Before anything else, there was that voice. Rich, regal, majestic, magnificent, and instantly recognizable—it seemed to come from a part of Heaven reserved solely for true greatness. Back in the day, it boomed out of your TV, announcing that “This is CNN.” Even further back in the day, it bellowed out of one of the most memorable villains ever to destroy a planet.
That voice could conquer Shakespeare, deliver August Wilson’s monologues with ease, comfort a lion cub, and remind us that baseball is magic, even in Iowa. The voice itself was magic, too.
And it belonged to James Earl Jones.
Since his debut in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” James Earl Jones brought his immense talent to every movie he made and every stage he commanded, from respectable high art like “Fences” and “The Great White Hope” to lowbrow movie fare like “Bloodtide” and “Conan the Barbarian.”
Though he’ll be forever enshrined in every recorded performance, his physical presence on Earth held no such guarantee. The voice of James Earl Jones returned to the mysterious cosmos from whence it came on September 9, 2024. He was an amazing 93 years old.
When I heard that James Earl Jones had passed, my brain immediately went to Darth Vader, the villain he voiced in the Star Wars universe. That sounds obvious and cliché, but hear me out. I was mentally taken back to the Hudson Mall Cinema in Jersey City to experience once again the disappointment I felt when I saw “Return of the Jedi.”
By 1977, I knew that Jones was the voice coming out of that black metal uniform. I had seen “Claudine” and “The Bingo Long Travelling All Stars & Motor Kings,” two of his earliest successes as a leading man. His mischievous eyes and Cheshire Cat smile were familiar to me when I saw “Star Wars.”
So imagine my surprise when, at the end of “Jedi,” they removed Darth Vader’s mask…and there was some White dude underneath it!
“Where the BLEEP is James Earl Jones?” I heard my older cousin say. He was echoing what I thought.
I’ll tell you where the BLEEP James Earl Jones was. He was in Rod Serling’s 1972 film, “The Man,” where he played the first Black president. He was in 1976’s “The River Niger,” opposite the equally regal voice and visage of Cicely Tyson. He was on Showtime’s “Faerie Tale Theatre,” playing the Genie of the Lamp in Tim Burton’s retelling of “Aladdin.” And he was (unfortunately) in “Exorcist II: The Heretic” alongside fellow Shakespearean actor, Richard Burton, and Pazuzu.
More importantly, James Earl Jones was in the hearts of millions of viewers who loved him and his work.
Have you ever thought about the famous cinematic kids James Earl Jones sired? He was Simba’s Dad in “The Lion King,” Luke Skywalker’s father and Prince Akeem’s royal Papa in “Coming to America,” to name a few. Each were different portrayals: Mufasa was wise and regal, Vader was cruel and King Jaffe Joffer was hilarious and comic. Joffer was my favorite of the JEJ dads, because the actor was so damn funny in the part—and you could tell he was having a good time.
That diversity of interpretation proved that James Earl Jones was a shapeshifter of a performer. Even in his worst movies, he never seemed miscast. He simply belonged wherever he was, or rather, he made us believe that to be true.
He was equally convincing as a boxer in “The Great White Hope” (his sole Oscar nomination—shame on the Academy!) and as a baseball player in “The Bingo Long Travelling All Stars & Motor Kings” opposite Richard Pryor and his fellow Black actor from a “Galaxy Far, Far Away,” Billy Dee Williams.
In fact, baseball and James Earl Jones went together as well as peanut butter and jelly. In addition to “Bingo Long,” Jones was in two of the most beloved baseball movies of all time. He’s the blind owner of the preternaturally enormous dog in the kiddie film classic, “The Sandlot,” for starters.
And in “Field of Dreams,” his character, Terrence Mann, gives a speech on baseball that wet the eyes of male viewers long before the end of that Kevin Costner movie drenched them in tears. “They will come, Ray,” Mann tells Costner’s character. “They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.”
Listen to the way Mann describes what those people will do when they get to the baseball diamond. You can close your eyes and see them. It’s a rather cheesy monologue on paper, but Jones makes it sing. His performance deserved an Oscar nomination.
Another cheesy monologue that Jones nailed perfectly is his explanation of “The Riddle of Steel” in 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian.” Playing Thulsa Doom, the most awesome villain to rock an UltraPerm, Jones lectures Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan on the power of flesh (and makes a White woman jump off a cliff just by using his voice—that played really well in my ‘hood theater back in 1982!). That speech gave me a line I say whenever I am stuck figuring out a problem:
“Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe. Crucify him!”
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention James Earl Jones’ excellent stage work. I had the pleasure of seeing him on Broadway six times, in plays as varied as August Wilson’s “Fences,” Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” and Donald L. Coburn’s “The Gin Game,” which reunited him with Cicely Tyson. He won Tonys for “Fences” and “The Great White Hope,” as well as an honorary Tony in 2017.
His voice rattles you when you hear it live, and that’s not hyperbole. You vibrate as it passes through, leaving remnants of its greatness in your bones.
It’s hard to believe that the man whose voice was his most powerful and flexible tool was also a stutterer. He uses that stutter in the great 1996 film “A Family Thing.” Of this affliction, he said, “You find yourself with a weak muscle, and you exercise it. And sometimes that becomes your strong muscle.” One can only imagine how ripped James Earl Jones’s strongest muscle was.
RIP, Roop from “Claudine.”
