Wednesday, September 11, 2024

James Earl Jones, EGOT Actor

 


James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93

He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.

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By Robert D. McFadden

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James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.

The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.

From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.

So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.

ImageA black and white portrait of Mr. Jones wearing glasses and looking away from the camera with a serious expression on his face.
Mr. Jones in 1979 as the author Alex Haley on “Roots: The Next Generation.”Credit...Warner Brothers Television, via Everett Collection

The rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.

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Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.

Under the artistic and competitive demands of daily stage work and heavy commitments to television and Hollywood — pressures that burn out many actors — Mr. Jones was a rock. He once appeared in 18 plays in 30 months. He often made a half-dozen films a year, in addition to his television work. And he did it for a half-century, giving thousands of performances that captivated audiences, moviegoers and critics.

They were dazzled by his presence. A bear of a man — 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds — he dominated a stage with his barrel chest, large head and emotional fires, tromping across the boards and spitting his lines into the front rows. And audiences were mesmerized by the voice. It was Lear’s roaring crash into madness, Othello’s sweet balm for Desdemona, Oberon’s last rapture for Titania, the queen of the fairies on a midsummer night.

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Mr. Jones wearing regal black, white and gold robes while holding what appears to be a sword between his hands.
Mr. Jones as Othello in the Broadway revival of the play in New York in 1981.Credit...Martha Swope/The New York Public Library

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He liked to portray kings and generals, garbage men and bricklayers; perform Shakespeare in Central Park and the works of August Wilson and Athol Fugard on Broadway. He could strut and court lecherously, erupt with rage or melt tenderly; play the blustering Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (2008) or an aging Norman Thayer Jr. in Ernest Thompson’s confrontation with mortality, “On Golden Pond” (2005).

Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.

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.”

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A portrait of Mr. Jones looking mysterious, wearing black and ensconced in shadow.
Mr. Jones playing the fictional former U.S. President Arthur Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” on Broadway in 2012.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Another of his theatrical techniques was to stand alone for a few minutes in a darkened wing before the curtain went up, settling himself and silently evoking the emotion he needed for the first scene. It became a nightly ritual during performances of Mr. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” (1987), in which Mr. Jones portrayed a sanitation worker brooding over broken dreams, his once promising baseball career cut short by big league racial barriers. It ran for 15 months on Broadway, and Mr. Jones won a Tony for best actor.

Mr. Jones’s technique in the first “Star Wars” trilogy — “A New Hope” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983) — was another trademark. To sustain Vader’s menace — a voice to go with his black cape and a helmet that filtered his hissing breath and evil tidings — Mr. Jones spoke in a narrowly inflected range, almost a monotone, to make nearly every phrase sound threatening. (He was credited for voice work in the third film, but, at his request, he was not credited in the first two until a special edition rerelease in 1997.)

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Mr. Jones was one of the first Black actors to appear regularly on the daytime soaps, playing a doctor in “The Guiding Light” and in “As the World Turns” in the 1960s. Television became a staple of his career. He appeared in the dramatic series “The Defenders,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and in mini-series, including “Roots: The Next Generation” (1979), playing the author Alex Haley.

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A black and white photo of Mr. Jones holding a child and looking at Diana Sands, who is standing next to him.
Mr. Jones and Diana Sands in the 1960s in the dramatic television series “East Side, West Side.” His prodigious body of work included nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series.Credit...Everett Collection

Mr. Jones’s first Hollywood role was small but memorable, as the B-52 bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on nuclear war, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

While drama critics recorded his steady progress as an actor, Mr. Jones did not win film stardom until 1970, when he played Jack Jefferson, a character based on Jack Johnson, the first Black boxing champion, in “The Great White Hope,” reprising a role he performed on Broadway in 1968. He won a Tony for the stage work and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie.

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A black and white photo of a young Mr. Jones wearing boxing gloves, his left arm extended in a punch.
Mr. Jones as Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope.” He won a Tony for his stage work in the role and was nominated for an Oscar for the movie version.Credit...George Tames/The New York Times

Although he was never active in the civil rights movement, Mr. Jones said early in his career that he admired Malcolm X and that he, too, might have been a revolutionary had he not become an actor.

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He said his contributions to civil rights lay in roles that dealt with racial issues — and there were many. Notable among these was his almost overlooked casting in the 1961 play “The Blacks,” Jean Genet’s violent drama on race relations. It featured a cast that included Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Louis Gossett Jr. and Billy Dee Williams, some wearing gruesome white masks, who night after night enacted in a kangaroo court the rape and murder of a white woman. Mr. Jones, the brutal and beguiling protagonist, found the role so emotionally draining that he left and then rejoined the cast several times in its three-and-a-half-year run Off Broadway.

