JAmes Earl Jones, who has died aged 93, was a hugely successful and respected African-American star of stage and screen, an ego titan and a superb interpreter of classical and modern roles from Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill and August Wilson. His looks – commanding, masculine, commanding – were, of course, a key to his success.
But it was his sound that made him a legend. That magnificent, booming basso profundo was like a storm brewing over the horizon, an almost supernatural voice of wisdom and power that made generations of moviegoers from the ’70s to the ’90s tremble in the presence of a father figure, good or evil.
He was the voice of Darth Vader in the first Star Wars trilogy, when he informed Luke Skywalker of something profoundly terrible – I will never forget that voice as he delivered that devastating news – and then he was the voice of Mufasa, father of the boy prince Simba in the great Disney animated film The Lion King, whose death is orchestrated by his evil brother Scar and for which Simba feels unfairly and tragically guilty. Jones’s sonorous voice brought dignity and a kind of benevolent innocence to Mufasa’s speech, in which he explained to the wide-eyed Simba his royal responsibility to the great chain of being: “Everything you see exists in a delicate balance with each other. As king, you must understand that balance and respect all living things, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope…”
This voice was no accident. It was an adornment of Jones’ classical training and talent, and like Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte or Paul Robeson, he was an African-American actor with a beautiful voice that was the key to his dignity and self-respect as a performer; it elevated his characters above racism and cruelty.
In the flesh, Jones gave character to roles in which wisdom coexisted with modesty and self-deprecation—a paradox considering what a formidable force he always was. Perhaps a typical late-period performance of Jones, equal to the thoughtfulness and depth of his stage roles, was his portrayal of the miner “Few Clothes” Johnson in John Sayles’ social realist drama Matewan (1987), about the 1920s strike in Matewan, West Virginia: a strong, clear moral presence. In Darrell Roodt’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), a remake of the Alan Paton novel set in apartheid South Africa and produced to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s new presidency, Jones was the tormented clergyman, Rev. Stephen Kumalo, who learns that his son has been arrested for killing a white man.
Jones made his film debut as Bombardier Zogg in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), piloting the plane that is to deliver the deadly cargo: a younger man, of course with a lighter, less commanding voice, but with the dignity needed for such a terrible, ironic responsibility.
His first Oscar nomination (and the Golden Globe for Best Newcomer) came for what was probably his most combative role: The Great White Hope (1970), which he had also played on Broadway opposite Jane Alexander. Jones plays the all-conquering boxer Jack Jefferson (based on Jack Johnson), whose success infuriates racists who long for a “white hope” to defeat him in the ring, but realize that he can be defeated outside it by exaggerating the supposed scandal of his relationship with a white woman. It was a wild, sensual performance, unlike the quiet calm of his later, more distinctive works, a role that matched his real radical passion.
Jones, incidentally, was at the forefront of the authentic casting debate when he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1972 to denounce Anthony Quinn’s plans to play Haitian Emperor Henri Christophe in blackface. Jones’ objection, although expressed in a moderate manner, caused so much uproar that Quinn was forced to abandon the project and lose his personal investment of half a million dollars.
Jones explored the blaxploitation mood of independent cinema in John Berry’s musical comedy Claudine (1974), for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. He plays Roop Marshall, a garbage man who falls in love with Claudine, played by Diahann Carroll, a single mother of six living on welfare. Her children, and perhaps the audience, might suspect that Roop – a good-natured but somewhat confused man who has not fully acknowledged his existing domestic responsibilities – will effectively be her seventh relative.
In Phil Alden Robinson’s baseball classic Field of Dreams (1989), Jones plays a reclusive Salinger-esque writer, Terence Mann, who is persuaded to attend a game. In the Jack Ryan films, he played another granite authority figure: Admiral James Greer. Comedy was not Jones’s forte, but he played the role of the King of Zamunda, father of Eddie Murphy’s Prince, in Coming to America (1988) with a deadpan face. He also brought some paternal and grandfatherly humor to the coming-of-age comedy The Sandlot (1993), which was inspired somewhat by Field of Dreams and in which he plays another reclusive curmudgeon who scares the neighborhood kids.
And above or below all these successes stand his “voice of God” moments – silly perhaps, but indicative of his joy in acting, of his immediate connection with the audience who naturally loved and respected him. James Earl Jones was a movie star in a class of his own.
