Dickie Jones is an American actor who achieved some success as a child and as a young adult, especially in B-Westerns and television. He is best known as the voice of Pinocchio in the 1940 Walt Disney film.

Jones was born in Snyder, the seat of Scurry County on the South Plains in Texas. The son of a newspaper editor, Jones was a prodigious horseman from infancy, billed at the age of four as the “World’s Youngest Trick Rider and Trick Roper”.

At the age of six, he was hired to perform riding and lariat tricks in the rodeo owned by Western star Hoot Gibson. Gibson convinced young Jones and his parents that there was a place for him in Hollywood, so the boy and his mother moved there.

Gibson arranged for some small parts for the boy, whose good looks, energy and pleasant voice quickly landed him more and bigger parts, both in low-budget Westerns and in more substantial productions. Although often uncredited, he was usually known as Dickie Jones. A well known early film role is the film A Man to Remember. Jones also appeared as a bit player in several of Hal Roach’s Our Gang shorts. In 1939, Dickie Jones appeared as a troublesome kid named ‘Killer Parkins’ in the film, Nancy Drew-Reporter. In the film he did a good imitation of Donald Duck.

Dennis Hopper was honored with the 2,403rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the ceremony Guests included Viggo Mortensen, Mark Canton, Laurence Fishburne, David Lynch, Johnny Mathis, Jack Nicholson, Danny Trejo, Dwight Yoakum, and Clifton Collins Jr.

6712 Hollywood Boulevard on March 26, 2010

BIOGRAPHY

An acclaimed actor and filmmaker with an iconic and distinctly American voice, Hopper has been twice nominated for an Academy Award: as Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic father who gets sober to coach his son's basketball team in Hoosiers, and for Best Original Screenplay of the counter-culture road movie Easy Rider, a film he directed, starred in, and co-wrote with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern.

Hopper was born in Dodge City, Kansas, and grew up in San Diego, California. He made a lasting impression as a teenager with his performance in Nicholas Ray's classic Rebel Without a Cause, opposite James Dean and Natalie Wood, quickly following that with an equally revelatory performance in George Stevens' epic Giant. Relocating to New York City where he studied with Lee Strasberg, Hopper starred in such television shows as "The Rifleman," "Naked City" and "The Twilight Zone."

Returning to Hollywood, Hopper forever changed the face of American cinema with the 1969 film Easy Rider. The movie, made for $350,000, went on to gross in excess of $50 million and garnered Hopper the Best New Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Since Easy Rider, Hopper has been a familiar presence both in front of and behind the camera for more than three decades. He has been in excess of 140 television shows and has starred in more than 150 films including most notably Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, River's Edge, Hoosiers, The Indian Runner, True Romance, Speed, Waterworld, Basquiat, and Edtv. He received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Hoosiers and as Frank Booth in David Lynch's now-classic Blue Velvet.

In 2008 alone, Hopper appeared in such films as Sleepwalking with Charlize Theron; Quentin Tarantino's Hell Ride; Elegy with Penelope Cruz; Kevin Costner's Swing Vote with Kelsey Grammer; and Wim Wenders's The Palermo Shooting. Other recent film projects for Hopper include the upcoming adventure comedy Alpha and Omega, in which he stars with Hayden Panettiere and Christina Ricci; comedy An American Carol with Kelsey Grammer; and horror thriller Forever with Edward Furlong.

Hopper received the prestigious CIDALC award at the Venice Film Festival for the movie-industry feature The Last Movie, in which he starred, co-wrote, and directed in. He also directed the gang-war crime drama Colors, starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall; action thriller Catchfire, in which he starred with Jodie Foster; and crime drama The Hot Spot, starring Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen.