But the experience helped clarify his feelings about race. “Through that role,” he told The Washington Post in 1967, “I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.”

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Miss., on Jan. 17, 1931, to Robert Earl and Ruth (Connolly) Jones. About the time of his birth, his father left the family to chase prizefighting and acting dreams. His mother eventually obtained a divorce. But when James was 5 or 6, his frequently absent mother remarried, moved away and left him to be raised by her parents, John and Maggie Connolly, on a farm near Dublin, Mich.

Abandonment by his parents left the boy with raw wounds and psychic scars. He referred to his mother as Ruth — he said he thought of her as an aunt — and he called his grandparents Papa and Mama, although even the refuge of his surrogate home with them was a troubled place to grow up.

“I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black,” Mr. Jones told the BBC in a 2011 interview. “She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.” She blamed all white people for slavery, and Native American and Black people “for allowing it to happen,” he said, and her ranting compounded his emotional turmoil.

Traumatized, James began to stammer. By age 8 he was stuttering so badly, and was so mortified by his affliction, that he stopped talking altogether, terrified that only gibberish would come out. In the one-room rural school he attended in Manistee County, Mich., he communicated by writing notes. Friendless, lonely, self-conscious and depressed, he endured years of silence and isolation.

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“No matter how old the character I play,” Mr. Jones told Newsweek in 1968, “even if I’m playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.”

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Mr. Jones wearing a priest’s outfit and sitting among a crowd of people with a solemn look on his face, his hands folded in front of him.
Mr. Jones playing a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).Credit...Miramax, via Alamy

In high school in nearby Brethren, an English teacher, Donald Crouch, began to help him. He found that James had a talent for poetry and encouraged him to write, and tentatively to stand before the class and read his lines. Gaining confidence, James recited a poem a day in class. The speech impediment subsided. He joined a debating team and entered oratorical contests. By graduation, in 1949, he had largely overcome his disability, although the effects lingered and never quite went away.

Years later, Mr. Jones came to believe that learning to control his stutter had led to his career as an actor.

“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak.”

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Mr. Jones sitting back to back with Terrence Howard on an ottoman in a furnished room.
Mr. Jones as Big Daddy in a 2008 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With him was Terrence Howard.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

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Mr. Jones enrolled at the University of Michigan on a scholarship, taking pre-med courses, and joined a drama group. With a growing interest in acting, he switched majors and focused on drama in the university’s School of Music, Theater and Dance. In a memoir, he said he left college in 1953 without a degree but resumed studies later to finish his required course work. He received a degree in drama in 1955.

In college, he had also joined the Army under an R.O.T.C. commitment, then washed out of infantry Ranger School. But he did so well in cold-weather training in the Rockies that he considered a military career. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in mid-1953, after the end of the Korean War, and was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.

In 1955, however, he resigned his commission and moved to New York, determined to be an actor. He lived briefly with his father, whom he had met a few years earlier. Robert Jones had a modest acting career and offered encouragement. James found cheap rooms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, took odd jobs and studied at the American Theater Wing and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.

After minor roles in small productions, including three plays in which he performed with his father, he joined Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960; over several years he appeared in “Henry V,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Richard III” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” During a long run as Othello in 1964, he fell in love with Julienne Marie, his Desdemona.

They were married in 1968, but they divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married the actress Cecilia Hart, who had also played Desdemona to one of his Othellos. She died in 2016. They had a son, Flynn Earl Jones, who survives him, along with a brother, Matthew.

In the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Mr. Jones was in constant demand for stage work in New York, films in Hollywood and television roles on both coasts. He took occasional breaks at a desert retreat near Los Angeles and at his home in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County.

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Mr. Jones wearing a tuxedo and standing in front of a microphone while smiling, his left hand raised in the air.
Mr. Jones in 2017 when he accepted a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But his long run with “Fences” in 1987 and 1988, including a national tour, proved too taxing. He did not return to Broadway for many years, and made movies almost exclusively. His notable film roles included an oppressed coal miner in John Sayles’s “Matewan” (1987); the king of a fictional African nation in the John Landis comedy “Coming to America” (1988), a role he reprised at 90 in 2021 in “Coming 2 America”; an embittered but resilient writer in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” (1989); and a South African priest in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1995).

