I spent my first decade in New York working at Variety’s former offices on Park Ave. South and more than once found myself sharing an elevator with James Earl Jones while he was on his way to or from Verizon to shoot commercials. The giant of an actor, who died today at age 93, never failed to say a warm “Good morning” or “Good Afternoon,” and even if I hadn’t recognized his face or his imposing 6’2” frame, there was no mistaking that sonorous voice.
His voice was the earth-shaking basso rumble coming from behind the forbidding mask of Darth Vader in the Star Wars saga, starting with the original 1977 film, and the stentorian growl of Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands and father of Simba in The Lion King.
It was also the voice of a revered stage actor, who forged his reputation in the 1960s and ‘70s, tackling the great classical roles in Shakespeare in the Park productions of The Winter’s Tale, Othello, Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Hamlet and King Lear. His versatility led him to Hickey in The Iceman Cometh, Lennie in Of Mice and Men, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard and Troy Maxson in Fences.
I caught that towering performance as the tragic hero in August Wilson’s 1985 masterpiece only on video at Lincoln Center’s invaluable Library for the Performing Arts. Even without the electricity of live theater, the pathos and pride, the force of will masking a broken spirit in Jones’ portrait of a Pittsburgh sanitation worker bitter over the career in Major League Baseball he was denied, rang out loud and clear. It won him the second of three Tony Awards.
Because Jones remained so loyal to his theater roots, I was fortunate to see him on stage several times. The first was his return to Broadway after nearly two decades’ absence, starring opposite Leslie Uggams in a 2005 revival of Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond. Even in that creaky vehicle Jones was majestic, rising above the stock character of the lovable curmudgeon to imbue him with blazing intelligence, mischievous humor and searing vulnerability when a life-threatening health scare exposes his fear of death.
In 2008, he played the overbearing Southern patriarch Big Daddy with gusto in a mixed-bag all-Black production of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, then returned two years later, pairing with Vanessa Redgrave, their combined stature elevating the rickety Driving Miss Daisy.
Jones continued working on the stage up to his mid-80s, demonstrating an eight-performance-a-week discipline and stamina that many actors a fraction of his age struggle to maintain.
In Gore Vidal’s election satire, The Best Man, Jones was one of two octogenarians to steal the show (the other was Angela Lansbury), playing a former president staring into the abyss of mortality but reinvigorated by the fight of a contentious primary race and cagey about which candidate is going to get his endorsement.
He was sheer delight as the benevolent grandpa of an eccentric family in a sprightly 2014 revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s screwball comedy You Can’t Take It With You, playing the role with a twinkle in his eye but also with the gravitas and wisdom to make him an effective peacemaker in moments of crisis. “Life is kind of beautiful if you let it come to you,” he said in one of the 1936 play’s more memorable lines.
Jones’ final Broadway role, in 2015, was another pairing of two stage titans, starring opposite Cicely Tyson as bickering and bantering residents of a retirement home in The Gin Game. The rather slight play was given substance and vitality by the joy of watching two wily old pros spark off one another. Jones was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Tony the following year.
While he made his film debut with a small role in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove in 1964, my first encounter with Jones on screen was on late-night TV in Martin Ritt’s 1970 film of The Great White Hope, adapted from the play that had won Jones his first Tony the previous year.
He reprised the part of Jack Jefferson, a character based on real-life boxer Jack Johnson, whose winning streak rankled racist sports fans into mounting a search for a white challenger to take down the heavyweight champion. Ultimately, Jack’s defeat comes when authorities target him for his courtship of a white woman, played by fellow Tony-winning stage holdover Jane Alexander.
That film, which earned Jones his first and only Oscar nomination (the Academy presented him with an Honorary Award in 2012), opened up a film career that would span six decades, even if he was seldom given the leading-man opportunities that a white actor of his standing would have landed.
His booming voice made him a natural for roles of authority, but he radiated strength even in silence. Jones could also modulate the powerful instrument that became his trademark to bring out warm, velvety textures in more avuncular parts, invariably showing great depth of feeling whether he was playing hubris or humility.
Beyond Darth Vader, movie audiences probably know Jones best from his role as Admiral James Greer in three Tom Clancy adaptations, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger; and as the king of a fictional African nation in Coming to America and its sequel, which was his final feature appearance.
Other prominent screen roles include the South African church minister whose son is arrested for murder in Cry the Beloved Country; the representative for Black West Virginia coal miners in John Sayles’ union drama Matewan; and the disenchanted author and activist who helps Kevin Costner’s Iowa farmer pursue his vision of a baseball field in his cornfield, where ghosts of legendary players are welcomed, in the fantasy drama Field of Dreams.
I prefer to remember Jones in one of his earlier and perhaps most uncharacteristic screen roles, the 1974 romantic comedy-drama Claudine, in which he co-starred as a garbage collector who falls in love with Diahann Carroll’s title character, a single mother raising six children in Harlem.
It’s a lovely film, bittersweet and funny, with two incandescent lead performances. Claudine bucked the Blaxploitation trend of the time to consider the hopes and dreams of ordinary Black Americans, struggling with poverty, the indignities of welfare and systemic inequality. It also has a killer Curtis Mayfield soundtrack with vocals by Gladys Knight & the Pips.
Or maybe I’ll just choose to remember Jones fondly as the elegant gentleman in the elevator.
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