The first time I specifically remember seeing James Earl Jones in a movie was in The Great White Hope (1970), where he played a Jack Johnson-like boxer. I went to the cinema with my high school girlfriend and her father. Both Jones and Jane Alexander had won Tonys for their Broadway performances. The performances were very good, though I thought the film was too stagy.I was recently making a list of my favorite movies. Field Of Dreams is definitely on it, and James Earl Jones’ near-monologue is a primary reason.
The VOICE
But it’s the voice, in everything from Star Wars (1977 et al.)to The Lion King (1994) to the CNN tag – all represented in this brief Simpsons clip – that he was best known for. Listen also to his narration of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Per Mark Evanier, he even did an episode of Garfield.
It’s strange for someone who stuttered so severely as a child, born on January 17, 1931, in Arkabutla, MS, that he stopped speaking for a time because of his abusive grandmother’s treatment. “Mr. Jones profited from a deep analysis of meaning in his lines. ‘Because of my muteness,’ he said in ‘Voices and Silences,’ a 1993 memoir written with Penelope Niven, ‘I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.'”
I also saw him in the movies, including The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), Coming to America (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Sneakers (1992), The Sandlot (1993), and more recently, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).
Indeed, I watched him in anything that aired on TV, including Homicide: Life on the Street, Picket Fences, Law & Order, and NYPD Blue, and his portrayal of Alex Haley on Roots: The Next Generation.
The Brooks and Marsh book on TV described his role as a police captain on Paris (1979), a short-lived program, as lacking “believability… Jones, a highly respected actor, strutted through this role speaking in booming, stentorian tones as if it were Richard III.” But I watched it; it was James Earl Jones! On this show, he met his second wife, Cecilia Hart, who predeceased him.
“His Acting Resonated Onstage and On-screen”
Alas, I never saw him on stage. “A commanding presence on the Broadway stage, Jones earned four competitive Tony Award nominations for Best Actor in a Play, winning twice for his performances as Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope in 1969 and Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences in 1987. He received a Special Tony Award at the 2017 ceremony…
“In September 2022, the Shubert Organization rechristened its 110-year-old Cort Theatre as The James Earl Jones Theatre… ‘For me standing in this very building 64 years ago at the start of my Broadway career, it would have been inconceivable that my name would be on the building today,’ Jones said in a statement… “Let my journey from then to now be an inspiration for all aspiring actors.'”
Jones was a 2002 Kennedy Center Honoree and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from SAG-AFTRA in 2009 and the National Board of Review in 1995. Here’s a 1996 interview, a life in pictures, a critic’s appreciation of an “ideal elevator companion,” and the New York Times obituary.
Given the fact that he was 93 and had lived what most would consider a “good life,” I was surprised at how utterly sad I was at his passing.