Mr. Jones received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush at the White House in 1992, Kennedy Center honors in 2002, an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement, and in 2017 a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard University.

In 2015, Mr. Jones and Cicely Tyson appeared in a Broadway revival of D.L. Coburn’s 1976 play, “The Gin Game,” portraying residents of a retirement home making nice, and sometimes not so nice, over a card table. For the 84-year-old Mr. Jones, it was, as The Times noted, his sixth Broadway role in the past decade.

In 2022, Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.

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James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931, Arkabutla, Mississippi, U.S.—died September 9, 2024, Dutchess county, New York) was an American actor who used his deep resonant voice to great effect in stage, film, and television roles. Jones earned Tony Awards for his performances in The Great White Hope (1968–70) and Fences (1987–88), and his prolific movie career included memorable voice roles as Darth Vader in the Star Wars series and Mufasa in The Lion King (1994, 2019).

Early life and education


His father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, abandoned the family before James Earl Jones was born, and his mother, Ruth (née Connolly) Jones, later left him to be raised by her parents in Michigan. This living arrangement added to his turmoil due to his grandmother’s racist tirades; he later called her “the most…bigoted person I have ever known.” As a child Jones developed a severe stutter, and he rarely spoke. However, he overcame the speech impediment in high school, after a teacher encouraged him to recite poetry in class. Jones later attended the University of Michigan (B.A., 1953), majoring in drama. After a brief stint in the U.S. Army, he went to New York City, studying at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg.

Theater career


In 1957 Jones acted in his first Off-Broadway production, and he performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1961–73. He won a Tony Award for his boxer role in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope (1968–70), a play about the tragic career of the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, loosely based on the life of Jack Johnson. He also starred in the film version (1970), for which he garnered an Academy Award nomination. Jones received critical acclaim for the two-character stage play Paul Robeson (1978) and in the title role of William Shakespeare’s Othello (1982), opposite Christopher Plummer’s Iago.

In 1987–88 Jones starred in the Broadway premiere of August Wilson’s Fences, and he earned a Tony for his portrayal of the embittered Troy Maxson. His later Broadway credits included a 2008 production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that featured an all-Black cast as well as productions of Driving Miss Daisy (2010–11), Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2012), George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s You Can’t Take It with You (2014–15), and The Gin Game (2015–16). In 2017 Jones received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

Films


James Earl JonesAmerican actor James Earl Jones, 1990.

A prolific career in pictures began with a part in the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove (1964). Jones’s other movie roles included an evil ruler in the fantasy film Conan the Barbarian (1982), a coal miner fighting for the right to form a union in John Sayles’s Matewan (1987), and an African king who lets his son (played by Eddie Murphy) travel to the United States in the comedy Coming to America (1988) and its sequel (2021). He appeared as Adm. James Greer in the film adaptations of Tom Clancy’s novels about CIA agent Jack Ryan: The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

In 1995 Jones portrayed the Rev. Stephen Kumalo in the film version of Alan Paton’s classic novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Jones next starred opposite Robert Duvall in A Family Thing (1996). His big-screen appearances diminished in the 21st century, though he did take occasional supporting roles.

Voice work and television


Known for his deep resonant voice, Jones was cast in many voice-over roles in television advertising and in films, both as a narrator and for animated characters. He is perhaps best known for giving voice to the villain Darth Vader in the Star Wars series of movies, which began in 1977. In 1994 he provided the voice of the wise Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King. He was the only cast member to reprise his role in the 2019 remake. In addition, in 1977 he won a Grammy Award for best spoken word recording for Great American Documents.

Jones’s television work included a role as a private detective in Gabriel’s Fire (1990–91; retitled Pros and Cons, 1991–92), for which he won an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He also earned an Emmy for his role in the TV movie Heat Wave (1990), about the Watts Riots of 1965. Jones continued to make guest appearances on television into the 21st century.

In 2011 Jones received an honorary Academy Award. He thus achieved a noncompetitive EGOT, having already won an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony.

