RIP James Earl Jones: A Great American Voice, A Great American Life

It’s never a surprise, or at least shouldn’t be, when someone goes on at the age of 93. Father Time, after all, is undefeated. But this one really hurts.

As actuarially sound as the event may have been, my wife and I were still jolted and more than a little saddened Monday night while preparing dinner to hear of the death of the great James Earl Jones, a giant of the stage and screen, and a giant soul. As lives go, Jones was at least in double OT. But we would gladly have waited a bit longer to say goodbye to him. (READ MORE: Willie Mays, the Game’s Greatest, RIP)

There seems to be an Obit Writers Union work rule requiring, at the passing of any public figure, that the dearly departed be described as one of a kind, a giant in his (her) field, who will be greatly mourned and missed. It ain’t always so. But all these accolades do apply to Jones

A Man of Many Voices   

Jones was not a physical giant, though impressive enough at 6-2 and north of 200 pounds. Not possessed of leading man looks — he wasn’t Denzel Washington — it was his immense talent (that booming bass voice that could project any mood) and an almost magical screen presence that commanded the viewer’s attention. Hard to watch anyone else when Jones was on the screen.

Since his death Monday at his home in Dutchess County, New York (no cause of death has been given), print and broadcast tributes have mentioned his better known roles — the voices of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise and Mufasa in The Lion King, as well as the reclusive writer in Field of Dreams and the admiral in Hunt For Red October and in the spook operas with Harrison Ford that followed. (READ MORE: Hollywoke Heroes and Movies We’ll Never See)

I enjoyed these. But my favorites of Jones’ work tend to be the more subtle roles where his characters embody the intelligence, good humor, tolerance, charity, and respectful courtesy that are the soul of civilization and make life worth living. I raise up such as: The Sandlot, What the Deaf Man Heard, Cry, the Beloved Country, The Reading Room, and A Family Thing. This last pairs Jones with Robert Duvall, two of America’s finest actors at the top of their considerable games. They take the most unlikely idea — James Earl Jones and Robert Duvall as brothers (not just friends, but actual blood brothers) and make it watchable, amusing, even in places enlightening, if never quite believable.

We Owe Jones’ High School English Teacher a Debt of Gratitude

Jones’ long and successful career, considering his unpromising start, is just as unlikely as any role he ever played. He was born to a poor family, which his father abandoned before James Earl was even born, in Akabutla, Mississippi, a wide place in the road in the shadow of the Tennessee border, inhabited today be fewer than 300 souls. By the time he was six, his mother also left, leaving young James Earl to be cared for by her parents in rural Dublin, Michigan. Jones described his grandmother — part Cherokee, Choctaw, and black — as racist and bigoted, often ranting against white people for slavery and their treatment of blacks, and at blacks and Indians for allowing it. (READ MORE: A Little-Known Film Is a John Wayne Gem)

In all this turmoil, it’s no surprise that young James Earl developed a stutter. That future voice of voices eventually went silent as James Earl went mute for several years. He only came out of his shell with the help of a high school English teacher, who saw talent in his pupil and encouraged him to read poetry aloud to the class. (This teacher deserves a medal and our gratitude.) An interest in theater soon followed, as did a degree in drama from the University of Michigan. After two years in the Army in the mid-50s as a commissioned officer, when there were few black officers, Jones was off to New York where he tread the boards in theater for several years before, at 33, his first role on the silver screen. This was as the navigator in the ill-fated B-52 in Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove of 1964. This was a smallish role as the only sane person on a screen full of whack jobs. And who could guess from it what riches were to follow?

RIP James Earl Jones. Thank you for the hours of viewing pleasure that I, and millions of others, have enjoyed from watching your work.

The post RIP James Earl Jones: A Great American Voice, A Great American Life appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.