Jones, James Earl

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    At James Earl Jones Memorial, Denzel Washington and Whoopi Goldberg Share Stories

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    At a gathering in the Broadway theater renamed to honor the star, speakers including Denzel Washington and Phylicia Rashad described Jones as an inspiration.Denzel Washington called him his “northern star.” Whoopi Goldberg said “getting to see him onstage was heaven.” Some of the most notable names in show business gathered in Times Square on Monday afternoon for a starry, and sometimes emotional, send-off for James Earl Jones, who died last year at the age of 93. He was remembered for his thunderous voice and his enviable acting chops, as well as for being a gentle guiding presence in the lives of young actors.For more than 90 minutes, at the Broadway theater that now bears his name on West 48th Street in Manhattan, a packed house laughed, cried and shared numerous personal stories that not only painted a bright picture of Jones, but cast him as an important figure who inspired fellow actors to reach their personal bests.“He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Denzel Washington said of Jones.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a short speech, Denzel Washington described Jones as having personified grace, power and dignity. Washington, who is currently starring in a Broadway revival of “Othello,” a role that Jones had made his own on Broadway more than six decades ago, said he hoped to be as good a stage actor as Jones. “He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Washington said. “He is not only the greatest African American actor; in my opinion he is one of the greatest actors ever to be on a Broadway stage.”The actress Linda Powell recalled starring with Jones in a Broadway revival of “On Golden Pond,” which opened 20 years ago this week. She said Jones had pushed for her to be cast in the role of his daughter. “It was one of the best jobs of my life, one of the best experiences of my life, and his faith in me was a gift,” she said.Phylicia Rashad recalled seeing Jones perform when she was a young adult, and later performing as Big Mama to his Big Daddy in the 2008 Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Othello and Iago, a Marriage Made in Both Heaven and Hell

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      Who exactly is in charge here?Is it the strutting general or his self-effacing ensign? The man celebrated for his “free and open nature” or the sociopath who keeps stockpiling secrets?That question has been occupying the minds of theatergoers and readers since Shakespeare’s “Othello” was first performed in London in the early 17th century. And it is doubtless being puzzled over by audiences at the star-charged Broadway revival of this tragedy of homicidal jealousy, with Denzel Washington in the title role of the noble Moorish warrior and Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago, his eminently credible, equally duplicitous aide-de-camp.On the most basic level, the answer is obvious. (For those unfamiliar with “Othello,” serious spoilers follow.) It’s the resentment-riddled Iago, the ultimate disgruntled employee, who takes command of his commander, and pretty much everyone in his orbit, in coldblooded pursuit of revenge. It’s Iago who gives the orders to his boss, while making his boss believe otherwise. And it’s Iago who’s still alive at the end.Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington in the play’s latest revival, on Broadway through June 8.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut in another sense, the contest has never been that easy to call. Put it this way: After you’ve seen it, who is it who dominates your thoughts? Which character’s point of view wound up ruling the night? In other words, who owned the production?Othello may have the glamour, the grand poetic speeches and a death scene for the ages. But there is a reason that Laurence Olivier, who would play the part blackface to divisive effect in the early 1960s, would worry about having “the stage stolen from me by some young and brilliant Iago.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Great James Earl Jones Role That Can Finally Be Seen