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James Earl Jones (January 17, 1931 – September 9, 2024) was an American actor known for his film roles and his work in theater. He was one of the few performers to achieve the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony).[1][2][3][4] He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985, and was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1992, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2009, and the Academy Honorary Award in 2011.[5][6]

Born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, in 1931, he had a stutter since childhood. Jones said that poetry and acting helped him overcome the challenges of his disability. A pre-med major in college, he served in the United States Army during the Korean War before pursuing a career in acting. His deep voice was praised as a "stirring basso profondo that has lent gravel and gravitas" to his projects.[7][8] Jones made his Broadway debut in the play Sunrise at Campobello (1957). He then gained prominence for acting in numerous productions with Shakespeare in the Park including Othello, Hamlet, Coriolanus, and King Lear.[9] Jones worked steadily in theater, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as a boxer in The Great White Hope (1968), which he reprised in the 1970 film adaptation, earning him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

Jones won his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as a working class father in August Wilson's Fences (1987). He was a Tony award nominee for his roles as the husband in Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond (2005) about an aging couple, and as a former president in the Gore Vidal play The Best Man (2012). His other Broadway performances included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2008), Driving Miss Daisy (2010–2011), You Can't Take It with You (2014), and The Gin Game (2015–2016). He received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017.[10][11]

Jones made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964). He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Claudine (1974). Jones gained international fame for his voice role as Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, beginning with the original 1977 film. Jones's other notable films include The Man (1972), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Matewan (1987), Coming to America (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Sneakers (1992), The Sandlot (1993), The Lion King (1994), and Cry, the Beloved Country (1995). On television, Jones received eight Primetime Emmy Awards nominations winning twice for his roles in thriller film Heat Wave (1990) and the crime series Gabriel's Fire (1991). He also acted in Roots (1977), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Picket Fences (1994), Homicide: Life on the Street (1997), and Everwood (2004).

Early life and education

Jones's father, Robert Earl Jones, in promotional still for the Langston Hughes play Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938)

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931,[12][13] to Ruth (née Connolly); (1911–1986), a teacher and maid, and Robert Earl Jones (1910–2006), a boxer, butler, and chauffeur. His father left the family shortly after James Earl's birth and later became a stage and screen actor in New York and Hollywood.[14] Jones and his father did not get to know each other until the 1950s, when they reconciled. He said in interviews that his parents were both of mixed African-American, Irish, and Native American ancestry.[15][16]

From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly,[12] on their farm in Dublin, Michigan; they had moved from Mississippi in the Great Migration.[17] Jones found the transition to living with his grandparents in Michigan traumatic and developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak. He said, "I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school."[17] He credited his English teacher, Donald Crouch, who discovered he had a gift for writing poetry, with helping him end his silence.[14] Crouch urged him to challenge his reluctance to speak through reading poetry aloud to the class.[18][19]

In 1949, Jones graduated from Dickson Rural Agricultural School[20] (now Brethren High School) in Brethren, Michigan, where he served as vice president of his class.[21]

He attended the University of Michigan, where he was initially a pre-med major.[14] He joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and excelled. He felt comfortable within the structure of the military environment and enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow cadets in the Pershing Rifles Drill Team and Scabbard and Blade Honor Society.[22] After his junior year,[23] he focused on drama with the thought of doing something he enjoyed, before, he assumed, he would have to go off to fight in the Korean War. Jones graduated from the university in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in drama.[12][24][25]

Military service

With the war intensifying in Korea, Jones expected to be deployed as soon as he received his commission as a second lieutenant. While he waited for his orders, he worked on the stage crew and acted at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan.[26] Jones was commissioned in mid-1953, after the Korean War's end, and reported to Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) to attend the Infantry Officers Basic Course. He attended Ranger School and received his Ranger Tab. Jones was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 38th Regimental Combat Team.[27] He was initially to report to Fort Leonard Wood, but his unit was instead sent to establish a cold-weather training command at the former Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado.[28] His battalion became a training unit in the rugged terrain of the Rocky Mountains. Jones was promoted to first lieutenant prior to his discharge.[29]

Jones moved to New York, where he studied at the American Theatre Wing and worked as a janitor to support himself.[30][31]

Career

External audio
audio icon James Earl Jones talks with Studs Terkel on WFMT; 1968/02, 49:25, Studs Terkel Radio Archive[32]

1953–1972: Early roles and acclaim

Jones began his acting career at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan. In 1953, he was a stage carpenter, and between 1955 and 1957, he acted and was a stage manager. In his first acting season at the Ramsdell, he portrayed Othello.[33] His early career also included an appearance in the ABC radio anthology series Theatre-Five.[34] In 1957, he made his Broadway debut as understudy to Lloyd Richards in the short-lived play, The Egghead, by Molly Kazan.[35] The play ran only 21 performances,[36] but three months later, in January 1958, Jones created the featured role of Edward the butler in Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello at the Cort Theatre.[37]

