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Actor and beloved baritone James Earl Jones dies at 93
James Earl Jones, pictured here in 2014, followed in the footsteps of actors like Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, all of whom refused to be limited by stereotypical roles.
Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post/Getty Images
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Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post/Getty Images
James Earl Jones, pictured here in 2014, followed in the footsteps of actors like Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, all of whom refused to be limited by stereotypical roles.
Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post/Getty Images
One of America’s most beloved actors, James Earl Jones, died Monday at age 93. He was at home in Dutchess County, N.Y. surrounded by his family, his longtime agent Barry McPherson confirmed to NPR.
In addition to an illustrious stage career — which included roles in classics like Macbeth, Othello and The Iceman Cometh — Jones also had an extensive film career, appearing in Dr. Strangelove, Field of Dreams, and The Hunt for Red October. He voiced Mufasa in The Lion King, and as Darth Vader, he delivered the line that still sends shivers up the spines of Star Wars fans: “I am your father.”
James Earl Jones was born on Jan. 17, 1931, in Arkabutla, Miss. He was raised by his grandparents. When he was 5 years old, the family moved to a rural farm in Dublin, Mich. Jones said the move so traumatized him that he developed a severe stutter that continued until he was in high school.
“I was able to function as a farm kid, doing all those chores where you call animals,” he told WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1993, “and I certainly let the family know what my needs were. But when strangers came to the house, the mute happened. I didn’t want to confront them and I wasn’t ready. I hid in a state of muteness.”
Then a high school teacher found a way to help: “He one day discovered that I wrote poetry and he said to me, ‘This poem is so good I can’t believe you wrote it. The way you can prove it to me is to get up in front of the class and recite it by heart.’ And I accepted the challenge and did it, and we both realized we had a means — we had a way of regaining the power of speech through poetry.”
And what a power it was. Jones’ baritone came complete with its own echo chamber. His voice became one of the most instantly recognizable in entertainment history.
Everything about him was big: his commanding stage presence, the intensity of his glance and his brilliance at his chosen craft. Woodie King Jr. is founder of New York’s New Federal Theater, which has been producing shows by and about African-Americans throughout its history. He first became aware of Jones in the early 1960s.
“I was a young aspiring actor who had come into New York and he had all the elements of acting — physicality, vocal range, psychically in tune with what was going on,” King says. “And I wanted to be that kind of artist who had that kind of freedom with his instrument.”
King saw Jones’ critically acclaimed performance in a 1961 production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks. He also worked with Jones in a 1968 Broadway production of Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope, based on the life of champion black boxer Jack Johnson.
“It was an unbelievable kind of performance,” King recalled. “It was an amazing metamorphosis, watching him transform himself into this vicious boxer.”
Muhammad Ali, (left) spars with Jones, then the star of The Great White Hope, in 1969.
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Muhammad Ali, (left) spars with Jones, then the star of The Great White Hope, in 1969.
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Jones won a Tony for that role, as well as an Oscar nomination for the 1970 film adaptation, and he won a second Tony in 1987 for his role in August Wilson’s Fences.
His first film role was as bombardier Lothar Zogg in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove. In 1972’s The Man, Jones played the first black president; in the 1974 black classic Claudine, he played a garbage man who charms a date out of a welfare mom; and in 1989’s Field of Dreams, he explained why people would care about a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield. Jones has said that one of his favorite roles was that of the South African reverend in Cry, the Beloved Country.
Jones’ voice has pervaded pop culture: He’s the voice of CNN and Verizon, and even showed up on a few episodes of The Simpsons, which managed to kid the actor about his kaleidoscopic work in one fell swoop.
In his conversation with Fresh Air, Jones remembered the beginning of his voice-over career with amusement. “I think the first commercials I did … they asked me to ‘just give us the sound of God.’ … They were not embarrassed about saying that.”
Jones takes a bow after his final performance in Broadway’s You Can’t Take It With You in 2015.
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Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images
New Federal Theater’s Woodie King said Jones was a warm, somewhat shy man who was a powerful artist. He followed in the footsteps of actors like Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, all of whom refused to be limited by the old stereotypical roles of butlers or buffoons. Jones saw theater as a place for all people.
“What you have is a master craftsman at work,” King said. “He makes young people aware of the vast possibilities of this business when you are a craftsman. … The Broadway stage sees him as really colorless — not black or white, but a brilliant artist.”
Brad Pitt and George Clooney play competing Hollywood “fixers” in the Apple TV+ film Wolfs.
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Apple TV+
For most of its history, Hollywood made its money by putting stars the public liked to watch in stories that wouldn’t be worth watching without them. These days, such star-driven films are falling out of fashion — except on our streamers.
