BARRY JONES was never an Olivier, a Gielgud, a More, a Mills or Guinness, the great British screen actors that sandwiched the war years. But no Guernseyman has ever starred in so many movies, tallying an impressive 72 largely film and TV credits over a long career which he had lined up as a small boy in shorts, growing up along Glategny Esplanade in the late 1890s.
In recent years – the '70s or '80s – John Gillett walked out of the college gates and headed for a pretty successful acting career under the stage name Aden Gillett – he was perhaps best-known for playing the role of Jack Maddox in the BBC series The House of Eliott. But that was nothing in comparison with the depth of work that the son of candle and soapmaker William John Jones and Amelia Hammond (nee Robilliard) achieved.
Born in 1893, he first made the walk up St Julian's Avenue from his seafront home to Elizabeth College in 1902.
As the youngest member of a large family, with eight brothers and sisters, surprisingly, even then he was sure what he wanted to do with his adult life: act.
At the age of seven, he applied for a role in a Shakespearean touring company that was visiting Guernsey and performing Henry V.
He was advised to wait a little longer by Sir Frank Benson, who had brought his troupe of players over from Stratford-upon-Avon.
Young Barry's inspiration had come from seeing first-hand the visiting troupe and he was sufficiently impressed to beg to be taken to see the players the next year.
It was then that he announced his future profession: 'I am going to be an actor when I grow up and I am going to play Shakespeare with Sir Frank Benson. Won't someone take me to meet them?'
It is said he asked Sir Frank: 'When I am grown up, may I be in your company?'.
Sir Frank said he might, but it was no joking matter for Barry.
He wrote to Sir Frank – and he replied. Remarkably, the correspondence continued until the summer of 1914.
Then he announced that he was going on the stage and the Jones family quit thinking it a joke.
The First World War delayed Barry's stage debut and before he could take up that spot with Benson's company, he had to survive four years of Army service.
In December 1914, aged 19, he was commissioned into the militia and the following summer transferred to the Royal Irish.
In January 1916 he was sent to France with his regiment and within two months was wounded. Having recovered, he went to a marginally more peaceful spot – Dublin – and the Sinn Fein disturbances.
As the war rumbled on, he was recalled for duty with the 1st battalion of the RGLI and promoted to captain and a quieter life of recreational training officer.
Three years after the Great War ended, he was demobilised and got his acting head back on.
In 1921 he started his acting career on the British stage and a further 11 years passed before he made his debut film – Shaw's Arms and the Man.
That was one of three movies he made that year and as a character actor, in many films he portrayed nobility.
Clearly, given the number of roles offered to him, he was good at this acting lark and the films came thick and fast either side of the Second World War.
Then came TV and in the 1960s he appeared in both The Saint alongside Roger Moore and a 1965 Sherlock Holmes series.
Half a century later and while researching the The 39 Steps for a school production, Elizabeth College's Dot Carruthers discovered that the 1959 film version, starring Kenneth More, had also featured Old Elizabethan Barry Jones, school number 3023, as the spy ring leader.
It was undoubtedly his biggest movie.
His big screen career ended six years later at the age of 72 when he starred alongside Kirk Douglas in The Heroes of Telemark.