In 1961, Jones appeared in an Off-Broadway production of The Blacks by Jean Genet, alongside eight subsequently prominent Black actors, including Roscoe Lee Browne, Cicely Tyson, Lou Gossett and others.[38] The New York Public Library has a collection of photographs of this production, including one of Tyson and Jones.[39]

Jones performs Othello's Act I, scene III monolog from Shakespeare's Othello at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009

During the early to mid 1960s, Jones acted in various works of William Shakespeare, becoming one of the best known Shakespearean actors of the time. He tackled roles such as Othello and King Lear, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Abhorson in Measure for Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet. Also during this period, Jones made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) as the young Lt. Lothar Zogg, the B-52 bombardier. Jones would later play a surgeon and Haitian rebel leader in The Comedians, alongside Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alec Guinness.[23]

In December 1967, Jones starred alongside Jane Alexander in Howard Sackler's play, The Great White Hope, at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Jones took the role of the talented but troubled boxer "Jack Jefferson", who is based on the real champion Jack Johnson. The play was a huge success when it moved to Broadway on October 3, 1968. The play was well received, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Jones himself won the 1969 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, and the Drama Desk Award for his performance.[40][41]

In 1969, Jones participated in making test films for the children's education series Sesame Street; these shorts, combined with animated segments, were shown to groups of children to gauge the effectiveness of the then-groundbreaking Sesame Street format. As cited by production notes included in the DVD release Sesame Street: Old School 1969–1974, the short that had the greatest impact with test audiences was one showing bald-headed Jones counting slowly to ten. This and other segments featuring Jones were eventually aired as part of the Sesame Street series itself when it debuted later in 1969 and Jones is often cited as the first celebrity guest on that series, although a segment with Carol Burnett was the first to actually be broadcast.[14] He also appeared on the soap opera Guiding Light.[23]

Jones and Jill Clayburgh in a stage production of Othello at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California, on April 9, 1971

In 1970, Jones reunited with Jane Alexander in the film adaptation of The Great White Hope. This would be Jones's first leading film role. Jones portrayed boxer Jack Johnson, a role he had previously originated on stage. His performance was acclaimed by critics and earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He was the second African-American male performer after Sidney Poitier to be nominated for this award.[14] Variety described his performance declaring, "Jones' recreation of his stage role is an eye-riveting experience. The towering rages and unrestrained joys of which his character was capable are portrayed larger than life."[42] In The Man (1972), Jones starred as a senator who unexpectedly becomes the first African-American president of the United States.[23]

1973–1983: Rise to prominence

In 1973, Jones played Hickey on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh[43] and starred in the title role of William Shakespeare's King Lear opposite Paul Sorvino, René Auberjonois, and Raul Julia at the New York City Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, which was recorded and broadcast in the PBS Great Performances series the following year.[44] In 1974, Jones played Lennie on Broadway in the 1974 Brooks Atkinson Theatre production of the adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella, Of Mice and Men, with Kevin Conway as George and Pamela Blair as Curley's wife.[45]

In 1974, Jones co-starred with Diahann Carroll in the film Claudine,[13] the story of a woman who raises her six children alone after two failed and two "almost" marriages. The film is a romantic comedy and drama, focusing on systemic racial disparities black families face. It was one of the first major films to tackle themes such as welfare, economic inequality, and the typical marriage of men and women in the African American community during the 1970s. Jones and Carroll received widespread critical acclaim and Golden Globe nominations for their performances.[46] Carroll was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.[47]

In 1977, Jones made his debut in his iconic voiceover role as Darth Vader in George Lucas's space opera blockbuster film Star Wars: A New Hope, which he would reprise for the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Darth Vader was portrayed in costume by David Prowse in the film trilogy, with Jones dubbing Vader's dialogue in postproduction because Prowse's strong West Country accent was deemed unsuitable for the role by director George Lucas.[48] At his own request, Jones was uncredited for the release of the first two Star Wars films,[49] though he would be credited for the third film and eventually also for the first film's 1997 "Special Edition" re-release.[50] As he explained in a 2008 interview:

When Linda Blair did the girl in The Exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was controversy as to whether Mercedes should get credit. I was one who thought no, she was just special effects. So when it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I'm just special effects. But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, OK I'll let them put my name on it.[49]

In 1977, Jones also received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Great American Documents.[51] In late 1979, Jones appeared on the short-lived CBS police drama Paris.[52] Jones also starred that year in the critically acclaimed TV mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations as the older version of author Alex Haley.[14]

