The Voice of James Earl Jones

It’s quite possible that most of us unconsciously know James Earl Jones as a voice. An authoritative voice. Whether that be the primary villain in the Star Wars universe, Darth Vader, or the dulcet tones of the betwixt and between commercial interludes of the first 24/7 news channel, CNN. “This is CNN,” Jones would say. 

By no means should that basso profondo voice be dismissed. That sound came from what seemed like a deep well of knowledge, and surely it did. It also may have, partially, covered up what a wonderful actor Jones could be when given the opportunity. First and foremost, James Earl Jones was a stage actor. In his early years back in the mid-sixties, Jones appeared in many Shakespearean productions while appearing on the occasional daytime soap and guesting on episodic television. After first being noticed in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant anti-war satire Dr. Strangelove in 1964, Jones made his big breakthrough playing “Jack Jefferson,” a less than thinly-veiled look at the life of the real-life African American Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who dated and married white women not long after the turn of the 20th century. To say that Johnson, a black man beating the hell out of white men and “carrying on” with white women during that era was controversial is to practice in understatement. The play, Great White Hope (which referred to almost every white opponent he faced) started off-Broadway in 1967 but soon moved to Broadway in ‘68. Jones’ towering performance (across from the great actress Jane Alexander as his wife) would become Jones’ breakthrough role. 

In 1970, Director Martin Ritt brought Great White Hope to the silver screen with the help of the show’s playwright Howard Sackler. While Ritt’s direction struggled at times to open up the play, the film’s staginess couldn’t diminish the work of Jones and Alexander (who reprised their stage roles), both of whom earned Oscar nominations as lead performers. Despite winning a Tony and gaining an Oscar nomination in consecutive years, Jones did not reap the type of rewards that one might expect. He was, after all, a Black man in the early seventies. It wouldn’t be until 1974 that Jones would find another role of merit in the film Claudine in a supporting part across from Diahann Carroll (in the title role) as a good but wayward man called “Roop” attempting to make a life with Claudine while weathering the hardships of being Black in America. At a time when most successful films made about Black people fell in the “Blaxploitation” action/gangster film genre, Claudine set itself apart, telling the story of the ordinary lives many people of color were trying to live when the deck was stacked against them. While Jones wasn’t recognized by the Academy, Carroll became the fourth Black woman to be nominated for leading actress in the history of the Oscars. 

One of the more fascinating aspects of James Earl Jones ‘ career is how many of his most memorable parts took place around baseball. Directed by John Badham in his big-screen debut (Badham went on to direct Saturday Night Fever, War Games, and Stakeout), The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976) was a raucous and terrifically entertaining film about Black baseball players in the 1930s running themselves ragged through the Negor Leagues. Co-starring Billy Dee Williams (who Jones would later be heard but not seen with in the initial Star Wars trilogy) and Richard Pryor, Bingo Long is a sadly overlooked film ripe for rediscovery. Jones’ cameo in the much-beloved baseball film, The Sandlot from 1992 about kids playing pick-up games next to a supposedly mean old man’s house (with Jones as that man) is also a part that I believe is destined for a long and beloved memory. Of course, there is another baseball film to discuss, but I’ll get there in a moment.

Paradoxically, Jones’ most popular role in the history of his esteemed career would come in 1977 as the voice of Darth Vader in George Lucas’ blockbuster space opera/High Noon rip Star Wars. I say paradoxically because Jones didn’t just have a commanding voice but at 6 foot 2 and a man of some bulk, his physical presence was nearly as forceful. Still, Jones gave life to Vader’s voice four more times in the sequels The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, the prequel Revenge of the Sith, the one-off Rogue One, The Rise of Skywalker, and the mini-series Obi-Wan Kenobi. In this last half century, there might not be a more resonant voice than that of Jones (save Morgan Freeman), and that deep, assured sound eventually caught the ears of the higher-ups at CNN, where his voice has been heard for over thirty years on that network. 

