Esteemed EGOT winner, legendary actor James Earl Jones has passed away today.
James Earl Jones was 93.
Known for his rich, rumbling baritone as his imposing physical presence.
James Earl Jones was one of the premier actors of the world. Notable not merely for fine technique and style, but for his ability to electrify an audience through the controlled intensity of his performances.
(Actor James Earl Jones looking at his reflection in a mirror in a dressing room before going on stage to appear in the play ‘The Great White Hope’ as ‘Jack Jefferson’, Broadway, US, 10th December 1968. Photo by Harry Benson/Daily Express/Getty Images)
James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931 to Robert Earl Jones and Ruth Connolly in Arkabutla, Mississippi.
When Jones was five years old, his family moved to Dublin, Michigan.
His father, Robert Earl Jones, was a prizefighter who turned to acting. His mother, Ruth, was a maid and former schoolteacher. Robert Jones left his family not long after Jones’s birth, and the child was adopted and raised on a Michigan farm by his maternal grandparents.
He graduated from Dickson High School in Brethren, Michigan in 1949. In 1953, Jones participated in productions at Manistee Summer Theatre.
(James Earl Jones as the King of Birds in the University of Michigan student production of “The Birds”, 1954. His first ever stage role.)
After serving in the U.S. Army for two years, Jones received his B.A. degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1955.
Jones developed a strong stutter as a youth and, out of embarrassment, rarely talked until he was 15. A high school English teacher took an interest in him when he learned that Jones wrote poetry.
He helped him overcome his stutter and win a scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he went in 1949. Jones started as a premed student and then switched to drama. He graduated magna cum laude in 1953 and served a stint in the army.
(A demonstrator holds a sign reading “Robeson’s Life Triumph Not Tragedy” outside a theatre before the premiere of a play by Phillip Hayes Dean in which James Earl Jones played Paul Robeson, the singer and civil rights activist, New York, New York, 1978. Photo by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images)
After his service time, Jones moved to New York City to pursue an acting career and for a time was reunited with his father, another struggling actor. Together they waxed floors for money to live on while auditioning for plays. Jones began getting small parts in Off-Broadway shows but did not land his first role on Broadway until 1957.
His career got a big boost when he was invited to join the New York Shakespeare Festival, which performed Shakespeare’s plays each summer in Central Park. Jones was impressive in such leading Shakespearean roles as Othello, King Lear, and Oberon, the king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
(Actor James Earl Jones and guests attend the pre-party for 41st Annual Tony Awards on May 20, 1987 at Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City. Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
During this time he made his film debut as a member of the flying squad that dropped a nuclear bomb on Russia in Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964).
Two years later he made his television debut on the daytime soap opera As The World Turns. That same year Jones became a Broadway star when he was cast as a troubled black heavyweight boxer based on fighter Jack Johnson in the drama The Great White Hope (1966).
(Cecily Tyson and James Earl Jones in “The Blacks,” a play also co-starring Roscoe Lee Browne, Godfrey Cambridge, Maya Angelou, Billy Dee Williams, and other Black luminaries, 1961.)
His powerful performance earned him a Tony Award for best actor in a play. He later earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor when he reprised the role in the 1970 film version.
Jones gave strong performances in a handful of films in the 1970s. He played an eccentric psychiatrist in The End of the Road (1972), the first black president in The Man (1972) written by Rod Serling, and a black baseball player in The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976).
Jones gave a riveting performance as the great actor and human rights activist Paul Robeson in a controversial, one-man show on Broadway. He portrayed writer Alex Haley in television’s Roots: The Next Generation (1979), the sequel to the blockbuster miniseries Roots, based on Haley’s best-selling book.
Jones’s most popular and probably best-known film role is one in which he was never seen. He was the threatening, mysterious voice of arch villain Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977) and its two sequels.
The actor made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1985 as a defiant former baseball player in August Wilson’s play Fences, which earned him his second Tony as best actor. He played another former baseball player and reclusive writer in the fantasy film Field of Dreams (1989), generally considered one of his finest screen roles.
(CAMBRIDGE, MA – MAY 25: James Earl Jones received an Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree from Harvard University at its 2017 366th Commencement Exercises on May 25, 2017 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images)
In the 1990s, Jones, who had played an African chieftain on the 1960s TV series Tarzan, returned to series television as the ex-con and former cop Gabriel Bird in the dramatic series Gabriel’s Fire. Despite generally good reviews, the series, retitled Pros and Cons in its second season, did not last.
( James Earl Jones, singer Diana Ross, and Pop & R&B musician Michael Jackson (1958 – 2009) as they attend the opening night of the play ‘Robeson’ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, New York, New York, January 19, 1978. Photo by Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)
He won three Emmys for his television work and has been nominated six other times most recently in 2004. Jones has found few good screen roles in recent years but has played many solid supporting roles.
He was Admiral James Greer, Harrison Ford’s mentor in The Hunt for Red October (1990), who reappears in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), all based on the techno-thrillers of novelist Tom Clancy.
(James Earl Jones as Hoke Coleburn and Vanessa Redgrave as Daisy Werthan in Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy” directed by David Edbjornson at Wyndham’s Theatre in London. Photo by robbie jack/Corbis via Getty Images)
Some still know Jones best for his popular television commercials for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and other companies, where his rich voice had been a strong selling tool.
In 2010, Jones starred in a Broadway production of Driving Miss Daisy at the Golden Theater. He played the same role in 2011 in the London West End production. In 2012, his appearance in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man on Broadway earned him a Tony nomination for Best Performance in a Lead Role in a Play.
James Earl Jones received a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in January 2009.
On November 12, 2011, Jones was awarded an Honorary Academy.
On Broadway, he played the cheerfully eccentric grandfather in the classic comedy You Can’t Take It With You in 2014, and starred opposite Cicely Tyson in a revival of the two-character drama The Gin Game in 2015.
(NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 11: James Earl Jones accepts the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre onstage during the 2017 Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 11, 2017 in New York City. Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
In 2017, James Earl Jones received a Special Tony Award for lifetime achievement in the theater.
James Earl Jones was one of the only, to have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).
UB sends our condolences to the Family, Friends and Fans of the late great James Earl Jones.