1985–1999: Established career

In 1987, Jones starred in August Wilson's play Fences as Troy Maxson, a middle aged working class father who struggles to provide for his family.[23] The play, set in the 1950s, is part of Wilson's ten-part "Pittsburgh Cycle". The play explores the evolving African American experience and examines race relations, among other themes. Jones won widespread critical acclaim, earning himself his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.[13] Beside the Star Wars sequels, Jones was featured in several other box office hits of the 1980s: the action/fantasy film Conan the Barbarian (1982),[23] the Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America (1988),[23] and the sports drama/fantasy Field of Dreams (1989)[23] which earned an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination.[53] He also starred in the independent film Matewan (1987),[23] which dramatized the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners' strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia. He received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his performance.[54]

Jones with President George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush in 1992, receiving the Medal of Arts

In 1985, Jones lent his bass voice as Pharaoh in the first episode of Hanna-Barbera's The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible.[55] From 1989 to 1992, Jones served as the host of the children's TV series Long Ago and Far Away.[56] Jones appeared in several more successful films during the early-to-mid-1990s, including The Hunt for Red October (1990),[23] Patriot Games (1992),[23] The Sandlot (1993),[13] Clear and Present Danger (1994),[23] and Cry, the Beloved Country (1995).[23] He also lent his distinctive bass voice to the role of Mufasa in the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King.[12] In 1992, Jones was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President George H. W. Bush.[12] Jones had the distinction of winning two Primetime Emmys in the same year, in 1991 as Best Actor for his role in Gabriel's Fire and as Best Supporting Actor for his work in Heat Wave.[13][57]

Jones also performed voice work for The Simpsons: in the 1990 "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween special and in two other episodes.[13]

Jones played lead characters on television in three series. Gabriel's Fire[23] and a revamped version called Pros and Cons aired on ABC between 1990 and 1992. In both formats of that show, Jones played a former policeman wrongly convicted of murder who, upon his release from prison, becomes a private eye. In 1995, Jones starred in Under One Roof as Neb Langston, a widowed African-American police officer sharing his home in Seattle with his daughter, his married son and children, and Neb's newly adopted son.[58] The show was a mid-season replacement and lasted only six weeks, but earned him another Emmy nomination. He also portrayed Thad Green on "Mathnet", a parody of Dragnet that appeared in the PBS program Square One Television.[59] In 1998, Jones starred in the widely acclaimed syndicated program An American Moment (created by James R. Kirk and Ninth Wave Productions). Jones took over the role filled by Charles Kuralt, upon Kuralt's death.[60]

On July 13, 1993, accompanied by the Morgan State University choir, Jones spoke the U.S. national anthem before the 1993 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Baltimore.[61][62] In 1996, he recited the classic baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra,[63] and on June 1, 2007, he did the same before a Philadelphia Phillies home game.[64]

External videos
video icon [1] Jones reciting the National Anthem at the 1993 MLB All Star Game

2000–2009: Career honors and other roles

Jones guest-starred in many television shows over the years, including for NBC's Law & Order, and Frasier, ABC's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Fox's medical drama House, M.D., and CBS' The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men.[65]

In 2002, Jones received Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Also at the ceremony were fellow honorees Paul Simon, Elizabeth Taylor, and Chita Rivera. President George W. Bush joked, "People say that the voice of the president is the most easily recognized voice in America. Well, I'm not going to make that claim in the presence of James Earl Jones."[66] Those there to honor Jones included Sidney Poitier, Kelsey Grammer, Charles S. Dutton, and Courtney B. Vance.[67]

He also voiced the CNN tagline, "This is CNN".[13] He lent his voice to the opening for NBC's coverage of the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics.[60] Jones narrated all 27 books of the New Testament in the audiobook James Earl Jones Reads the Bible.[68] Although uncredited, Jones's voice is possibly heard as Darth Vader at the conclusion of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005). When specifically asked whether he had supplied the voice, possibly from a previous recording, Jones told Newsday: "You'd have to ask Lucas about that. I don't know."[49]

On April 7, 2005, Jones and Leslie Uggams headed the cast in an African-American Broadway revival version of On Golden Pond, directed by Leonard Foglia and produced by Jeffrey Finn.[14] In February 2008, he starred on Broadway as Big Daddy in a limited-run, all-African-American production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,[13] directed by Debbie Allen and staged at the Broadhurst Theatre. In November 2009, James reprised the role of Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre in London's West End. That production also starred Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mamma, and Adrian Lester as Brick.

