NEW YORK (AP) — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon on stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent Barry McPherson confirmed that Jones died at home in the Hudson Valley region of New York on Monday morning. The cause of death was initially unclear.
The pioneer Jones, who became one of the first African-American actors in a long-running role in a soap opera film (“As the World Turns”) in 1965 and worked until his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He also received an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for his lifetime achievement. In 2022, a The Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He was an elegant man in his old age with a dry sense of humor and a fierce work ethic. In 2015 he came to the rehearsals for a Broadway performance of “The Gin Game” he already had the piece memorized and notebooks full of comments from the creative team. He said he was always at the service of the work.
AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on the death of actor James Earl Jones at the age of 93.
“The need to tell stories has always been there,” he told the Associated Press at the time. “I think it first happened around the campfire when the man came home and told his family that he got the bear, not the bear getting him.”
Jones created unforgettable film roles such as the reclusive writer who was lured back into the limelight in “Field of Dreams”, the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and film hit “The Great White Hope”, the Author Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and South African pastor in “Cry, the Beloved Country”.
He was also a sought-after voice actor, Expression of the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father”, often misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benevolent dignity of King Mufasa in the 1994 and 2019 versions Disney’s “The Lion King” and announced during the breaks, “This is CNN.” He won a Grammy in 1977 for his performance on the audio book “Great American Documents.”
James Earl Jones and Peter Cushing in a scene from “Star Wars”.
“If you were an actor or wanted to be an actor, if you walked around these streets looking for jobs, one of our standards was always to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.
His other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali)“Conan the Barbarian”, “Three Men on the Run” and the role of an admiral in three blockbusters Tom Clancy Adaptations – The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Hour and The Cartel. In a rare romantic comedy, Claudine, Jones had an on-screen love affair with Diahann Carroll.
LeVar Burton, who starred alongside Jones in the television movie “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones,” paid tribute to him on X, writing, “There will never be another man with this special combination of grace.”
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958 in “Sunrise At Campobello” and won two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He was also nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was recognized for his mastery of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard equally. Recent Broadway appearances include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Driving Miss Daisy, The Iceman Cometh and You Can’t Take It With You.
An aspiring stage and television actor, he has performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth,” and “King Lear,” as well as in off-Broadway plays.
Jones was born on January 17, 1931, by the light of an oil lamp in a cabin in Arkabutla, Mississippi. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had left his wife before the baby was born to pursue a life as a boxer and later as an actor.
When Jones was six years old, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.
“For me, a world was ending, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, Voices and Silences. “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me, it was a heartbreaking moment, and not long afterward, I began to stutter.”
Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and classmates through handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so flawlessly.
Teachers and students worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I couldn’t get enough of talking, discussing, speaking – acting,” he recalled in his book.
He failed a pre-med exam at the University of Michigan and went to drama school. He also played basketball for four seasons. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.
In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled in the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son polished floors to keep themselves afloat while they looked for acting jobs.
True fame came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggle of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, against racism in early 20th century America. In 1972, Jones reprised his role in the film version and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.
Jones’ two wives were also actresses. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson on the CBS police drama Paris, in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had one son, Flynn Earl, who was born in 1983.
FILE – James Earl Jones, left, greets the press with his wife Cecilia, center, and son Flynn, right, at the premiere of “The Lion King” in Los Angeles, June 12, 1994. Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon on stage and screen, died Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, at the age of 93. (AP Photo/Tara Farrell, File)
In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis Sing “Go the Distance”, Brian Stokes Mitchell sing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson-Jackson.
“You can’t imagine an artist who has served America more,” Director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It seems like a small act, but it’s a big act. It’s something we can look at and see, that’s tangible.”
Although he cited his stutter as one of the reasons he was not a political activist, Jones still hoped that his art could change people’s minds.
“I realized early on through people like Athol Fugard that you can’t change anyone’s mind no matter what you do,” he told AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you can’t change their mind. But you can change their feelings.”
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
