Alumni Association University of Michigan — Winter 2012
Change Language:
James Earl Jones: In His Own Words
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is recognizing actor James Earl Jones for his many contributions to film during his career. In this interview, he looks back on his professional life, which also includes significant work on stage and television, and how it took root at the University of Michigan.
James Earl Jones has built a career that many actors only dream of. He distinguished himself on Broadway with roles ranging from the title character in Shakespeare’s “Othello” to boxing champion Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope” to the tragically flawed Troy Maxson in “Fences.” The American Theater Wing has twice recognized this work, bestowing upon him Tony Awards for best actor in the latter two plays.
His versatility extends to film, where he has played a host of characters, such as his Academy Award-nominated role in the movie version of “The Great White Hope,” Terence Mann in “Field of Dreams,” and the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” saga. In a medium filled with iconic images and sounds, his voicing of that villain is among the most memorable, including the moment when he intones to Luke Skywalker, “No, I am your father.”
It is for his contributions to film that the Actors’ Equity Association named Jones the recipient of the 2011 Paul Robeson Award in October and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a 2011 Honorary Award in November. The Academy will recognize him at the Oscar ceremony on February 26.
Jones’ own story began in 1931. Born in Mississippi to Ruth (a teacher) and Robert Earl Jones (who became a New York-based actor), young James Earl moved to Dublin, Michigan, with his grandparents when they sought better farming and educational opportunities. At 6, he started stuttering, emulating an epileptic relative who stuttered. In his memoir, “Voices and Silences,” Jones says he was virtually mute until age 14. However, he liked to write and learned that with a script in hand, he could speak; he became his high school’s champion public speaker.
In 1949, he won a Regents Alumni scholarship to U-M and was a premedical major when he arrived on campus. But the stage beckoned, prompting him to shift from a premed to an English major.
He acted in many campus plays, spending summers at the Manistee Summer Theatre in Michigan. Jones went on to study acting in New York. By 1960, he had acted in the New York Shakespeare Festival (now the Public Theater) and had lined up his first major role in an off-Broadway play.
More than 50 years later, he continues to ply his craft, most recently starring in London’s West End with Vanessa Redgrave in “Driving Miss Daisy.” Despite a hectic schedule, Jones, ’55, HLHD’71, took the time to answer a few questions from Michigan Alumnus, commenting on his Oscar, movies, recent stage work, time at U-M, and early acting in northern Michigan.
Michigan Alumnus: Congratulations on your Honorary Award. What does it mean to you?
James Earl Jones: It means something wonderful. I haven’t absorbed it all yet. Partly, it means that if you hang in there long enough, all kinds of wonderful things can happen. I feel honored to be recognized with the other two recipients (Oprah Winfrey, who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and makeup artist Dick Smith, who also received an Honorary Award). Their work I’m familiar with; I don’t know if they’re familiar with mine, but I’ve been around a long time. It also means I get an Oscar statuette for my mantel!
You’ve appeared in more than 50 movies. Which screen roles are the most significant to you?
First of all, you told me something I didn’t know (regarding the 50 films). I just said I’d been around a long time, but I didn’t know that happened, which means I’ve probably forgotten some— not the people I worked with—but I’ve forgotten the event. And sometimes people approach me and say “I’ve seen you in such and such” and remind me, often to my surprise. Which is my favorite? I’m like a grandfather with a lot of grandchildren, I guess. Good not to pick favorites. I remember some because of the people I worked with, stories that I really liked, and a few because of the locations—like being on top of a flearidden camel in some North African country trying to evoke tears for Franco Zeffirelli in the middle of the night at the sight of the Baby Jesus (as Balthazar in the tele vision miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth”). As you might notice, I tend to talk about the more obscure things, and in a way, they are my favorite things.
It sounds as though you were very busy on stage during the fall. Can you tell me about it?
