Remembering James Earl Jones

Most of the tributes to James Earl Jones, who has died at the age of 93, referred to his resounding bass tones. But, as Cinema Paradiso discovers, there was much more to one of the finest actors of his generation than voicing two famous film fathers.

When asked about his longevity as an artist, James Earl Jones replied, 'The secret is never forgetting that you're a journeyman actor and that nothing is your final thing, nothing is your greatest thing, nothing is your worst thing.' He added, 'I still consider myself a novice.' With typical modesty, he said, 'Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I'm just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, "OK, I'll do that."'

Standing 6ft 2in tall and weighing around 200 pounds, Jones was never going to be a matinee idol. But he did everything better than well and possessed an instantly recognisable voice that could be stentorian or soothing with equal facility. Consequently, he was always in demand and appeared in dozens of plays, around 75 features, and over 100 TV shows. Jones took his craft seriously, but not himself, hence his memorable guest turn in 'The Convention Conundrum', a 2014 Season Seven episode of The Big Bang Theory, in which he revels in a night on the town with a starstruck Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons).

Emerging From Silence

James Earl Jones was born on 17 January 1931 at the farm in Arkabutla, Mississippi where his maternal grandparents were tenants. Eleven other Connolly family members resided in the four-bedroom farmhouse, including his mother, Ruth. But father Robert Earl Jones left before his son was born to pursue his acting ambitions.

As 'Battling Bill Stovall', Jones had been a sparring partner of the great Joe Louis. But he relocated to New York during the Great Migration from the southern states and was working with the Works Progress Administration, when he was offered a part by Langston Hughes in his 1938 play, Don't You Want to Be Free? Deciding to act full time, Jones co-starred with Edna Mae Harris in Lying Lips (1939) and The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940), a couple of so-called 'race films' that were directed by Oscar Micheaux, whose role as the 'father' of Black cinema in the United States is evident from Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2015).

When James saw a picture of Robert in a magazine, his announcement that he was also going to be an actor earned him a clip around the ear from his grandfather. In fact, the pair would not meet until James was 21, when they worked together on three plays. However, Robert was blacklisted in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communism in the entertainment industry. He continued to act, however, co-starring with Harry Belafonte in Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1960) and playing grifter Luther Coleman in George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973), as well as cropping up in John Landis's Trading Places (1983), Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984), and Peter Weir's Witness (1985), all of which are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso.

Working as a maid or a teacher, Ruth was rarely at home. But the five year-old James was deeply traumatised when she remarried and left him to be raised by her parents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly. They tried to fob him off with Robert's folks, but the boy clung to the car on its arrival in Memphis. 'It was the only way I could express that I wanted to be with them,' he later explained. But a move to a new farm in Dublin, Michigan proved so stressful that James developed a stutter.

In a 2011 interview with the BBC, Jones revealed, 'I was raised by a very racist grandmother, who was part Cherokee, part Choctaw and Black. She was the most racist person, bigoted person I have ever known.' His remarks caused a degree of controversy, as he explained that Maggie had blamed all white people for slavery, but considered Native American and Black people equally culpable 'for allowing it to happen'.

Miserable because of the severity of his stutter, the eight year-old James elected not to speak, except to his dog and the farm animals. 'I was a stutterer,' he remembered. 'I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.' While attending the one-room country school in Manistee County, he communicated through notes and was often teased.

Things improved when he went to high school in Bretheren, as English teacher Donald Crouch hit upon a way of coaxing James into speaking. Discovering the 14 year-old wrote verse, Crouch asked him to prove that he hadn't merely copied a poem by getting him to recite it to the class. Gaining in confidence, Jones started reading aloud from William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe and went on to act in plays and join the school debating team.

Throughout his career, Jones controlled his stutter by slipping subtle pauses into his line readings to calm the flow of words. He also recognised how much his silent period shaped his personality. 'No matter how old the character I play,' he explained, 'even if I'm playing Lear, those deep childhood memories, those furies, will come out. I understand this.' Indeed, as he confided in his 1993 memoir, Voices and Silences, his experience gave him a unique perspective on words. 'Because of my muteness,' he wrote, 'I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.'

Graduating from Dickson Rural Agricultural School as vice president of his class in 1949, Jones became a pre-med major at the University of Michigan. In his junior year, however, he devoted his time to drama and later reflected, 'Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think. In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn't speak.'