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      A restored version of Charles Burnett’s 1999 movie “The Annihilation of Fish” opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after being virtually unshown for 25 years.When James Earl Jones died in September at 93, he left behind a great performance that, for 25 years, has gone virtually unseen. The movie, “The Annihilation of Fish,” directed by Charles Burnett, had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 but never received a proper release. Now it’s getting a second chance, in a restoration that opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.“I hope people see it in a fresh light, and look at the talent,” Burnett, 80, said by phone from his home in Los Angeles.A great deal has changed since 1999: Burnett’s masterpiece “Killer of Sheep,” completed in 1977 and accorded a belated opening in 2007, is more widely available than it had been in those intervening years, and an honorary Oscar for Burnett in 2017 put a spotlight on a body of work that has long been championed by critics. The loose movement from which Burnett emerged — the group of film students at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became known as the L.A. Rebellion — has been the subject of academic attention in recent years. And while Jones’s death occurred after the restoration of “The Annihilation of Fish” was completed, the prospect of seeing the actor in one of his finest roles offers yet another reason to check out this surreal and disarming film.Jones plays Obediah Johnson, an immigrant from Jamaica who begins the movie having spent 10 years under institutional care. Obediah, who goes by the name Fish, is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon — an invisible presence that he repeatedly tries to wrestle into submission, baffling those around him.Released from his supervised living situation, Fish makes his way from New York to Los Angeles; he figures that the City of Angels will give him an advantage over a demon. Upon arrival, he moves into a boardinghouse run by an eccentric landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). Soon they are joined by the woman who becomes the home’s only other resident, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who is running from an invisible companion of her own: the ghost of Puccini, her lover, with whom she has called it quits. (They can’t marry because California law requires a corporeal presence.)Jones plays Obediah Johnson, who goes by the name Fish. He is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon.Kino LorberWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Annihilation of Fish’ Review: A Gem That’s Worth the Wait

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      The director Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular film from 1999, starring James Earl Jones, is finally receiving a theatrical release.Obediah Johnson — the lost-and-found soul played by a magnificent James Earl Jones in “The Annihilation of Fish” — has a barrel chest and a voice that sounds like it emerged, warmed and polished, from unfathomable depths. It’s an instrument that many know from “Star Wars” and “The Lion King,” in which Jones voiced two of the most totemic fathers in movies. Yet the eloquence of his basso profundo was also instrumental in lesser-known works like “Annihilation,” Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular view from the margins that is receiving a theatrical release 26 years after its first public screening at a film festival.It seems shocking that it’s taken this long for the film to hit theaters given Burnett’s elevated standing; his masterful “Killer of Sheep” (1978) is a milestone in American cinema and his reputation long established. There are a number of reasons that “The Annihilation of Fish,” his fifth feature, didn’t reach the world earlier. Among other things, genuine independent filmmaking, the kind that transcends formula and expectations and comes without corporate sponsorship, has always been difficult to market. And Burnett, whose filmography includes “To Sleep With Anger” (1990), a neo-Gothic tale about a Southern interloper that slips between drama and comedy, has always defied compartmentalization. He can’t be pigeonholed.“The Annihilation of Fish” similarly evades classification, genre and otherwise. The movie is often gently funny, though occasionally lurches into boisterous excess, with jolts of slapstick and glints of ticklish nonsense. At the same time, there’s a strong current of melancholy running throughout the story, which complicates and occasionally destabilizes its comedy. There are moments here when you laugh but aren’t sure if you should, and instances when you wonder (and worry) if you’re laughing with the characters or at them, and whether it matters. Most movies prompt you about when it’s time to laugh and to cry; not this one.Written by Anthony C. Winkler, the film tells the tale of Obediah — he goes by Fish — a Jamaican immigrant who’s long lived in a mental facility in New York and claims to be bedeviled by an invisible demon he calls Hank. The demon pops up unexpectedly, as imps tend to do, and Fish keeps him in check by wrestling him. They’re grappling in church soon after the movie opens, a tussle that ends with Fish being abruptly ousted from his group home. “It was like Pearl Harbor,” he protests to a functionary, “sneak attack!” No matter. Soon, he is out the door with his suitcase and headed West, where his story begins in earnest.Fish ends up in that vexed paradise known as Los Angeles, where he moves into a modest, dilapidated apartment building run by a friendly eccentric, Mrs. Muldroone (a winning Margot Kidder). With its lush garden and stained, peeling interior, the building is the sort of place you can imagine the likes of Nathanael West and David Lynch making poetically dark use of. By contrast, Fish settles in with the pragmaticism of someone who must make do with what little life has afforded him: He spruces up his new apartment, transforming squalor into a home. Not long after, he meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave).The trickiest character in the movie, Poinsettia is introduced sometime before she and Fish meet; you know she’s important to his story from how Burnett cuts between them, like an anxious matchmaker. A loud, aggressively flamboyant figure given to voluble yowling and mewling, Poinsettia lives in San Francisco and claims to be in a relationship with the invisible and very dead Giacomo Puccini, a fixation that involves some strained comedy. Things improve when she too leaves for Los Angeles (before she does, Burnett tucks in an allusion to “Vertigo,” a classic of mad love), where she moves into the apartment across from Fish’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wendell Pierce and Courtney B. Vance on James Earl Jones’s Influence