Yes! Joyfully reprising a role in “Driving Miss Daisy”—that of the driver, Hoke. It is a joy to do that play because of the play itself, which is a wonderful, subtle play, and also because of my fellow actors Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines. It becomes a wonderful little family on and off the stage. The family on stage, of course, is riddled with unusual conflicts, some cultural, that are frankly fun to resolve each night.
You performed your first stage role in Manistee in “Othello.” What sticks in your mind about acting in that theater and in that Shakespeare play in the mid-to-late 1950s?
When I look back on Manistee, I see much more, and in much bolder relief, than “Othello.” I started as the stage carpenter and worked up to stage manager, meanwhile doing small parts in every offering each summer. Again, I have very fond memories of the company and the manager of the company, Madge Skelly.
I also look back at the moment when I was scheduled to enter the military service in the fall of 1953, and I was in the green room of the Summer Theatre when the announcement came of the truce in Korea. That was particularly interesting news for me.
All I’ll say about the “Othello” was that one of the important backers of the theater, and a dear friend of mine, Anne Wittig, said, when an interviewer asked her how my Othello was, and she said, “Jimmy was God awful.” Probably, Anne was the most honest and helpful critic I’ve ever had, because that set me off to keep working on Othello for six more productions in my life. And whether I got beyond “God awful” is up to critics like Anne Wittig to say.
Is there any significance to having been a U-M student, initially thinking premed, when you discovered your interest in drama?
I come from a family in which I was the first member to enter the armed forces, the second member to ever go to college. And in that family, whereas higher education was certainly encouraged, the idea was that you did something important with that education. There were always the “Big Three”—doctor, lawyer, engineer. And so there was no way I could take that scholarship and that money and go to a big university like the one in Ann Arbor with the idea of being an actor, settling for a “liberal education,” as they called it. So I went and plugged away at premed until reality hit me and the Korean War was beckoning. And I simply decided to do something I felt I would enjoy before death in combat, and that was to join the theater department, forsaking my premed studies.
When did you realize that your voice was so distinctive?
I haven’t yet. All I’m aware of is that my voice is a tool I can use if I take good care of it and keep exercising it, with the main goal being clarity. The rest is in the ear of the beholder.
When will audiences next see you or hear your trademark bass voice on screen? On stage? Elsewhere?
Like most work-a-day actors, I’m never exactly sure when I’ll be working in film, but because stage work requires of us actors a bit more advance prepa ration, I’m given to know that I’ll be doing Art Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” next season (on Broadway in April 2012).
Do you ever visit Michigan?
When my mother was alive, I visited it quite often for this or that function. Lately my visits have been about introducing my own family to my homestead and to some of the interesting places around Michigan.
Lisa Klionsky, ’83, MA’85, is an Ann Arbor-based writer and editor.
Taking Flight with “The Birds”
James Earl Jones acted in plays during his last two years at U-M. In this excerpt from his autobiography, “Voices and Silences” (Scribner, 1993), he describes his role in one of those plays and the influence of Claribel Baird, a beloved and long time U-M theater faculty member who died in 2003 at the age of 99.
When I heard about casting for a drama department production of The Birds by Aristophanes, I showed up at the theatre and asked to read for one of the minor parts. After I sat down, the director, a remarkable teacher named Claribel Baird, asked me to audition for the role of Epops, the King of the Birds. They gave me the role. (Claribel, who lives even now in Ann Arbor, encourages me still. “You played him magnificently,” she tells me today,” despite the diffi ulty of negotiating the constructionist set built for the benefit of students who had never seen one.”) What Claribel didn’t know was that it was a delight for me to negotiate that set. With Gwen Arner, the attractive actress who played the Queen of the Birds, I had to climb up to the top of that platform before the curtain went up. We had to remain there silent and still during the first act. I found it delightful to be in the quiet company of Miss Arner.