That’s where you’ll find Wolfs, an AppleTV+ vehicle that features George Clooney and Brad Pitt skating through a crime plot in glamorously grizzled mode. They play two professional “fixers” — they’ll do anything to clean up a client’s mess — who collide while working the same job. Written and directed by Jon Watts (who did a popular Spider-Man reboot), Wolfs matters more for its stars than for the characters they play.
The action begins when a New York politico played by Amy Ryan has a casual fling at a posh hotel that goes terribly wrong. She calls Clooney, a seasoned pro who knows how to make trouble disappear. He’s doing just that when they’re interrupted. Enter Pitt who, as it turns out, is working for the hotel, which also wants the problem to go away. Because Clooney and Pitt (their characters don’t use names) always work alone, both bristle at each other’s presence.
The two bicker and gibe and question each other’s expertise — Pitt keeps hinting that Clooney’s an old man. And naturally, they discover that their task is more challenging than it looked.
All too soon they’re dealing with four bricks of stolen drugs, a goofy college kid and a group of murderous gangsters. Over the course of a long night the two come to a kind of understanding — not only with one another, but about their larger role in the world.
If I’d paid to see Wolfs in a theater rather than screened it on TV — which has the lowered expectations of in-flight viewing — I’d probably have been bugged by its lack of imagination and urgency. Watts’ script gives you no singing dialogue a la Elmore Leonard or Quentin Tarantino, none of the stinging emotional force you find in comparable two-hander stories — Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, say, or Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges.
And yet the movie’s still enjoyable. Clooney and Pitt are such deft, charismatic actors that, even in a lazy, low-key picture like this one, you get a lot of pleasure from their barbed asides and mocking silences. It’s clear why they’ve been stars for three decades.
Thirty years ago, one would have wagered that Clooney, a smart man with a wide-ranging mind, would wind up with the weightier resume of the two. And indeed, he’s been in lots of terrific movies, like Out of Sight, Up in the Air and his work with the Coen Brothers. Yet just as he’s drawn to the idea of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack — he has one of his own — he often throws himself into projects that feel like throwbacks to the 1950s or ‘60s. He’s an old-fashioned kind of star. And while a lot of his movies are fun — think Ocean’s Eleven — they rarely resonate in the culture as much as he does off the screen.
For all his prettiness and ubiquity in the tabloids, Pitt’s movies do. Maybe because he’s always been running away from his beauty — he’s never happier than when scruffed up — he’s chosen a more adventurous path. From Thelma & Louise and Se7en, to Fight Club and The Tree of Life, to 12 Years a Slave and Moneyball and Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, he’s made movies that feel in touch with our present moment.
What Clooney and Pitt share, beyond friendship, is that both achieved stardom by doing the kind of movies that rarely get made anymore. That’s why, even though Wolfs is slight, I can see how they might find it meaningful.
After all, this is a story about two old pros who each start out thinking he’s irreplaceable — the only one who can do this special job. Then each discovers that, far from being unique, there’s somebody else who does exactly what they do. And so far from being indispensable, they’re working for soulless people who have no qualms about getting rid of them and hiring somebody new. Which is to say, Wolfs isn’t really a film about being a fixer. It’s a film about being an aging movie star.
Bigfoot is buzzing again after a TikTok went viral this week, with non-believers pointing and laughing … but one Ph.D. expert on the subject tells TMZ the joke is on them.
Here’s the deal … on Thursday, an apparent Bigfoot made its TikTok debut … recorded just chilling against a tree in a wooded area of Lawton, about 3 hours from Oklahoma City. It was quickly dismissed as an obvious fake — but it also piqued some legit new interest!
TMZ.com
Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, tells TMZ Bigfoot finding such a popular foothold in pop culture is a double-edged sword … ’cause it does poke fun at those who truly are investigating its existence … but the silliness also encourages more people to ask questions.
The author of “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science” says the existence of a Bigfoot creature is “one of the most interesting questions facing researchers of human evolution” … so there’s a lot more to this than just selling beef jerky, and stooges trying to get clicks.
TMZ.com
Dr. JM says he has “hundreds” of legit foot casts of sasquatch and other relict hominoids from around the world … so he is quite confident something was — and may still be — out there.
It is easy for skeptics to point to prank videos like the recent one, and to snack commercials, to mock the idea … but if people look at the actual evidence, their tune would change pretty quickly.
Tik Tok/@e_man580
Of course … he points out discoveries of actual evidence rarely make news … people acting like boobs with fake videos are more fun for the media to cover.
As for the popularity of Bigfoot over other mysterious creatures … Dr. Meldrum tells us that is born out of nationalism. The term “Bigfoot” was coined in the U.S. in 1948, and it became “our monster” … and from there, creatives ran with the idea for sci-fi.
One thing’s for sure — if the experts are correct, “Harry and the Hendersons” might turn out to be a documentary.
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