Jones Ike

American film producer and actor who was the first African American to serve as a producer on a major motion picture, namely A Man Called Adam, a 1966 film starring Sammy Davis Jr. He became the first African American graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in June 1953. Harry Belafonte hired him as vice president of development for Harbel Productions, and in the 1960s, Jones headed Nat King Coles Kell-Cole Productions. Jones was relatively unknown outside of the film industry until 1970 when he publicly announced that he had been secretly married to actress Inger Stevens from 1961 until her death of a drug overdose in April 1970. Jones announced that he would use a portion of the $1,171,000 of Stevens estate to open a mental health care clinic in Watts, Los Angeles. At the time, Jones managed a chain of convalescent homes. In 1995, he became the first recipient of the Oscar Micheaux Award, presented by the Producers Guild of America. Ike Jones died of complications from a stroke and congestive heart failure in an assisted-living facility in Los Angeles on 5 October 2014 at age 84. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less