I did not realize it at the time, but it was Claribel who chose the next student production, Deep Are the Roots by Arnaud d’Usseau and James Gow, so that I could play the lead role of Brett in this play which exposed intolerance in the South. The show went on, despite the interruption during one performance when a graduate student rose and ostentatiously exited to protest a scene between me and the white actress playing opposite me.
Reprinted with permission from James Earl Jones.
James Earl Jones in the Spotlight
1958 Secures his first speaking role on Broadway as a valet in “Sunrise at Campobello”
1960 Joins Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in “Henry V”
1961 Plays Deodatus Village in “The Blacks” off-Broadway
1963 Appears in his first movie, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” as Lt. Lothar Zogg
1965 Plays Dr. Jerry Turner in the television soap opera “As the World Turns”
1969 Wins a Tony Award for the role of Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope”
1970 Is nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the film version of “The Great White Hope”
1977 Begins his voice work as Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” movie saga
1978 Portrays Paul Robeson on Broadway in “Paul Robeson”
1981 Plays Othello on Broadway
1987 Wins a Tony Award for his portrayal of Troy Maxson in “Fences”
1991 Wins an Emmy award for the role of Gabriel Bird in the television series “Gabriel’s Fire”
1994 Portrays civil rights activist Vernon Johns in the televised film “The Vernon Johns Story”
1995 Plays the Rev. Stephen Kumalo in the film “Cry, The Beloved Country”
2000 and 2004 Narrates the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics
2005 Is nominated for a Tony Award for the role of Norman in “On Golden Pond”
2008 Plays Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway and in London Receives Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award
2010 and 2011 Plays Hoke Coleburn in “Driving Miss Daisy” on Broadway and in London
2011 Receives the Paul Robeson award from the Actors’ Equity Association and an Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
2012 Will play U.S. President Art Hockstader in the Broadway revival of “The Best Man”
SOURCES: “VOICES AND SILENCES” BY JAMES EARL JONES AND PENELOPE NIVEN (SCRIBNER, 1993); ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES; ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION; AMERICAN THEATRE WING; THE NEW YORK TIMES; THE OFFICIAL LONDON THEATRE GUIDE; PLAYBILL.COM; SCREEN ACTORS GUILD
James Earl Jones has built a career that many actors only dream of. He distinguished himself on Broadway with roles ranging from the title character in Shakespeare’s “Othello” to boxing champion Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope” to the tragically flawed Troy Maxson in “Fences.” The American Theater Wing has twice recognized this work, bestowing upon him Tony Awards for best actor in the latter two plays.
His versatility extends to film, where he has played a host of characters, such as his Academy Award-nominated role in the movie version of “The Great White Hope,” Terence Mann in “Field of Dreams,” and the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” saga. In a medium filled with iconic images and sounds, his voicing of that villain is among the most memorable, including the moment when he intones to Luke Skywalker, “No, I am your father.”
It is for his contributions to film that the Actors’ Equity Association named Jones the recipient of the 2011 Paul Robeson Award in October and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a 2011 Honorary Award in November. The Academy will recognize him at the Oscar ceremony on February 26.
Jones’ own story began in 1931. Born in Mississippi to Ruth (a teacher) and Robert Earl Jones (who became a New York-based actor), young James Earl moved to Dublin, Michigan, with his grandparents when they sought better farming and educational opportunities. At 6, he started stuttering, emulating an epileptic relative who stuttered. In his memoir, “Voices and Silences,” Jones says he was virtually mute until age 14. However, he liked to write and learned that with a script in hand, he could speak; he became his high school’s champion public speaker.
In 1949, he won a Regents Alumni scholarship to U-M and was a premedical major when he arrived on campus. But the stage beckoned, prompting him to shift from a premed to an English major.
He acted in many campus plays, spending summers at the Manistee Summer Theatre in Michigan. Jones went on to study acting in New York. By 1960, he had acted in the New York Shakespeare Festival (now the Public Theater) and had lined up his first major role in an off-Broadway play.