Jones also joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and felt accepted by his fellow members of the Pershing Rifles Drill Team and the Scabbard and Blade Honor Society. As the United States was fighting the Korean War, Jones expected to be deployed to Asia as soon as he became a second lieutenant. While awaiting orders, he worked as a carpenter at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, where he used the name Todd Jones for his first few acting credits.

Having completed the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning, Jones attended Ranger School before being assigned to the Headquarters Company of the 38th Regimental Combat Team. Rather than being sent abroad, however, the unit was detailed to establish a cold-weather training command at Camp Hale, in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Converting to Roman Catholicism during his time in uniform, Jones was discharged after being promoted to first lieutenant. Returning to college, he completed his drama degree in 1955 and joined his father in New York City.

From Cold Water Flat to Cold War Satire

Finding $19 a month lodgings in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Jones worked as a janitor while studying at the American Theatre Wing. He even took classes at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio, but was too shy to speak to fellow student, Marilyn Monroe. Having played Othello at the Ramsdell, Jones knew he could handle major roles. But he had to settle for a bit on the ABC radio anthology series, Theatre-Five.

In 1957, he landed his first Off Broadway role in Wedding in Japan before he was hired as understudy to Lloyd Richards on Broadway in The Egghead. Sadly, the play only ran for 21 performances, but Jones drew encouragement from his father's advice, 'If you want to do this business, you gotta do it because you love it, not because it's gonna make you rich or famous.' His luck changed in January 1958, when he was cast as Edward the butler in Dore Schary's Sunrise At Campobello at the Cort Theatre, which was filmed by Vincent J. Donehue in 1960, with Ralph Bellamy as Franklin D. Roosevelt (a film that really should be available on disc).

In a Newsweek interview in 1963, Jones revealed that he had been in 18 plays in 30 months and had 'less money than the average off-Broadway stagehand'. But he had found a niche in 1960 with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, appearing in Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and A Midsummer Night's Dream before falling in love with his Desdemona while headlining Othello in 1964. Jones and Julienne Marie would marry four years later, only to divorce in 1972. Curiously, he met second wife, Cecilia Hart, when she played Desdemona to his Moor of Venice in March 1982.

Sidney Poitier refused the role because he believed Othello was a white man's dupe. But Jones played him seven times in all, while also essaying King Lear, Abhorson in Measure For Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet for Shakespeare in the Park. Although not an active Civil Rights campaigner, Jones admired Malcolm X and claimed that he might have been a revolutionary if he had not become an actor. He and Ossie Davis narrated Arnold Perl's documentary, Malcolm X (1972), before Jones took an uncredited cameo as Malcolm in Tom Gries's Muhammad Ali biopic, The Greatest (1977).

Jones preferred to express his views through his work. So, he joined Roscoe Lee Browne, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, Billy Dee Williams, and Lou Gossett, Jr. in wearing disturbing white masks in Jean Genet's Les Negres (1961). He considered the part of Deodatus Village crucial to his development, as 'Through that role came, I came to realize that the Black man in America is the tragic hero, the Oedipus, the Hamlet, the Macbeth, even the working-class Willy Loman, the Uncle Tom and Uncle Vanya of contemporary American life.'

When Lorraine Hansberry reworked the scenario as Les Blancs (1970), Jones won the Drama Desk Award for Best Actor prior to joining an all-Black production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (1972) and playing Lennie in a 1974 adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. During an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1972, he objected so strongly to Anthony Quinn wearing blackface to play Haitian emperor Henri Christophe in a biopic that the Mexican-born actor cancelled the project at a personal cost of half a million dollars.

Back in Central Park in 1962, Jones found himself playing opposite George C. Scott's Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Stanley Kubrick saw the production and cast Scott as General Buck Turgidson in his pacifist farce, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). 'I was also in the play, as the Prince of Morocco,' Jones later joked, 'and Kubrick said, "I'll take the Black one, too." That's not what he actually said, but that's the way I like to put it.' The role of Lieutenant Lothar Zogg wasn't large. But the B-52 bombardier not only afforded Jones his feature debut, but also got him noticed.

Getting Established

In 1966, Jones followed a brief stint as Dr Jim Frazier in The Guiding Light (1952-2009) by becoming the first African American to land a continuing role in a daytime drama, when he was cast as Dr Jerry Taylor in As the World Turns (1956-2010). Whenever he was unavailable, Brock Peters stepped in and Jones revealed that the producers believed that the audience would not notice the difference.

