It is a moving irony that the possessor of the greatest voice in American acting was so hampered by a stutter that he barely spoke until he got to high school. James Earl Jones, who has died in New York at the age of 93, explained in a 2008 interview that an English teacher named Donald Crouch helped him find his voice by winning him over to epic poetry. “He said to me: ‘If you like words, you should be able to say them out loud’,” Jones said. “So he tricked me into talking. I credit him with being the father of my voice.”
So rich and resonant was the timbre that, despite decades of memorable stage and film performances, many obituaries led with a film series in which his face never appeared. Jones did not even take a credit for the first two Star Wars films. By the time of Return of the Jedi, however, he had to accept that his vocal turn as Darth Vader had become an immovable part of the culture. “When it came to Darth Vader, I said: ‘No, I’m just special effects’,” he said. “But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, okay I’ll let them put my name on it.” His most famous line had already been much misquoted. Vader didn’t exactly say “Luke, I am your father” to a fraught Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back. “No, I am your father,” he corrects the younger man.
Jones seemed relaxed about the Star Wars kerfuffle. Why would he be otherwise? Few actors of his generation could boast such a CV. He made his Broadway debut in 1957 and went on to receive three Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards and a Grammy. He won the National Medal of the Arts and, in 2011, an honorary Academy Award. He was an essential presence in such memorable films as Conan the Barbarian, Field of Dreams and Coming to America. That voice captivated two further generations of film fans with his turn as Mufasa in Disney’s 1994 smash The Lion King. It involves little hyperbole to suggest that no other actor had quite that degree of charisma.
Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi in 1931 and largely raised by maternal grandparents in Michigan. His mother was a teacher and a maid. His father, Robert Earl Jones, was a former boxer who left the family to become a successful actor. In The Sting, the older Jones played Robert Redford’s pal, the minor con man whose death sets in motion the film’s complicated act of revenge. Father and son had by then reunited.
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Clearly a bright fellow, James Earl Jones initially studied medicine at the University of Michigan, but moved on to focus on drama. He did military service just after the Korean War and, upon moving to New York, studied at the American Theatre Wing, the organisation that created the Tony Awards. That Broadway debut came in The Egghead by Molly Kazan, first wife of Elia Kazan. In 1960s he arrived at Joseph Papp’s American Shakespeare Festival, for which he eventually portrayed Othello and Macbeth.
In 2014, he was characteristically amusing about his screen debut in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. “George C Scott was playing Shylock in Shakespeare in the Park when Kubrick came to look him over,” he said. “I was also in the play, as the Prince of Morocco, and Kubrick said, ‘I’ll take the black one, too.’ That’s not what he actually said, but that’s the way I like to put it.” One can imagine the rich bass laughter that would surely have accompanied that anecdote.
Stardom did not come quickly. Discussing his journey through the 1960s, Variety used the dread words “one of Broadway’s best-kept secrets”. The secret was out with his performance as Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, in Howard Sackler’s 1967 play the Great White Hope. Jones received his only Oscar nomination for Martin Ritt’s film version in 1970. For all the Star Wars hoopla, this was surely his greatest performance.
After that, James Earl Jones was always there – a character actor on film; what Orson Welles would have called a “king actor” on stage. It was as if no screen was wide enough to contain his presence. Cast Jones and you immediately established your character as man of integrity and emotional weight. That worked for Phil Alden Robinson in his indestructible 1989 fantasy Field of Dreams. When he turned up as reclusive, and temperamental, author Terence Mann we knew the fictional character was to be taken seriously. Tony awards came for The Great White Hope and for August Wilson’s 1987 play Fences.
Long before his death, Jones – the most celebrated African-American actor of his generation – had gone beyond being a mere performer and taken on the persona of an American avatar. If someone had to be cast as the voice of the nation then few other candidates could compete. “Thank you dear James Earl Jones for everything,” Colman Domingo, one of the black actors who swam in his wake, said on hearing of his passing. “A master of our craft. We stand on your shoulders. Rest now. You gave us your best.”
He was married twice – to actor and singer Julienne Marie from 1968 to 1972, to actor Cecilia Hart from 1982 to her death in 2016 – and had one son with the latter. In 2022 the venue where he made his Broadway debut was renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre. Throughout a remarkable career he remained good humoured and impressively humble. “The secret is never forgetting that you’re a journeyman actor,” he said of his longevity. “Nothing is your final thing, nothing is your greatest thing, nothing is your worst thing. I still consider myself a novice.”
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