More than 50 years later, he continues to ply his craft, most recently starring in London’s West End with Vanessa Redgrave in “Driving Miss Daisy.” Despite a hectic schedule, Jones, ’55, HLHD’71, took the time to answer a few questions from Michigan Alumnus, commenting on his Oscar, movies, recent stage work, time at U-M, and early acting in northern Michigan.
Michigan Alumnus: Congratulations on your Honorary Award. What does it mean to you?
James Earl Jones: It means something wonderful. I haven’t absorbed it all yet. Partly, it means that if you hang in there long enough, all kinds of wonderful things can happen. I feel honored to be recognized with the other two recipients (Oprah Winfrey, who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and makeup artist Dick Smith, who also received an Honorary Award). Their work I’m familiar with; I don’t know if they’re familiar with mine, but I’ve been around a long time. It also means I get an Oscar statuette for my mantel!
You’ve appeared in more than 50 movies. Which screen roles are the most significant to you?
First of all, you told me something I didn’t know (regarding the 50 films). I just said I’d been around a long time, but I didn’t know that happened, which means I’ve probably forgotten some— not the people I worked with—but I’ve forgotten the event. And sometimes people approach me and say “I’ve seen you in such and such” and remind me, often to my surprise. Which is my favorite? I’m like a grandfather with a lot of grandchildren, I guess. Good not to pick favorites. I remember some because of the people I worked with, stories that I really liked, and a few because of the locations—like being on top of a flearidden camel in some North African country trying to evoke tears for Franco Zeffirelli in the middle of the night at the sight of the Baby Jesus (as Balthazar in the tele vision miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth”). As you might notice, I tend to talk about the more obscure things, and in a way, they are my favorite things.
It sounds as though you were very busy on stage during the fall. Can you tell me about it?
Yes! Joyfully reprising a role in “Driving Miss Daisy”—that of the driver, Hoke. It is a joy to do that play because of the play itself, which is a wonderful, subtle play, and also because of my fellow actors Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines. It becomes a wonderful little family on and off the stage. The family on stage, of course, is riddled with unusual conflicts, some cultural, that are frankly fun to resolve each night.
You performed your first stage role in Manistee in “Othello.” What sticks in your mind about acting in that theater and in that Shakespeare play in the mid-to-late 1950s?
When I look back on Manistee, I see much more, and in much bolder relief, than “Othello.” I started as the stage carpenter and worked up to stage manager, meanwhile doing small parts in every offering each summer. Again, I have very fond memories of the company and the manager of the company, Madge Skelly.
I also look back at the moment when I was scheduled to enter the military service in the fall of 1953, and I was in the green room of the Summer Theatre when the announcement came of the truce in Korea. That was particularly interesting news for me.
All I’ll say about the “Othello” was that one of the important backers of the theater, and a dear friend of mine, Anne Wittig, said, when an interviewer asked her how my Othello was, and she said, “Jimmy was God awful.” Probably, Anne was the most honest and helpful critic I’ve ever had, because that set me off to keep working on Othello for six more productions in my life. And whether I got beyond “God awful” is up to critics like Anne Wittig to say.
Is there any significance to having been a U-M student, initially thinking premed, when you discovered your interest in drama?
I come from a family in which I was the first member to enter the armed forces, the second member to ever go to college. And in that family, whereas higher education was certainly encouraged, the idea was that you did something important with that education. There were always the “Big Three”—doctor, lawyer, engineer. And so there was no way I could take that scholarship and that money and go to a big university like the one in Ann Arbor with the idea of being an actor, settling for a “liberal education,” as they called it. So I went and plugged away at premed until reality hit me and the Korean War was beckoning. And I simply decided to do something I felt I would enjoy before death in combat, and that was to join the theater department, forsaking my premed studies.
When did you realize that your voice was so distinctive?
I haven’t yet. All I’m aware of is that my voice is a tool I can use if I take good care of it and keep exercising it, with the main goal being clarity. The rest is in the ear of the beholder.