Further small-screen assignments followed, including four episodes of Dr Kildare (1961-66) as Dr Lou Rush. He returned to film as Haitian rebel leader, Dr Magiot, in Peter Glenville's adaptation of Graham Greene's The Comedians (1967), which co-starred Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Alec Guinness. But it was a stage role that proved the year's most decisive development, as Jones won a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his work as troubled boxer Jack Jefferson in Howard Sackler's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Great White Hope. Indeed, Jones so made the role his own that he was cast opposite Jane Alexander in Martin Ritt's 1970 film version and he became only the second African American after Sidney Poitier to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He would never be considered again, however, and it's equally disgraceful that this landmark picture is not available on disc in the UK. Neither is Ken Burns's 2004 documentary, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, in which Jones recalls the role that was based on 'the Galveston Giant'.

While it's perhaps understandable that Aram Avakian's modish comedy, End of the Road (1970), has slipped from view, Jones's performances as Douglass Dilman, the senator who gets to become the first Black president in Joseph Sargent's The Man (1972), and as garbage collector Rupert P. Marshall, helping the Oscar-nominated Diahann Carroll raise her six kids in John Berry's Claudine (1974), deserve to be seen.

Landing him on the cover of Newsweek, Jones ranked The Great White Hope among his most important roles. Variety wrote of his first screen lead, 'Jones' recreation of his stage role is an eye-riveting experience. The towering rages and unrestrained joys of which his character was capable are portrayed larger than life.' When Muhammad Ali saw the film, he told Jones, 'This is me.'

Yet Jones also had fun playing Nerlan alongside Diana Ross and The Supremes as nuns building a jungle hospital in a 1968 episode of Tarzan (1966-68). Moreover, in 1969, he enjoyed the test recordings for a new children's educational show, which resulted in him becoming the first guest star on Sesame Street, which is still running over 4700 episodes later. Numerous other tele-slots from this period have faded into the ether, but PBS recorded Jones's towering display in Edwin Sherin's Shakespeare in the Park presentation of King Lear, which is on offer from Cinema Paradiso, even if a teaming with Cicely Tyson in Krishna Shah's The River Niger, James Goldstone's Swashbuckler, and Ivan Nagy's Deadly Hero (all 1976) are not.

We can also bring you John Badham's raucous baseball romp, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976). Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor come along for the ride in a tribute to the segregated Negro Leagues of the 1930s, with Jones on fine form as slugging catcher Leon Carter. This was a highlight of a busy period that saw Jones play the older Kokumo in John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic, Balthazar in the Nativity sequence of Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, and retired detective Joshua Burke seeking to turn habitual thieves Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby in youth counsellors in A Piece of the Action (all 1977).

For a lark, Jones also joined Peter Ustinov, Michael York, Ann-Margret, Trevor Howard, Terry-Thomas, and Spike Milligan to play Sheikh Abdul in Marty Feldman's fitfully amusing Foreign Legion farce, The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977). But Jones's one-man show about Paul Robeson prompted some to complain that he had damaged the actor-activist's reputation. However, with Jones needing a bodyguard when he took the production on tour, Broadway luminaries Edward Albee, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and Richard Rodgers signed a letter stating that Jones had got the interpretation spot on. No one would dare to criticise his next outing, however.

Round of a Prowse

The story goes that George Lucas originally considered Orson Welles for the voice of Darth Vader. Recognising that David Prowse's West Country accent didn't fit the bill (the cast nicknamed him 'Darth Farmer'), Lucas knew that the villain of Star Wars (1977) needed to have a voice to match his imposing physical presence. So, he phoned James Earl Jones's agent and asked if he had a free day to record a handful of lines.

Adopting a measured, but flat delivery style to emphasise Vader's threatening nature, Jones had his words filtered through a scuba tank regulator by sound designer Ben Burtt to make them sound more mechanically ethereal. Jones was paid a single $7000 fee for his contribution and he decided to forego a credit, as the part was so small. He did so again for David Acomba's Lucas-scripted cartoon, The Story of the Faithful Wookiee (1978), and Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back (1980). However, he received a larger fee, as Lucas realised that Vader's menace was more reliant on Jones's voice than Prowse's 6ft 6in frame or Brian Muir's costume.

