James Earl Jones Was So Much More Than His Golden Voice

With James Earl Jones, the voice was always there. It roared and gushed over you, thick as molasses. He sounded regal, even when he was playing a humble ex-football player instead of a king. It was always unmistakably his voice—it wasn’t even mentioned that he was the voice of Darth Vader in the first two films. star wars Vader could have been the epitome of evil, and he was a clear figure of good and reason in his role as King Mufasa in “The Devil”. The Lion KingOr as a testament to the value of journalism and democracy, like the man who declared “This is… CNN” in a series of ubiquitous promotional ads. The voice made such an impression that when Luke Skywalker took off Vader’s helmet at the end of the film, Return of the JediMany in the audience were disturbed to see the face of the elderly white English actor Sebastian Shaw, and not Jones's distinctive face (or even that of any other black actor).

In almost every other role Jones has played in live-action films during his long and distinguished career, the voice has been in tune with the body it came from. Jones took up space in every way possible. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall and as wide as a barn even when he was young and lean enough to play the gunfighter Jack Johnson in his breakout role in Great White HopeActors are generally smaller than we think, so Jones tended to outshine his co-stars physically and verbally. And when he wanted to—indeed, when he was allowed to, in a career that made him a global icon but was in many ways more limited than his talents deserved—he could wow viewers on screen with his essential dramatic or comedic talent as an actor, regardless of his size or voice.

With news of Jones' death at the age of 93, thoughts naturally turn first to that voice: to him growling as Vedder tells his subordinate, “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” or to him laughing out loud. Field of Dreams I make the point in all seriousness that baseball “reminds us of all that was good once, and can be good again.” But to limit the discussion to this amazing machine diminishes the other talents, and the overall legacy, of a man who was a giant in many senses of the word.

You probably know some of Jones' origin story by now, including the fact that the golden-voiced man had a severe stutter as a child, to the point where he was too embarrassed to introduce himself to strangers. He overcame this struggle through his art (starting by reading poetry aloud in high school English class) and eventually became a respected Broadway actor; his screen debut was in Dr. Strangelove The idea came about because director Stanley Kubrick came to see George C. Scott in a production. The Merchant of VeniceHe was impressed by his young colleague Scott. In 1968, he won a Tony Award for the original stage production of Great White HopeHe then became only the second black nominee, after Sidney Poitier, for the Academy Award for Best Actor when it was made into a film in 1970.

This imposing screen presence proved to be a double-edged sword throughout Jones' screen career, but especially early on. He wasn't as classically handsome as Poitier—though he could be both arrogant and charming in films like the baseball comedy Long-distance Travel Stars at Bingo and Motor Kings – So starring roles were hard to come by. But he was such a prominent subject for the camera, so charismatic, that there was often a risk that he would overshadow any actor asked to stand in his vicinity. And because of his stage background, and because his voice and demeanor could make him seem very aristocratic, he was often cast in the same kind of trap that black stars who followed him, like Morgan Freeman, would fall into: Often, he was hired because of the authority and dignity he exuded, not because the filmmaker had a complex character that they wanted Jones to explore.

But when given the chance to play men rather than icons, Jones was a true marvel.

Field of Dreams He was in the middle of a trilogy of classic baseball movies he appeared in over the years (the other was The SandlotAs has often been the case, this wasn't his movie. Kevin Costner is the star, gets a great emotional arc, gets to meet the ghost of his late father in tears, gets to be a movie star in the best way possible, etc. Jones does a great job of pulling the movie out from under him.

In the book Field of Dreams It was based on, barefoot atmosphereCostner's character Ray Kinsella recruits Catcher in the Rye In 1992, Ray asked author J.D. Salinger to help him with his mission to bring some magic to a baseball stadium built in an Iowa cornfield. Salinger threatened to sue Ray if he used his name in the film, so writer-director Phil Alden Robinson had to create a character who could convincingly inspire that same level of awe. Much of this was accomplished simply by the fact that James Earl Jones, of all people, was playing author Terrence Mann. But Robinson and Jones also allowed Mann to be hilariously prickly (“I’m going to beat you with a crowbar, until you leave,” the exhausted author tells Ray when they first meet), clearly tired of a legacy he never asked for, and genuinely thrilled to see the ghosts of Joe Jackson and Mel Ott play a game in front of him. So when Robinson’s camera rolls in, James Horner’s score goes up, and Mann begins his speech about the beauty and value of baseball.

Everett Group The only part of the speech and the movie that didn't quite fit, especially since the characters Jones played in Bingo Lounge and

The Sandlot

Both Jones and Jones were legendary black baseball players, each modeled after the legendary Josh Gibson: all the baseball players who got a chance at Ray Field were white, not men like Gibson who were prevented from playing against the likes of Shoeless Joe because of the color of their skin. Jones’s character offers this anthem to baseball purity without even hinting at that fact. Like many great actors who kept finding starring roles in movies elusive, Jones tried his hand at television several times and became the rare actor to win two Emmy Awards in the same year, in 1991, for a TV movie about the Watts riots titled Heat waveand to represent in Gabriel's Firea short-lived private investigator drama about a man released from prison after serving 20 years for a murder he didn't commit. From his first Emmy-nominated role (as a financially struggling husband and father facing family tragedy in a 1960s social worker drama) East and West Side) to the end of his life (as a coal miner and a jazz pianist in a few episodes of the early family drama Aughts

Everwood ), he gave everything he was asked to do. Gabriel's FireIt was a rare case of executives looking at Jones in serious actor mode and wondering if they should let him be funnier; after its first season, it was renewed into a funnier series called Pros and Conswith Jones and Richard Crenna playing the same characters in both. But this version only lasted half a season, making it difficult for Jones to wear the metaphorical jester hat again in the future. But he found opportunities whenever possible to play his own image. In the second episode ever of sesame streetHe recited the alphabet in his familiar baritone voice. He also voiced Maggie Simpson in an episode of Treehouse of Horror, and modified his tendency to be an authority figure by playing the president in the “Mathnet” segments of the public television math show. The first square In the early 1990s, he did a series of television commercials for Bell Telephone, each script clearly written with the knowledge of who would deliver lines like “This is the book that made Bubba cook.” Mufasa wasn't even the first African king Jones would play, as The Lion KingThis was preceded by his mischievous turn as the arrogant King Jaffe Joffer in Eddie Murphy's 1988 film The Magician.

. Most popularHe reprised the role in the 2021 sequel. Coming to AmericaBut most of his final credits were voice-only, including playing Mufasa again in CGI. The Lion King and Feder in various star wars Movies & Shows. Latest in 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi The series, credited to Jones, was not actually worked on; by that point, he had given up the rights to Lucasfilm to digitally recreate his voice for any future projects, and an AI program created Vader's new dialogue based on his previous work. Like so much about this show, Vader's voice was close to what we'd known from the past.

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