Whatever Happened to Jean Marie Hon — Ruth from TV’s ‘Ark II’

Growing up, one of my favorite Saturday morning TV shows was Ark II. The show was set in the 25th century after the effects of waste, pollution, and warfare had decimated the Earth. Each week, three young scientists, along with an intelligent talking chimpanzee, would wander around in a high-tech vehicle called the Ark II to search for remnants of humanity, reintroducing lost ideas and, when possible, reigniting a spark of humanity into a world that had fallen into a very dark age.

Along with Jean Marie Hon, who played a character named Ruth, the program also starred Terry Lester as Ark II‘s Commander Jonah and Jose Flores as Samuel. The talking chimpanzee named Adam was voiced by the show’s producer, Lou Scheimer. It was all fairly low budget, and, as most of the live-action kids’ shows in the ’70s, there was always, and I do mean always, a valuable lesson to be learned by the end of the episode.

CBS had it as part of its Saturday morning lineup for almost four years. The weird thing is that, much like the shows by Sid and Marty Krofft, these Filmation productions only had first-run episodes for one or two seasons. In the case of Ark II, it was just a single season. New episodes ran only from September to December of 1976. There were only 15 episodes ever made, but CBS ran them over and over through 1979.

Everett Collection

While reruns of Ark II were still playing on CBS, Jean Marie had moved on and become a recurring character on a competing network: NBC’s underwater sci-fi adventure series, Man from Atlantis. Of the 17 episodes produced, Jean Marie appeared in nine of them as a crew member named Jane. Man from Atlantis had so much potential. It even had its own Marvel comic. Sadly, NBC didn’t really have that much faith in it and canceled it after a single season.

The late ’70s were good to Jean Marie, who made guest appearances on a couple of my favorite shows, Hawaii Five-0 and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. But with the dawn of a new decade, things really started to slow down. For whatever reason, it was clear that acting was no longer Jean Marie’s top priority. Her last working gig was a movie called Blade in Hong Kong, which starred her friend from Ark II, Terry Lester.

After that, she just disappeared. So, where did she go?

The easiest answer can be found on comic book writer Christopher Mills’ blog, Space:1970. According to a post there, Christopher reports that Jean Marie retired from acting to raise a family and became a pharmacist. And, over on Reddit, another poster says that she retired in 2019 after more than three decades of work in that noble profession, which makes sense given that, around the time of her retirement, she would have been in her mid-60s.

A little more sleuthing led me to a webpage called Planet Trout, which is a blog created by Jean Marie’s husband, who also happens to be an avid outdoorsman and fisherman. After spending a bit of time on that site, it’s clear to me that two of the driving forces behind her decision to leave show business were her children, who are both now grown adults. Most of the photos on the blog are of Jean Marie, the wife and mother, not the actress. And, after reading a few of his posts and looking at a handful of pictures, it’s obvious to me that Jean Marie made the right decision.

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Kid Stuff

June 2018

Unleash your inner child by reliving your favorite kids TV shows, cartoons, toys and more!

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