John Joseph Haley Jr. (August 10, 1898 – June 6, 1979) was an American actor, comedian, dancer, radio host, singer, drummer and vaudevillian.

He died in the wreck of the schooner Charles A. Briggs at Nahant, Massachusetts on February 1, 1898, aged 31, when Jack wasn't born yet.

[1] He had one older brother, William Anthony "Bill" Haley, a musician, who developed pneumonia which caused tuberculosis, and he died in 1915 at the age of twenty.

One of his closest friends was Fred Allen, who would frequently mention "Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" on the air.

Haley made a few phonograph records in 1923, and in the early 1930s starred in comedy shorts for Vitaphone in Brooklyn, New York.

He replaced song-and-dance comedian Buddy Ebsen, who had suffered a severe allergic reaction after inhaling aluminum powder from his silver face makeup, which triggered a congenital bronchial condition; the dust settled in Ebsen's lungs and, within a few days of principal photographic testing, he found himself struggling to breathe.

[4] Haley also portrayed the Tin Man's Kansas counterpart, Hickory Twicker, one of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's farmhands.

[10] His funeral was held at the Church of the Good Shepherd and the eulogy was given by Ray Bolger who concluded it by saying, "It's going to be awfully lonely on that Yellow Brick Road now, Jack.