When it came to Richard Marquand's Return of the Jedi (1983), however, Jones requested an on-screen credit, as the trilogy had rewritten box-office history. As he explained in a 2008 interview: 'When Linda Blair did the girl in The Exorcist, they hired Mercedes McCambridge to do the voice of the devil coming out of her. And there was controversy as to whether Mercedes should get credit. I was one who thought no, she was just special effects. So when it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I'm just special effects. But it became so identified that by the third one, I thought, OK I'll let them put my name on it.'

With the release of the 1997 Special Edition, the credits were changed on the first two instalments to incorporates Jones's name. Yet he only devoted two paragraphs of his memoir to Star Wars and informed fans that he couldn't remember the lines when asked to do the voice. He did once employ it over his CB radio during a road trip, however. 'The truck drivers would really freak out,' he laughed, 'for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that.'

According to some, he can be heard at the end of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). But Jones remained evasive, telling one news outlet, 'You'd have to ask Lucas about that. I don't know.' However, he was present for the animated TV series, Star Wars Rebels (2014-16), as well as Gareth Edwards's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and J.J. Abrams's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), in which he had a three-word cameo as the Emperor Palpatine impersonates Vader. Ironically, when it came to the radio versions of the original triptych (1981-96), Darth Vader was voiced by Brock Peters, with whom Jones had supposedly been interchangeable on As the World Turns.

In September 2022, Jones announced that he had retired from voicing Darth Vader. However, he had been so impressed by the Respeecher software used in the making of the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, that he signed a pioneering deal with Lucasfilm allowing archival recordings of his voice to be used to generate new dialogue for future Star Wars projects.

Taking a Break From the Boards

In 1977, Jones won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording for the album, Great American Documents. But the decade ended with a clutter of projects that made few demands on his talent. He had a walk-on as a prisoner in Tom Kotani's The Bushido Blade before playing novelist Alex Haley in the miniseries, Roots: The Next Generation. Also in 1979, he took the lead in Saul J. Turell's Academy Award-winning documentary short, Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, which was narrated by Sidney Poitier. Having turned down the leads in both The Streets of San Francisco (1972-77) and Quincy M.E. (1976-83) to focus on his stage work, Jones finally accepted his own detective series. But Paris (1979-80) failed to find an audience and the same would prove true of Jones's other headlining series - Me & Mom (1985), Gabriel's Fire (1990-91), Pros and Cons (1991-92), and Under One Roof (1995) - as none made it to a second season.

Yet Jones made numerous TV-movies and guest appearances during the 1980s, with Cinema Paradiso users being able to see him in Highway to Heaven (1984-89) and L.A. Law (1986-93). They can also see him relishing the purple prose scripted for him by John Milius as Thulsa Doom, the leader of the snake-worshipping cult in Conan the Barbarian (1982). Indeed, he would pay tribute to his director in Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson's 2013 documentary, Milius. Jones also amused himself as Umslopogaas, the fearless warrior who helps Richard Chamberlain's hero in Gary Nelson's Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986). The same year also saw him impart some quiet words of wisdom as Professor Banks in Steve Miner's Soul Man, which sees C. Thomas Howell pretend to be Black in order to get a scholarship to Harvard Law School.

Unsurprisingly, the make-up used in this film has meant it has dated badly (although it also proved contentious on its release). However, Jones felt it had lessons to teach, as was the case with John Sayles's Matewan (1987), in which he so excelled as 'Few Clothes' Johnson, the representative of the Black West Virginia coal miners striking in a small pit town in the 1920s, that he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In its review, showbiz bible Variety claimed that Jones 'glowed in the dark'.

He drew on his military background to play Sergeant Major 'Goody' Nelson, the best friend of James Caan's Arlington Cemetery honour guard commander in Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone. However, he was heard but not seen as the secondary title character in Hal Sutherland's animation, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (both 1987). Annoyingly, he evades our grasp altogether in Flight of Dragons, Blood Tide (both 1982), City Limits (1985), and My Little Girl (1987), and, even more frustratingly, nobody thought to film Jones's Tony-winning performance as baseball star-turned-garbage collector Troy Maxson in the 1987 Broadway production of Angus Wilson's Fences. This landmark 'Pittsburgh Cycle' play that was filmed in 2016 by Denzel Washington, who took the same role opposite Oscar winner Viola Davis.

