. Acting career Jones (having adopted the stage name Christopher) made his Broadway debut on December 17, 1961, in Tennessee Williams's The Night of the Iguana, directed by Frank Corsaro and starring Shelley Winters. Winters introduced Jones to actress Susan Strasberg, the daughter of method acting progenitor Lee Strasberg. Jones studied at Strasberg's Actors Studio. Jones married Susan in 1965; the couple divorced in 1968. Their daughter, Jennifer Robin Jones, was born in 1966. Moving to Hollywood, Jones was cast in the title role of ABC's television series The Legend of Jesse James, which ran for 34 episodes in the 1965–66 season. When the series ended, he accepted the title role in the movie Chubasco (1967) with Susan Strasberg playing his character's lover/wife. Their real marriage did not survive the filming, and they divorced in 1968. Jones made a guest appearance in the fourth season episode of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." titled; 'The Test Tube Killer Affair' playing a programmed killer. Jones's next acting role, was rock star and presidential aspirant Max Frost in the influential cult film Wild in the Streets (1968), co-starring Shelley Winters, Hal Holbrook, and Richard Pryor. Later that same year, Jones appeared with Yvette Mimieux in the sex comedy Three in the Attic. After two films in Europe with Pia Degermark—The Looking Glass War and Brief Season, both in 1970—Jones was cast by director David Lean in Ryan's Daughter (1970). The two men had a difficult relationship; this was the experience of many actors who worked with Lean. The problems intensified when production of the film took 12 months instead of the expected six, because Lean would wait for the right composition