James Earl Jones might have enjoyed an acting career that lasted nearly 60 years. But the thing he will be remembered for was that voice.
It was a deep, rolling, glorious contrabass; once described as the sound that “Moses heard when addressed by God.”
He was the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, summoning by speech alone the full power of the mystical ‘Force’.
More recently, he could be heard growling “This is CNN”, conveying urgency and bestowing gravitas on the US news channel’s tagline.
James Earl Jones was born on 17 January 1931 in Mississippi, of African-American, American Indian and Irish ancestry. His father, Robert Earl Jones abandoned his family not long after the birth of his son.
It was a big household, with 13 people, and it was decided that Jones should live with his grandmother in Memphis “to ease the burden”. But when he was driven to her house, he clung desperately to the car.
“It was the only way I could express that I wanted to be with them”, he recalled. “They accepted that.”
It was all so traumatic he developed a stammer that lasted into his teens. It got so bad that, for some time, he was unable to speak, and communicated only in writing.
Oscar nomination
Ironically, it was the stammer that turned him towards acting, giving him a life-long appreciation of the spoken word.
In high school, a sympathetic teacher discovered his talent for writing poetry and encouraged him to read his compositions out loud in class. Jones discovered that his stammer eased when he was speaking from memory. Encouraged, he began to take part in debates and public speaking competitions.
He was drawn to the theatre during his time at the University of Michigan and, after completing his military service, sought work as an actor in New York. For a time he lived with his father, not because he was seeking a reconciliation but simply to save on the rent.
“It was too late to get to know him as a father,” he said. “If you don’t learn that from the beginning, there’s no way to catch up.” But Robert, who had tried to make a go of acting himself, supported his son’s ambition with one condition.
“I can’t make a living doing this”, he told the young James. “So if you want to enter this world, do it because you love it.” It wasn’t bad advice.
Despite the difficulties black actors found finding work, Jones made his name in Broadway productions such as Jean Genet’s drama, The Blacks, in which black actors performed in white make-up to subvert colonial stereotypes.
He was fortunate to have hit a time when New York theatre was remaking itself in a different image. No longer did you have to be white and middle class to succeed.
He did Shakespeare; not only Othello, but King Lear, Oberon and Claudius. And there was cutting edge, modern work in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and an all-black production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
In 1968, he won a Tony award for his stage portrayal of a character based on the great black boxer, Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope. He later received an Oscar nomination for his performance in the film version, only the second black actor following Sidney Poitier to be so honoured.
Authority
His first film role was as a young, trim member of Slim Pickens’ flight crew in Stanley Kubrick’s dark satire Dr Strangelove.
He later appeared in a wide variety of movies such as Conan the Barbarian, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. He would think of himself as a journeyman actor who took whatever came along and paid a cheque.
“Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers,” he admitted to the Guardian. “I’m just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, ‘OK, I’ll do that.”
As children know the world over, he was asked to voice Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. The man behind the mask, Dave Prowse, had a strong West Country accent. It was good enough for the Green Cross Code man, but lacked the menace of an evil Jedi bent on intergalactic power.
At his own insistence, Jones was not given a credit for his performance. He felt it was all merely another “special effect”. When the films broke all box office records, he was persuaded to rethink.
He was also well known as a television performer, playing the older Alex Hailey in Roots: The Next Generation and winning one of his two Emmys for the lead role in the US drama Gabriel’s Fire. His gravelly tones were used in The Simpsons and as the voice of Mufasa in The Lion King.
He also appeared in early episodes of Sesame Street. To see if the show worked, the producers showed clips to schoolchildren. The one that had the biggest impact, by far, was of James Earl Jones standing motionless, simply counting slowly from one to 10.
In 2011, he was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contribution to the film industry. He received it on the stage of a London theatre where he was appearing with Vanessa Redgrave in the play, Driving Miss Daisy.
Such was the authority in his voice, James Earl Jones became a stalwart of commercial voice-overs, documentaries and computer games. He was the voice of SeaWorld in Florida and NBC’s Olympic coverage. Someone even had the good sense to ask him to record all 27 books of the New Testament.
He was happy to hire out his voice for business, but was more reticent about politics. His father had been black-listed by Senator Joseph McCarthy and he steered clear of controversy.
“My voice is for hire”, he once said. “My endorsement is not for hire. I will do a voice-over, but I cannot endorse without making a different kind of commitment. My politics are very personal and subjective.”
He never retired, working long into his 80s. The boy from Mississippi with a strong stammer will be remembered as a powerful stage actor with a legendary voice.
In 2016, there was even a final performance as Darth Vader in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
His words still had the brutal power they’d wielded four decades previously; bringing to a new generation of children the timeless horror of the Dark Side. – BBC