A stand-off between Jones and Wilson (after the former rewrote the ending) persuaded the actor to take a sabbatical from stage work that would last for almost 20 years. He used the spare time wisely, however, as he came close to stealing John Landis's Coming to America (1988) off star Eddie Murphy, as Jaffe Joffer, the king of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, tries to rein in the rebellious heir who refuses to commit to an arranged marriage. Jones also made the most of limited screen time in Phil Alden Robinson's Field of Dreams (1989), an Oscar-nominated adaptation of W.P. Kinsella's novella, Shoeless Joe, in which reclusive author Terence Mann (Jones) agrees to help farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) create a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield.

Also in 1989, Jones appeared in Bruce Halford's documentary, JFK: The Day the Nation Cried, after having pursued odd-couple bank robbers Nick Nolte and Martin Short as Inspector Marvin Dugan in Francis Veber's Three Fugitives and helped Eric Roberts and his mismatched buddies compete against a South Korean martial arts team as veteran coach Frank Couzon in Bob Radler's Best of the Best. Next, he did duty in three Tom Clancy adaptations as Admiral James Greer, although, having browbeaten Alec Baldwin as CIA Intelligence analyst Jack Ryan in John McTiernan's The Hunt For Red October (1990), he gave his orders to Harrison Ford in the Philip Noyce duo of Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

As one might expect of such a prolific performer, there were misses among the hits, with the result that Peter Masterson's Convicts, Larry Cohen's The Ambulance, Stephen M. Kienzle's Terrorgram, Wayne Coe's Grim Prairie Tales (all 1990), David Beaird's Scorchers (1991), Jon Acevski's Freddie As F.R.O.7. (1992), Bill Brown and Steve Grass's Dreamrider, John Hess's Executive Force, and Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man (all 1993) failed to make it to disc in the UK. Cinema Paradiso can, however, bring you Jones seeking to prevent a nuclear conflagration as Alice, the codenamed general in command of Looking Glass in Jack Sholder's teleplay, By Dawn's Early Light (1990). He's also there cameoing alongside Lenny Henry in Charles Lane's Soul Man companion piece, True Identity (1991).

Around this time, Jones made Emmy history when he became the first actor to win two awards on the same night. Gabriel's Fire might not have been recommissioned, but its star was named Best Actor for playing the wrongfully imprisoned detective, while he was also recognised for his work as cobbler Junius Johnson in Kevin Hooks's Heat Wave (1991), which considered the reasons for the riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965. Also in 1992, Jones was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President George H. W. Bush.

Doing a favour to Phil Alden Robinson, Jones pops up as NSA Agent Bernard Abbott in Sneakers (1992), a hacking thriller whose all-star cast includes Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, and David Strathairn. But he had more to do as Judge Barry Conrad Isaacs attempts to establish the identity of the man (Richard Gere) claiming to be the Tennessee farmer who left his wife (Jodie Foster) to fight in the US Civil War in Jon Amiel's Sommersby (1993), which reworked Daniel Gélin's medieval French mystery, The Return of Martin Guerre (1984).

Despite only appearing late in the story, Jones reached a bigger audience in David Mickey Evans's The Sandlot Kids (1993), a rite of passage set in 1962 which centres on a neighbourhood baseball team and a vicious dog nicknamed, 'The Beast'. This ball-chewing terror is owned by the mysterious Morris Mertle, who keeps a secret about his past connection with the great Babe Ruth. Twelve years later, Jones reprised his role as the blind slugger in The Sandlot Kids 2 (2005), whose dog is known this time as 'The Great Fear'.

Disney Icon

Although Jones had settled into a routine of taking character parts that enabled him to pack several feature into a year, he also took occasional small-screen leads in teleplays like Ivan Dixon's Percy & Thunder (1993), in which his retired fighter tries to guide hopeful Courtney P. Vance to the top, and Gilbert Cates's Confessions: Two Faces of Evil (1994), which sees lawyer Charles Lloyd seek answers when two men claim to have committed to the same Christmas murder.

It was easy enough to guest as himself in Peter Segal's Naked Gun 33?: The Final Insult, but Jones enjoyed stealing scenes as characters like John Dolby, the best friend of Dana Carvey's amnesiac in Mick Jackson's comedy thriller, Clean Slate (both 1994). Moreover, he remained committed to using roles to challenge racial prejudice, whether he was essaying the pastor feted with launching the Civil Rights movement in Kenneth Fink's Freedom Road: The Vernon Johns Story (1994), cameoing as Madison Hemings, the son born to a slave mother and the third American president in James Ivory's Jefferson in Paris, or bringing dignity to the part of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, whose son is arrested for murder in Darrell Roodt's potent adaptation of Alan Paton's bestselling anti-apartheid novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (both 1995).