When will audiences next see you or hear your trademark bass voice on screen? On stage? Elsewhere?
Like most work-a-day actors, I’m never exactly sure when I’ll be working in film, but because stage work requires of us actors a bit more advance prepa ration, I’m given to know that I’ll be doing Art Hockstader in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” next season (on Broadway in April 2012).
Do you ever visit Michigan?
When my mother was alive, I visited it quite often for this or that function. Lately my visits have been about introducing my own family to my homestead and to some of the interesting places around Michigan.
Lisa Klionsky, ’83, MA’85, is an Ann Arbor-based writer and editor.
Taking Flight with “The Birds”
James Earl Jones acted in plays during his last two years at U-M. In this excerpt from his autobiography, “Voices and Silences” (Scribner, 1993), he describes his role in one of those plays and the influence of Claribel Baird, a beloved and long time U-M theater faculty member who died in 2003 at the age of 99.
When I heard about casting for a drama department production of The Birds by Aristophanes, I showed up at the theatre and asked to read for one of the minor parts. After I sat down, the director, a remarkable teacher named Claribel Baird, asked me to audition for the role of Epops, the King of the Birds. They gave me the role. (Claribel, who lives even now in Ann Arbor, encourages me still. “You played him magnificently,” she tells me today,” despite the diffi ulty of negotiating the constructionist set built for the benefit of students who had never seen one.”) What Claribel didn’t know was that it was a delight for me to negotiate that set. With Gwen Arner, the attractive actress who played the Queen of the Birds, I had to climb up to the top of that platform before the curtain went up. We had to remain there silent and still during the first act. I found it delightful to be in the quiet company of Miss Arner.
I did not realize it at the time, but it was Claribel who chose the next student production, Deep Are the Roots by Arnaud d’Usseau and James Gow, so that I could play the lead role of Brett in this play which exposed intolerance in the South. The show went on, despite the interruption during one performance when a graduate student rose and ostentatiously exited to protest a scene between me and the white actress playing opposite me.
Reprinted with permission from James Earl Jones.
James Earl Jones in the Spotlight
1958 Secures his first speaking role on Broadway as a valet in “Sunrise at Campobello”
1960 Joins Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in “Henry V”
1961 Plays Deodatus Village in “The Blacks” off-Broadway
1963 Appears in his first movie, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” as Lt. Lothar Zogg
1965 Plays Dr. Jerry Turner in the television soap opera “As the World Turns”
1969 Wins a Tony Award for the role of Jack Jefferson in “The Great White Hope”
1970 Is nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the film version of “The Great White Hope”
1977 Begins his voice work as Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” movie saga
1978 Portrays Paul Robeson on Broadway in “Paul Robeson”
1981 Plays Othello on Broadway
1987 Wins a Tony Award for his portrayal of Troy Maxson in “Fences”
1991 Wins an Emmy award for the role of Gabriel Bird in the television series “Gabriel’s Fire”
1994 Portrays civil rights activist Vernon Johns in the televised film “The Vernon Johns Story”
1995 Plays the Rev. Stephen Kumalo in the film “Cry, The Beloved Country”
2000 and 2004 Narrates the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics
2005 Is nominated for a Tony Award for the role of Norman in “On Golden Pond”
2008 Plays Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway and in London Receives Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award
2010 and 2011 Plays Hoke Coleburn in “Driving Miss Daisy” on Broadway and in London
2011 Receives the Paul Robeson award from the Actors’ Equity Association and an Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
2012 Will play U.S. President Art Hockstader in the Broadway revival of “The Best Man”
SOURCES: “VOICES AND SILENCES” BY JAMES EARL JONES AND PENELOPE NIVEN (SCRIBNER, 1993); ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES; ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION; AMERICAN THEATRE WING; THE NEW YORK TIMES; THE OFFICIAL LONDON THEATRE GUIDE; PLAYBILL.COM; SCREEN ACTORS GUILD
Message