After the original Star Wars, Jones found mixed success in front of the camera. He appeared in A Piece of the Action (1977) with Sydney Poitier and Bill Cosby, Conan the Barbarian (1982) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and had a prime part in the great John Sayles film Matewan (1987) about coal miners trying to start a union in 1920. That same year, Jones won a Tony for playing “Troy” in August Wilson’s Fences, as a former Negro League baseball player shut out of the big leagues by segregation making his way through life as a trash collector. As much as I adore Denzel Washington’s film version of Fences, I would have loved to see Jones play Troy on stage.

The remainder of Jones’ life on screen consisted mostly of co-starring or supporting parts–some more memorable than others. As Eddie Murphy’s father King Joffer in Coming to America (he would reprise the role again in 2021 in the Netflix sequel), Jones is only in the film at the beginning and the end, but he effortlessly stole every scene in which he appeared out from under everyone on screen. Jones had back to back commercial successes in two Jack Ryan films–The Hunt For Red October (1990) and Patriot Games (1992). He was a stitch in Phil Alden Robinson’s underrated caper film Sneakers (also 1992) and voiced the original Lion King “Mufasa” in Disney’s massive 1994 animated film. 

Jones is one of twenty-one performers to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar (for lifetime achievement), and a Tony–the fabled EGOT.

And yet, for all the success Jones’ magnificent skills brought him, there will always be one movie that I will come back to, Field of Dreams. The nostalgic, sentimental, father/son weepie about a grown farmer (Kevin Costner) rediscovering his father by building a baseball park through his Iowa cornfields, putting his family’s future at risk, because of hearing a voice while alone in those cornfields that says “If you build it, he will come.” Soon “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and other players from a long-gone era start to come out of the cornfields to play ball. Only Ray and his family can see them. Jones plays a former radical author from the ‘60s who comes out of self-sequestration in Brooklyn and travels to Iowa after a vision appears to him while at a ballgame with the farmer. It’s a decision the author may not entirely understand but needs to follow through on. To “go the distance.” Field of Dreams is not about logic, it is about second chances, and even the old, embittered reclusive author is not immune.

As a film, Field of Dreams may be easy to pick apart. It’s Frank Capra hokum to the Nth degree, but man does it ever play. And when the time comes to bring the film to its emotional climax, it’s not Costner who delivers the lines, it’s Jones. And in that moment, as if he didn’t deserve it already, Jones immortalized himself by giving voice to one of the greatest monologues in film history. 

Costner’s Ray Kinsella is nearly bankrupt. He has a family-saving offer to buy his farm. He holds the document in his hand, thinking. And then Jones turns to Ray to explain why he should not sign that deal.

Ray, people will come, Ray.

They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack. And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Several years ago, being a baseball fan myself, I made the sojourn to Dyersville, Iowa to visit the location where Field of Dreams was shot. The corn wasn’t as high as it was in the 1989 film. We arrived too early in the year for the corn to have reached full maturity. But the field was still there. The farm is near nothing of major note: just more farms and long two-lane roads that go on forever. We made our way down the dirt road that carries you over a modest stream and into a parking area where the house, the corn, and the field stand–seemingly unblemished by time. The magical feeling you get there doesn’t wash over you all at once. At first, you’re just playing catch with your buddy in the outfield. Then you walk over to the pitcher’s mound and throw some weak fastballs over the plate. And then you sit on the bench. The bench where James Earl Jones rose to give that remarkable speech. It’s when you stop doing anything that it comes to you. Jones stood right in front of that bench. He spoke those words. And as long as film exists, he exists.

We stayed for a few hours. As we took our leave, we walked slowly to our car. There was no reason to hurry from this site. Keep breathing it in, I thought. You may never come back this way again. And as we were leaving, a slow, steady stream of cars rolled up that dirt road with a polite eagerness to replace those of us on our way out.

“People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

James Earl Jones died on September 9, 2024. He was 93 years old.