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      The two actors talk about how the stage and screen great was a one-of-a-kind inspiration to them, and many others.James Earl Jones had already made a lifetime impression on Wendell Pierce by the time Pierce patiently waited in a receiving line to meet Jones after his opening night performance of August Wilson’s “Fences” nearly 40 years ago.Years earlier, Jones had mesmerized Pierce in the 1970 film “The Great White Hope,” embodying integrity, creativity and dignity in the role of the boxer Jack Jefferson. The performance inspired a teenage Pierce as he began his studies at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. That, he decided, was the type of actor he yearned to be.Pierce told Jones of his impact. “Are you an actor?” Pierce recalled Jones asking in his barreling baritone of a voice. Delighted to learn that he was, Jones discussed how he enjoyed the night, but was glad it was over. There was shared energy between the actors and audience except the hole where the critics sat stoic and unmoved. They wouldn’t be there after opening night.“Now that it’s over, there won’t be that hole there,” Jones said. “People can just respond to the play. That’s the great thing about doing theater. It’s that energy between the audience and the performance. Don’t you find that?”It’s a moment Pierce cherishes after carving his own impactful career by starring in television shows like “The Wire” and “Treme” and on Broadway in “Death of a Salesman.”“I knew I was part of a collective whole of the people who had seen it that would have this unique, seminal experience that would be something that you had to be there to see,” Pierce said. “And I feel privileged that I was a part of that very few, especially in theater performances with Mr. Jones, that got to see it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Was James Earl Jones an EGOT Winner? It’s Complicated.

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      The actor won just about every award he could — but his Oscar was an honorary one. Is that enough for an EGOT?When James Earl Jones died on Monday, some headlines called the prolific actor — known for his deep, mellifluous voice — an EGOT winner. But whether he’s really in the elite club isn’t so clear.Jones performed in scores of plays, some 120 movies and on nearly 90 television shows. And he was rewarded with Emmys, Tonys, a Grammy, an Obie (for Off Broadway productions), a National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.James Earl Jones with the Tony Award he won in 1969 for Best Dramatic Actor in “The Great White Hope,” with Lauren Bacall, who presented it to him.Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesBut the honorary Oscar might not be enough for the exclusive EGOT club — the playful acronym for winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. There has long been a debate over whether honorary or noncompetitive awards count toward EGOT status.Back in 2011, Jones won the honorary Oscar, a lifetime achievement award that comes with the famous Oscar trophy and has been given to the likes of Mel Brooks, Sophia Loren, Spike Lee and other Hollywood luminaries. Not enough, The Los Angeles Times proclaimed.“While Jones already has an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony, to complete the EGOT cycle, winners have to actually win each award, and honorary awards do not count,” according to the newspaper.James Earl Jones holds up the two Emmy Awards he won in 1991.ReutersAccording to Billboard, “most EGOT experts don’t count noncompetitive awards” because “the whole point is to have won the awards in competition.”The New York Times has noted in its reporting on EGOT recipients that “there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards.”Only 21 people have won a competitive EGOT. The list includes Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Viola Davis and Elton John.Even if an honorary win doesn’t quite count, Jones still finds himself in good company. Other honorary EGOT winners include Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones and Liza Minnelli. More

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      James Earl Jones’s Rich Career in Theater: ‘Othello,’ ‘The Great White Hope’ and More

