Dick Jones, an actor whose face should be more familiar than it is, given the dozens of movie and television roles he played from the time he was a child, but whose boyhood voice — the voice of Pinocchio in the original animated Disney film — remains indelibly memorable, died on Monday at his home in the Northridge section of Los Angeles. He was 87.

He died after hitting his head in a fall, his son Rick said.

Mr. Jones was known as Dickie when, as an 11- and 12-year-old, he played the title role, the marionette who dreams of becoming a real boy, in “Pinocchio,” still recognized as one of the great animated features in movie history.

Released in 1940, the film was adapted from a 19th-century Italian novel for children (originally written as a serial) in which Pinocchio could be a rather obnoxious wooden tyke. It was Walt Disney himself who insisted that the movie make him more universally lovable, and that the role be played by a child actor.

Image In 1955 and 1956, Mr. Jones played the title role on the series"Bufallo Bill Jr.," the marshal of the fictional town of Wileyville, Tex. Credit... ABC, via Photofest

Dickie Jones gave him what he wanted: the charm of an innocent on a beguiling quest for humanity. Accompanied by Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards), who, in a role greatly expanded from the novel, serves Pinocchio as both a conscience and a comic sidekick, he braves temptation after temptation in a series of adventures, learns the virtues of being truthful and ethical — a good boy — and thus earns his string-free human status.