However, it was another film with an African setting that introduced Jones to a younger audience. Inspired by Hamlet, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff's The Lion King (1994) afforded Jones the chance to record another iconic vocal performance as Mufasa, a role that had been turned down by Sean Connery.

Discussing his new fans, Jones said, 'Their parents will say, "There's Mufasa!" But I don't look like a lion, and if they're real little kids, they think they're being shafted or having the wool pulled over their eyes. And I can't roar to prove it to them, but I can say [in Mufasa's voice], "Simba. You have deliberately disobeyed me!"'

Indeed, Jones became so associated with the role that he was invited back when Simba decided to leave the Pride Lands and venture into the Outlands in Darrell Rooney and Rob LaDuca's The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride (1998). Moreover, when Disney decided to release a live-action remake of The Lion King (2019), director Jon Favreau was relieved when Jones became the only member of the animated classic cast to reprise their role.

Disney also asked Jones to join Patrick Stewart, Ulrich Tukur, and Ken Watanabe in narrating Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield's nature documentary, Earth (2007). But the House of Mouse was not alone in exploiting Jones's vocal talents, as he also made three appearances on The Simpsons (1989-). He plays the evil Maggie who goes on the rampage in 'Treehouse of Horror V' (1994) and provides the closing narration to 'Das Bus' (1998), which lampooned William Golding's The Lord of the Flies. But he was busiest in the first Halloween special, 'Treehouse of Horror' (1990), in which he crops up as a removal man in 'Bad Dream House' and as a drooling alien in 'Hungry Are the Damned' before he narrates Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven'. Aficionados will also note the tribute the makers paid to Jones in 'Round Springfield' (1995), as Harry Shearer impersonates him as Darth Vader, Mufasa, and the booming voice on CNN News in the cloud formation marking the passing of Lisa's jazz hero, Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Jones started intoning 'This Is CNN' in 1990 and he can be heard doing so in Mike Nichols's Primary Colors (1998). His voice also booms out as the uncredited narrator of Danny Cannon's Judge Dredd (1995) and over the Season One opening of 3rd Rock From the Sun (1996-2001). It also graces such popular TV series as Law & Order (1990-2010), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-96), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-99), Frasier (1993-2004), Stargate SG-1 (1997-2005), and Will & Grace (1998-2019).

Jones can also be heard as Kibosh in Sean McNamara's Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997) and as the Mountain King, alongside Sam Neill, in Steve Barron's miniseries, Merlin (1998). Not everything pleased the critics, even though Jones was typically good in less successful items like Richard Pearce's A Family Thing and Richard LaBrie's Good Luck (both 1996). While these aren't on disc (along with numerous TV-movies from the late 1990s), Cinema Paradiso members can see Jones joining Al Pacino to contemplate the art of playing Shakespeare in Looking For Richard (1996) and challenging James Belushi and Tupac Shakur as lawyer Arthur Baylor in Jim Kouf's Gang Related (1997), as a pair of corrupt cops try to pin a murder on the homeless Dennis Quaid.

In a busy end to the millennium, Jones did his last voicing assignment of the century, as Martin Luther King, Sr. in Rob Smiley and Vincenzo Trippetti's animated biopic, Our Friend, Martin. He also returned to Disney to introduce the 'Carnival of the Animals' segment of Fantasia 2000. Patient viewers can find Jones as the judge in the custody hearing at the end of Bryan Michael Stoller's mawkish melodrama, Undercover Angel, but they can't currently catch him in the title role of The Annihilation of Fish (all 1999), which is a great shame as this quirky saga about a dead composer and an imaginary friend was directed by Charles Burnett, whose key works, Killer of Sheep (1977), To Sleep With Anger (1990), The Glass Shield (1994), and The Wedding (1998), are available from Cinema Paradiso, along with Warming By the Devil's Fire, his contribution to Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues (2003).

