Oscar-nominated actor James Earl Jones, who stuttered as a child and later became one of America's most recognizable and articulate voices, has died.
Jones died Monday morning at his home in New York, his agent Barry McPherson confirmed in a statement shared with The Times.. The cause of his death was not disclosed. He was 93 years old.
Known for his rich, booming voice and commanding, almost powerful presence, Jones had a decorated career that spanned decades and a multitude of roles, from King Lear to Darth Vader.
James Earl Jones, left, gets a hug from Mark Hamill backstage after Jones finished a performance in the Broadway hit “Fences” in 1987 in New York. The two actors worked together on the “Star Wars” films, Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Jones as the voice of Darth Vader.
(Frankie Ziths/Associated Press)
Jones said it was the painful experience of being a stutterer that made him appreciate speech so passionately.
“The desire to speak grows and grows until it becomes part of your life force,” Jones recalled in her biography, writing of the years of childhood silence that preceded her career in theater and film.
“If I hadn't been a stutterer,” Jones told the Los Angeles Times in 2014, “I would never have been an actor.”
Critics were fascinated by Jones’s booming, powerful voice. They called him thunder in a bottle; they compared him to civil rights activist Paul Robeson and Paul Bunyan. Jones’ voice had “a tone of heroism,” wrote Washington Post critic Peter Marks.
Some mistakenly called him a baritone, but he wasn't. He was a natural and rare bass, a lucky birthright, he said.
To that genetic good fortune, Jones added acting prowess. He was distinguished by the “elemental force he brought to the stage,” Marks wrote. He played Tony-winning Broadway roles, an Oscar-nominated film role, over-the-top movies and prime-time television dramas.
He was Othello, Hamlet and Lear. He did commercials and, of course, voice-over roles, so many he lost count. “This… is CNN,” he shouted. In public, he was more recognizable by his voice than by his face.
Long after childhood, he continued to struggle with stuttering. He remained fascinated by the challenge of emotional expression, which he called a deep human need.
“The more you go into language and articulation, the further you get away from emotion. You have to go back to song and poetry,” he told The Times in 2002.
James Earl Jones received an honorary Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards in February 2012.
(Chris Carlson/Associated Press)
James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931, in Arkabutla, Mississippi, to boxer and actor Robert Earl Jones and Ruth Williams, a tailor. He was raised by his grandparents Maggie and John Henry Connolly; his father left home before he was born. His mother, whom he later hinted had mental health problems, was often away from home. When he reached school age, he and his family moved to Michigan.
At age 12, Jones began to stutter. In his distress, he fell silent and scribbled notes instead of speaking. His self-esteem eroded and he became an almost anonymous figure at school.
But a high school teacher discovered he was secretly writing poetry, Jones recounted in his 1993 biography “Voices and Silences,” written with Penelope Niven. “If you love words so much, James, you should be able to say them out loud,” the teacher told him.
The teacher did more than encourage Jones. He did research on stutterers and discovered that some were helped by reading aloud.
Eventually, the professor convinced Jones to try this technique. Jones's life took a turn around afterward: He discovered he was able to read in front of the class without stuttering. The professor handed him a volume of Shakespeare and told him to read aloud for practice, Jones said.
Years later, long after he had become a famous actor and a household name, Jones continued to mention the master in interviews, eventually giving name credit (first and last) to Donald Crouch.
Jones won a scholarship to the University of Michigan and earned a bachelor's degree in drama in 1955 (sixteen years later, he also received an honorary degree from the school). He served two years in the Army and then went to New York, where he met his father for the first time.
Muhammad Ali, right, always ready for a joke, takes a left-handed jab from actor James Earl Jones, star of the Broadway hit “The Great White Hope,” in a publicity photo in Hollywood in 1969.