In 2009, for his work on film and television, Jones was presented with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award by Forest Whitaker.[69]

2010–2022: Later career and retirement

Jones in the 2010 revival of the play Driving Miss Daisy at the Theatre Royal in Sydney

In October 2010, Jones returned to the Broadway stage in Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy, along with Vanessa Redgrave at the Golden Theatre.[70] In November 2011, Jones starred in Driving Miss Daisy in London's West End, and on November 12 received an honorary Oscar in front of the audience at the Wyndham's Theatre, which was presented to him by Ben Kingsley.[71] In March 2012, Jones played the role of President Art Hockstader in Gore Vidal's The Best Man on Broadway at the Schoenfeld Theatre: he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. The play also starred Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette (as candidate William Russell), Candice Bergen, Eric McCormack (as candidate Senator Joseph Cantwell), Jefferson Mays, Michael McKean, and Kerry Butler, with direction by Michael Wilson.[72][73]

Jones with Dame Angela Lansbury in 2013

In 2013, Jones starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave in a production of Much Ado About Nothing directed by Mark Rylance at The Old Vic, London.[74] From February to June 2013, Jones starred alongside Dame Angela Lansbury in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy.[75] In 2014, Jones starred alongside Annaleigh Ashford as Grandpa in the Broadway revival of the George S. Kaufman comedic play You Can't Take It with You at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Ashford received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play nomination for her performance. On September 23, 2015, Jones opened in a new revival of The Gin Game opposite Cicely Tyson, at the John Golden Theater, where the play had originally premiered (with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy). The play had a planned limited run of 16 weeks.[76] It closed on January 10, 2016.

Jones in 2013

In 2013–2014, he appeared alongside Malcolm McDowell in a series of commercials for Sprint in which the two dramatically recited mundane phone and text-message conversations.[77][78] In 2015, Jones starred as the Chief Justice Caleb Thorne in the American drama series Agent X alongside actress Sharon Stone, Jeff Hephner, Jamey Sheridan, and others. The television series was aired by TNT from November 8 to December 27, 2015, running only one season and 10 episodes. Jones officially reprised his voice role of Darth Vader for the character's appearances in the animated TV series Star Wars Rebels[79][80] and the live-action film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016),[81][82] as well as for a three-word cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).[83]

In 2019, he reprised his voice role of Mufasa for the CGI remake of The Lion King, directed by Jon Favreau, in which he was the only original cast member to do so.[84][85] According to Favreau, Jones's lines from the original film remained mostly the same.[86][87] Chiwetel Ejiofor, who voiced Mufasa's evil brother Scar in the remake, said that "the comfort of [Jones reprising his role] is going to be very rewarding in taking [the audience] on this journey again. It's a once-in-a-generation vocal quality."[86] Jones reprised the role of King Jaffe Joffer in Coming 2 America (2021), the sequel to Coming to America (1988); this was his final screen credit.[88][89]

In 2022, his voice was used via Respeecher software for Darth Vader in the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi.[90] During production, Jones signed a deal with Lucasfilm authorizing archival recordings of his voice to be used in the future to artificially generate the voice of Darth Vader.[91] In September 2022, Jones announced that he would retire from the role of voicing Darth Vader with future voice roles for Vader being created by that means.[92]

Personal life

Marriages and illness

In 1968, Jones married actress and singer Julienne Marie, whom he met while performing as Othello in 1964.[93] They had no children and divorced in 1972.[94] In 1982, he married actress Cecilia Hart, with whom he had a son, Flynn.[95][96] Hart died from ovarian cancer on October 16, 2016.[97]

In April 2016, Jones spoke publicly for the first time in nearly 20 years about his long-term health challenge with type 2 diabetes. He was diagnosed in the mid-1990s after his doctor noticed he had fallen asleep while exercising at a gym.[98]

Jones was Roman Catholic, having converted during his time in the military.[99][55]