Grand Old Man

Jones eased into the new decade by guesting in Phil Grabsky's documentary, Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World, playing Leo the veteran street musician in Yale Strom's On the Q.T., and owning a lost wallet as Avery Phillips in Jeff Probst's thriller, Finder's Fee (all 2001). Having narrated Kamoon Song's festive animation, Nine Dog Christmas (2003), he essayed the voice box at the hardware store in Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha's Robots (2005). He also took a handful of small-screen guest slots in such shows as Two and a Half Men (2003-15) and House M.D. (2004-11). But Jones spent an increasing amount of time on stage, after making a triumphant return to Broadway in 2005 in the role of Norman Thayer that had earned Henry Fonda his overdue Oscar in Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981).

Back in the swing, Jones wowed the New York and London critics as Big Daddy in a revival of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2008-10), while he was partnered by Vanessa Redgrave in the Broadway and West End productions of Driving Miss Daisy (2010-11). He and Angela Lansbury then took the play to Australia, the home of Bruce Beresford, who had directed Jessica Tandy to an Oscar beside Morgan Freeman in the 1989 screen version of Alfred Uhry's play. But Jones was far from finished with the theatre, as he earned a Tony nomination for Best Actor as President Art Hockstader in The Best Man (2012), another role that had been originated on film by Henry Fonda in Franklin J. Schaffner's 1964 take on Gore Vidal's acclaimed play.

In 2009, Jones was presented with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award by Forest Whitaker. Two years later, Ben Kingsley surprised him on the stage of Wyndham's Theatre in London to present him with the Honorary Academy Award that he had been unable to collect in person at the Los Angeles ceremony because he was playing chauffeur Hoke Colburn. 'You cannot be an actor like I am,' he told the matinee audience, 'and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have. But I stand before you deeply honoured, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.'

The Oscar gave Jones EGOT status and Cinema Paradiso members can find out who else is part of this select group by reading our recent article, 'Introducing the EGOT Gang'. In 2013, Jones reunited with Redgrave to play senior variations of Beatrice and Benedick in Mark Rylance's 2013 Old Vic presentation of Much Ado About Nothing. The following year, he played Grandpa in a revival of George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You, which had been the surprise winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture when Frank Capra adapted it for Columbia in 1938. Finally, in 2015, Jones brought down the curtain on his fabled stage career alongside Cicely Tyson in The Gin Game.

Although he had devoted his energies over the decade to live performance, Jones had also kept his filmic hand in. The year after Revenge of the Sith, he voiced the Darth Vader gate intercom in Dennis Dugan's The Benchwarmers (2006) and did his scuba stuff again for the 2011 theme park ride, Star Tours - The Adventures Continue. Staying in the dubbing studio, Jones voiced The Admiral in Harry 'Doc' Kloor and Daniel St Pierre's animated featurette, Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey (2010) and played Mufasa once more for Howy Parkins's The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar (2015). His unmistakable tones could also be heard as the Giant in Gary J. Tunnicliffe's updating of Jack and the Beanstalk (2009).

In front of the camera, Jones was cast as TV host Martin Lawrence's father in Malcolm D. Lee's Welcome Home, Roscoe Jones (2008) before he offered support to pregnant teenager Vanessa Hudgens as priest Frank McCarthy in Ron Kraus's Gimme Shelter (2013). The same year, archive footage showed Jones in a SeaWorld commercial in Gabriela Cowperthwaite's BAFTA-nominated documentary, Blackfish (2013). However, he was seen in a more favourable light as Ruben the video store owner in The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014), which reunited Jones with Phil Alden Robinson.

Between the documentaries, I Am Your Father (aka Finding David Prowse, 2015) and Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (2021), Jones played Pendleton, the lawyer bequeathing single mom Tammy Blanchard a battle to protect her home and water rights. in Dustin Fairbanks's Warning Shot (2018). He appeared on screen for the final time reprising the role of King Jaffe Joffer opposite Eddie Murphy in Craig Brewer's Coming 2 America (2021). But there was still one more career highlight to come, as the Cort Theatre where he had debuted in 1958 was renamed The James Earl Jones Theatre, making it only the second Broadway venue after The August Wilson Theatre to be named after a Black artist.

Jones died at his home in Pawling, New York on 9 September 2024 at the age of 93. Denzel Washington paid tribute to his hero by saying, 'I wasn't going to be as big as him. I wanted to sound like him. He was everything to me as a budding actor. He was who I wanted to be.' As a mark of respect, the Empire State Building was lit up as Darth Vader.