(GB / Associated Press)
The couple managed to get by, polishing floors and cleaning theaters. Eventually, Jones landed his first off-Broadway role, holding a lance in Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”
Jones was a portly, green-eyed man whose emotional face seemed always on the verge of laughter or fury. He had a natural stage presence. He joined Cicely Tyson’s cast in the off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s “The Blacks” in 1961. With the New York Shakespeare Festival, he played Othello in 1963. Television commercials and a role in a soap opera opened up, and he appeared in the film “Dr. Strangelove.”
He was cast in the lead role in “The Great White Hope,” a Broadway play based on the life of boxing champion Jack Johnson. “Magnificent” is how critic Richard L. Coe summed up Jones’ performance. He said Jones was “physically compelling, vocally assured, consistently interesting.”
It was the role that allowed Jones to reach his full potential: He won a Tony Award and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1970. He went on to win an Emmy, two more Tony Awards, a Grammy for spoken word and, in 2011, a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which noted his “legacy of consistent excellence and uncommon versatility.” He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2002.
“People say the president’s voice is the most recognizable voice in America,” President George W. Bush said at the Kennedy ceremony. “Well, I’m not going to make that claim in the presence of James Earl Jones.”
James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson starred in “The Gin Game” in New York City in 2015.
(Walter McBride / WireImage)
His numerous film, television and stage credits over the next half-century include the plays “Fences” and “Paul Robeson,” the Emmy-winning title role in the short-lived “Gabriel's Fire” and the films “A Piece of the Action,” “Coming to America,” “Field of Dreams,” “Cry, the Beloved Country” and “Exorcist II: The Heretic.” He was the voice of King Mufasa in “The Lion King” and the narrator of “Scary Movie 4.”
Critics sometimes criticized his performances for their pomposity, but, especially in later years, Jones secured a place in the pantheon of renowned Shakespearean-trained film actors.
Still, he never lost the habits of a wannabe. He took on all kinds of jobs, and seemingly no position was too small or cheesy.
He announced awards shows, narrated documentaries and acted in commercials. He read audiobooks and applied to Verizon. He later said his work as Darth Vader took little more than an hour and that he didn't seem to think much about the role.
Some critics complained that he was wasting his considerable talent. How could a man who had mastered the works of Anton Chekhov and August Wilson be content to shout “Desecrating infidels!” in “Conan the Barbarian”?
Jones insisted he was a character actor, but beyond that he offered no immediate answer. The best answer may have come from his second wife, Cecilia Hart, whom he married in 1982. (He divorced his first wife, Julienne Marie, in 1967.) Hart said Jones was simply a workaholic.
Whatever the reason, Jones continued a grueling stage acting schedule into his 80s, even as he battled chronic lung disease and was forced to use an oxygen tank between acts during performances. He did, however, reunite with Tyson, who was reportedly 90 at the time, for the Broadway revival of “The Gin Game” in 2015.
Throughout his career, he played both traditionally white and black roles. He was the lead in a stage production of “On Golden Pond,” Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Lennie Small in “Of Mice and Men.”
Although his career spanned periods of intense political activity around race, Jones forged his own path on racial issues. He was proud to have been groundbreaking as a black actor. He spoke of the historical degradation of blacks, but said no one should be defeated by it. He eschewed identity politics.
Craftsmanship came first. “You have to play with culture, not with color,” he said.
He spoke as a “language appreciator” whose thinking still bore the mark of his silent childhood sufferings. He rejected claims to a separate black cultural identity: because black Americans spoke English, they were basically European, Jones argued.
“Language is the only thing that defines culture,” he said.
James Earl Jones, in 1990, around the time of the NBC movie “Last Flight Out,” about the heroic efforts to evacuate 500 Vietnamese and Americans aboard the last civilian plane out of Saigon before it fell in April 1975.
(Bob Galbraith/Associated Press)
To the extent that he mounted a racial crusade, he did so through his acting, and specifically his hard-won mastery of spoken language.
“Anybody can carry a protest sign,” he told the Toronto Star in 2013, speaking in his trademark tone of voice. “But I think you should be able to express what that sign means.”
Jones' wife died in 2016 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. He is survived by his son, Flynn Earl Jones, a voice actor.
Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report. Leovy is a former Times staff writer.