On television, Hopper has appeared on HBO's Emmy award-winning "Entourage," as well as on the acclaimed series "24"; "Las Vegas" with James Caan; the USA Networks feature The Last Ride; received an Emmy nomination for starring in Paris Trout; and he co-starred opposite Benjamin Bratt in the Jerry Bruckheimer/Warner TV produced NBC series

"E-Ring," during 2005-2006. Most recently he starred in "Crash," a Starz original drama series inspired by the Oscar-winning movie. The series, based loosely on the Academy Award®-winning film, has Hopper taking on the role of successful Los Angeles record producer Ben Cendars, who still lives his life in the fast lane. The critically-praised second season of Crash will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray in July from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

In addition to acting and directing, Hopper is an internationally-known photographer and painter, with retrospective exhibitions in 2001 at the Stedlejik Museum in Amsterdam and The MAK in Vienna. The most important exhibition of his artistic career was in 2007 at The State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a photographic exhibition following at The Manege in Moscow, Russia. In October of 2008, he received the prestigious honor of being named a Commander in France's National Order Of Arts and Letters with the opening of an extensive film and art retrospective at La Cinematheque Francais in Paris. This exhibition moved to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in November of 2009.

Dennis Muren, A.S.C. is an American film special effects artist, most notable for his work on the films of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas. He has won six Oscars for Best Visual Effects.

Muren was born in Glendale, California, the son of Charline Louise and Elmer Ernest Muren. He developed an interest in film-making and special effects from an early age. While studying business at Pasadena City College, Muren spent $6500 to make Equinox, a short science fiction film. Tonylyn Productions, a small film company, liked the film enough to distribute it. Tonylyn hired film editor Jack Woods to direct additional footage in order to make Equinox into a feature-length movie. When the feature-length Equinox was released in October 1970, Muren was credited as a producer in spite of having directed much of the film and creating the special effects himself. Despite mixed to poor reviews the movie made enough money for Muren to recoup his $8000 investment, and in the years since it has become a minor cult classic.

After earning his associate’s degree, Muren began working as a visual effects artist full-time. In 1976, Muren was hired at Industrial Light & Magic, then an upstart visual effects studio founded by little-known director George Lucas. Lucas and ILM’s first film, Star Wars, was released in 1977 to wide critical and public acclaim and was the highest grossing film of all time up until that point.

Muren has been an important voice for pioneering new technologies in special effects. Muren spearheaded ILM’s move from models and miniatures to CGI for the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In a 2000 interview, he stated that Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the film he was most proud of.

Desi Arnaz was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer. While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the classic American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to whom he was married at the time.

Desi Arnaz was born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de Cuba to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz and his wife Dolores de Acha. His father was Santiago’s youngest mayor and also served in the Cuban House of Representatives. His mother’s father was Alberto de Acha, one of the three founders of Bacardi Rum. According to Arnaz himself, in his autobiography A Book, the family owned three ranches, a palatial home, and a vacation mansion on a private island in Santiago Bay, Cuba. Following the 1933 revolution, led by Fulgencio Batista, which overthrew President Gerardo Machado, Alberto Arnaz was jailed and all of his property was confiscated. He was released after six months when U.S. officials, who believed him to be neutral, intervened on his behalf. The family then fled to Miami, Florida.

In the US Desi Arnaz turned to show business to support himself. In 1939, he starred on Broadway in the musical Too Many Girls. He went to Hollywood the next year to appear in the show’s movie version at RKO, which starred Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball married on November 30, 1940. Arnaz also played guitar for Xavier Cugat.

Arnaz appeared in several movies in the 1940s, notably Bataan. He received his draft notice, but before reporting he injured his knee. He completed his recruit training, but was classified for limited service during World War II. He was assigned to direct United Service Organization programs at a military hospital in the San Fernando Valley. Discovering the first thing the wounded soldiers requested was a glass of cold milk, he arranged for movie starlets to meet them and pour the milk for them. Following his discharge from the Army, he formed another orchestra, which was successful in live appearances and recordings. He hired his childhood friend Marco Rizo to play piano and arrange for the orchestra. When he became successful in television, he kept the orchestra on his payroll, and Rizo arranged and orchestrated the music for I Love Lucy.