"The Addams Family" Actress Carolyn Jones 1983 Melrose Abbey Cemetery

Carolyn Sue Jones (April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) was an American actress. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for another 20 years. In 1964 she began playing the role of Morticia Addams in the television series The Addams Family, receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for her work.

Personal life and illness

Her acting career declined after The Addams Family ended in 1966. Sporadic roles in the 1970s included that of Mrs. Moore, the wife of the plantation owner in the Roots mini-series.

Jones landed the role of the power-driven political matriarch Myrna Clegg in the CBS daytime television soap opera Capitol in 1981. The following year, shortly after Capitol debuted, she was diagnosed with colon cancer, and played many of her scenes in a wheelchair. The cancer spread quickly to her liver and stomach. Despite the pain, Carolyn finished the first season.

Marriages

Carolyn Jones was married four times. While studying at the Pasadena Playhouse, Jones married Don Donaldson, a twenty-eight-year-old fellow student. The couple soon divorced. Jones was subsequently married to television producer Aaron Spelling from 1953 until 1964; Jones converted to Judaism when she married Spelling. She and Spelling separated in 1964.

Her third marriage was to Tony Award-winning Broadway musical director, vocal arranger and co-producer Herbert Greene (who was her vocal coach); she left him in 1977.

In September 1982, realizing she was dying, Jones married her boyfriend of five years, actor Peter Bailey-Britton. She wore a lace and ribbon cap to hide the loss of her hair from chemotherapy.

Death

Jones was diagnosed with colon cancer in March 1981. She continued to work, telling her friends she was being treated for ulcers. After a period of apparent remission, the cancer returned in 1982, and in July 1983 she fell into a coma at her home in West Hollywood, California. She died there on August 3, 1983, with her husband at her side. Her ashes were entombed at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park Cemetery in Anaheim, California, beside her mother.