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      The world will remember James Earl Jones, who died Monday at the age of 93, for his contributions to film, some of which are secure in the pop-culture canon.New York, however, will remember Jones for his contributions to theater, for which he received three Tony Awards (including one for lifetime achievement in 2017) and, in 2022, a rare distinction: the renaming of a Broadway theater in his honor.Jones once recalled that when he moved to New York to study acting, in 1957, his father, Robert Earl Jones (himself an actor), took him to live performances. In rapid succession, the young man saw the opera “Tosca,” the ballet “Swan Lake,” the musical “Pal Joey” and the drama “The Crucible.” This wide range may help explain Jones’s own rich, startlingly diverse stage career.For years, the actor deftly navigated oft-produced classics, head-scratching experimental theater, searching new works by major contemporary playwrights and, later in his career, popular dramas and comedies. Jones made his Broadway debut in the late 1950s but throughout the 1960s and ’70s, he also appeared in smaller venues. In 1961, for example, he was in the Living Theater’s avant-garde, resolutely countercultural production of “The Apple.” In 1965 he won an Obie Award for his performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Baal” and also appeared in Georg Büchner’s “Danton’s Death” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. In the 1970s, he was Hickman in “The Iceman Cometh,” and in the 1980s he starred in two dramas by the South African playwright Athol Fugard — all three on Broadway.Here are five productions that reflect Jones’s astonishing range and his commitment to the theater.1961‘The Blacks’A cast of unknowns that included Jones, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, Roscoe Lee Browne and Louis Gossett Jr. appeared in this explosive work by the French writer Jean Genet. An experimental take on power and oppression in which some of the Black actors wore white masks, “The Blacks” had its New York premiere in 1961 at St. Mark’s Playhouse in Manhattan’s East Village. In just over a week, Howard Taubman of The New York Times wrote not one but two raves about the production, praising it as “one of the most stimulating evenings Broadway or Off Broadway has to offer” and deeming it an event “on any level that matters.”1964‘Othello’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      James Earl Jones, Actor Whose Voice Could Menace or Melt, Dies at 93

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      James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.The office of his agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed the death in a statement.From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will. All had much to do with his success.So did plays by Howard Sackler and August Wilson that let a young actor explore racial hatred in the national experience; television soap operas that boldly cast a Black man as a doctor in the 1960s; and a decision by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” to put an anonymous, rumbling African American voice behind the grotesque mask of the galactic villain Vader.Mr. Jones in 1979 as the author Alex Haley on “Roots: The Next Generation.”Warner Brothers Television, via Everett CollectionThe rest was accomplished by Mr. Jones himself: a prodigious body of work that encompassed scores of plays, nearly 90 television network dramas and episodic series, and some 120 movies. They included his voice work, much of it uncredited, in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, in the credited voice-over of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Disney’s 1994 animated musical film, and in his reprise of the role in Jon Favreau’s computer-animated remake in 2019.Mr. Jones was no matinee idol, like Cary Grant or Denzel Washington. But his bulky Everyman suited many characters, and his range of forcefulness and subtlety was often compared to Morgan Freeman’s. Nor was he a singer; yet his voice, though not nearly as powerful, was sometimes likened to that of the great Paul Robeson. Mr. Jones collected Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.

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      in Theater

      James Earl Jones: A Life in Pictures

      by

      If it seemed at times that James Earl Jones was everywhere, it was perhaps because he really was. Over a 50-year career, Jones — who died on Monday at the age of 93 — acted prolifically on television, in movies and under the spotlight of Broadway stages, one of which is now named after him.An imposing man who stood taller than six feet, Jones was hard to miss. But it was his voice — deep, authoritative, powerful and sometimes menacing — that some fans may most remember. His voice work as Darth Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy and as Mufasa in “The Lion King” conveyed his presence to millions without audiences ever seeing him.Here are some snapshots from his life and career.Jones was a guest star on “Sesame Street” in 1970.Afro American Newspapers/Gado, via Getty ImagesJones, with Lauren Bacall, won the Tony for best actor in a play in 1969 for “The Great White Hope.”Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesJones with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson at a Broadway opening in 1978.Sonia Moskowitz/Getty ImagesJones and his wife, the actor Cecilia Hart, at the Tony Awards in 1989.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesJones in his dressing room in 1983.Steve Ringman/San Francisco Chronicle, via Getty ImagesJones with his son, Flynn, and his father, Robert, in 1987.Michael Tighe/Donaldson Collection, via Getty ImagesJones in a Hollywood recording studio in 1991.Edmund Eckstein/Getty ImagesJones and Cicely Tyson in 1991.Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesThe actors would star in a revival of Donald L. Coburn’s “The Gin Game” in 2015.Bruce Glikas/FilmMagicA Broadway theater was named after Jones in 2022.Todd Heisler/The New York Times More