Death and legacy

Jones died at his home in Pawling, New York, on September 9, 2024, at the age of 93.[88][100] In a statement, CNN said that Jones "was the voice of CNN and our brand for many decades, uniquely conveying through speech instant authority, grace, and decorum. That remarkable voice is just one of many things the world will miss about James."[101] Jones's alma mater, the University of Michigan, paid tribute to him by posting a "We Are Michigan" video narrated by Jones on X.[102][103] The NAACP, SAG-AFTRA, The Public Theater, and MLB also paid tribute to Jones.[104] The Empire State Building in New York City was lit up to look like Jones’s iconic Darth Vader villain from "Star Wars".[105] Vice President Kamala Harris praised Jones writing, "[He] used his voice to challenge America’s thinking on civil rights and race, and he continued to move our nation forward through his art."[106] Former President Bill Clinton released a statement praising Jones as "a brilliant actor who brought to life some of the most iconic characters ever".[107] Actor Denzel Washington paid tribute to Jones calling him his "hero" adding, "I wasn’t going to be as big as him. I wanted to sound like him. He was everything to me as a budding actor. He was who I wanted to be."[108] Numerous members of the entertainment industry also paid tribute to Jones including Kevin Costner, Mark Hamill, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barry Jenkins, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, Courtney B. Vance, Octavia Spencer, Jeffrey Wright, Jamie Foxx, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Rosario Dawson, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Uzo Aduba, Alec Baldwin, Danny DeVito, William Shatner, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.[109][110][111][112][113]

Following his death, The New York Times described Jones's career as a "a prodigious body of work" and called him "one of America's most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career".[12] The Hollywood Reporter referred to Jones as "one of the most-admired American actors of all time".[13] The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw wrote, "like Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte or Paul Robeson, [Jones] was an African American actor with a beautiful voice which was the key to his dignity and self-respect as a performer; it was how his characters rose above racism and cruelty", and described Jones as "movie royalty".[114] In 2011, Academy Award-nominated actor Alec Baldwin called Jones "one of the greatest actors in American history".[5]

Jones was recognized as a groundbreaker and pioneer for African Americans for his significant roles on stage and television.[12] In 1965, Jones became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama acting in As the World Turns.[115] Academy Award–winning actress Viola Davis said that Jones's career reflected "black excellence".[116] Critic Clive Barnes said that Jones's theater roles were "like a black avenging angel ... Even when corrupted by misery, his presence has an almost moral force to it, and his voice rasps out an agony nearly too personally painful in its nakedness".[117] In 2022, the Cort Theatre was renamed after James Earl Jones, becoming the second Broadway venue named after a Black theatrical artist, the first being the August Wilson Theatre named after the playwright August Wilson.[118] The Cort Theatre was the same stage on which Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958.[119]

Acting credits

Main article: James Earl Jones on screen and stage

Jones had an extensive career in film, television, and theater. He started out in film by appearing in the 1964 political satire film Dr. Strangelove as Lt. Lothar Zogg. He then went on to star in the 1970 film The Great White Hope as Jack Jefferson, a role he first played at Washington's Arena Stage in the world premier of Howard Sackler's play of the same name.[120]

Jones's television work includes playing Woodrow Paris in the series Paris between 1979 and 1980.[121] He voiced various characters on the animated series The Simpsons in three separate seasons (1990, 1994, 1998).[122]

Jones's theater work includes numerous Broadway plays, including Sunrise at Campobello (1958–1959), Danton's Death (1965), The Iceman Cometh (1973–1974), Of Mice and Men (1974–1975), Othello (1982), On Golden Pond (2005), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2008), and You Can't Take It with You (2014–2015).[40]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by James Earl Jones
Formerly known as the Cort Theatre, now the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway

Jones received two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Grammy Award. He also was the recipient of a Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2011, he received an Academy Honorary Award.[123] As such, he has been described as being an EGOT winning having been the recipient of the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). There is debate as to if the definition of EGOT extends to non-competitive winners such as Jones, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, and Harry Belafonte.[124][125][126]

In 1985, Jones was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame[127][128] He was also the 1987 First recipient of the National Association for Hearing and Speech Action's Annie Glenn Award.[129] In 1991, he received the Common Wealth Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Dramatic Arts. In 1992, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by George H. W. Bush.[12] He received the 1996 Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars.[130] Also in 1996, he was given the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member George Lucas.[131][132] In 2002, he was the featured Martin Luther King Day speaker for Lauderhill, Florida.[133] In 2011, he received the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Monte Cristo Award Recipient.[134] He also received an Honorary Academy Award on November 12, 2011.[5] He was the 2012 Marian Anderson Award Recipient.[135][136] Jones won the 2014 Voice Icon Award sponsored by Society of Voice Arts and Sciences at the Museum of the Moving Image. In 2017, he received an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Harvard University.[137] He was honored with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017.[138] In 2019, he was honored as a Disney Legend.[139] In March 2022, Broadway's Cort Theatre was renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in his honor.[140][141]

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