On September 9, 2024, we lost one of the great ones: James Earl Jones. Jones is one of the few people to achieve the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), but more important than awards was the passion, commitment, craft, and just sheer scale he brought to every role whether it was as the leading man, a supporting character, or just a voice. And he brought all that to the table whether he was doing Shakespeare or Sesame Street. He was truly a rare talent.
James Earl Jones made his Broadway debut in 1957 but gained acclaim for his work with the New York Shakespeare Festival taking on the Bard’s tragic heroes of Othello, Hamlet, Coriolanus, and King Lear. He would win a Tony Award for Best Actor for The Great White Hope (1968), a role that he reprised for the 1970 film adaptation, earning him his first Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. He made his film debut six years earlier in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for Stanley Kubrick. He also appeared in dozens of TV shows from Sesame Street and Faerie Tale Theatre to Dr. Kildare and Homicide: Life on the Streets. Jones also worked on mini-series such as Roots: The Next Generation and Jesus of Nazareth.
In James Earl Jones’ honor and to remember his legendary body of work, here are 10 must-see movies featuring his most memorable and iconic performances.
1. The Great White Hope (1970) as Jack Jefferson
Jones originated this role in Howard Sackler’s play, a fictionalized account of heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson (here renamed Jefferson), who in 1908, became the first Black man to hold the Heavyweight Championship of the world. But what Jefferson/Johnson could not beat was the prejudice of the times. Jones delivered a physically forceful performance combined with exceptional emotional subtlety. Jane Alexander also reprised her stage role opposite Jones as Jefferson’s interracial love interest. This marked his first juicy screen role, and he just devoured it.
2. The Man (1972),
Douglass Dilman
The Man was originally conceived as a TV movie that Paramount decided to release theatrically. It has the feel and look of a TV movie, but Rod Serling’s script based on Irving Wallace’s novel gave Jones a meaty role to sink his teeth into. Jones plays Sen. Douglass Dilman, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate who, through a series of tragic incidents, suddenly finds himself in the Oval Office as the first African American and first unelected President of the United States. But his presidency prompts some racist colleagues to immediately begin plotting his downfall.
Dilman is presented as an academic, specifically a former professor, and something of a quiet man. Neither of which seems to make him well-equipped for the cutthroat political realm he has just been thrown into. But watching Jones’ Dilman start to comprehend the ruthlessness of his colleagues and gain confidence in his own abilities to govern is a revelation. There are aspects of the film that are dated in historical ways (we have since had an unelected president as well as a Black president) and in cultural ways. But the film still resonates thanks to Jones’ performance as the ever-evolving Dilman who gains strength at each challenge and Serling’s stellar script that raises questions about politics and personal morality. This is an under-appreciated gem that you need to see.
Here’s dialogue from the film that reflects Serling’s skill as a writer and social commentator, and Jones delivers it with pitch-perfect ferocity: “We live in a time when violence is offered up as the panacea. The bullet seems to be the final instrument of political discourse. Men die violently, we bury them, we mourn for them, and we seek retribution. It’s a deadly pattern… a quote from Genesis: ‘Behold the dreamer. Come now therefore and let us slay him and we shall see what has become of his dream.’ We cannot murder the tyranny by murdering the tyrant and we cannot murder the dream by murdering the dreamer. And if we justify the taking of any life in the name of our morality, we’ve done nothing but murder our morality.”
3. Claudine (1974),
Roop
This might be Jones’ most charming performance. He plays Roop, a Harlem-based garbage collector who decides to ask out a single mom, the Claudine of the title played by Diahann Carroll, who has six kids. There is a moment when Roop first visits Claudine’s home and is sitting in a chair that looks much too small and low for him, and he takes in the chaos of the family with a quiet bemusement. It is just such a wonderful piece of acting by Jones that it remains vivid decades later.
Claudine is a reality-based comedy on the fringes of Blaxploitation, so Jones gets to also display some grit and anger as he faces the absurdity of the welfare system in the ’70s. And in a challenge to the Hollywood happily-ever-after rom-com ending, Jones gets to dig into some poignant vulnerability as he shows Roop trying to navigate living on minimum wage with ex-wives, kids, and a potential new family to support. Jones makes a fabulous leading man to Carroll’s Claudine. The husband-wife writing team of Lester and Tina Pine gives them great material to work with as they spar, fall in love, and face the challenges of being poor and Black in America of the 1970s.
4. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976),
Leon Carter
Since James Earl Jones has so many great performances, I am doing a little cheat here and picking just one baseball role to reflect his trilogy of baseball home runs hits; the other two being Field of Dreams and The Sandlot. While all three films have their merits, I am going with The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings as my pick for its combination of Jones’ performance, a stellar Black ensemble, and the window it provides to the real-life Negro Leagues of the 1930s.
Heading the cast with Jones are Billy Dee Williams as the dashing pitcher Bingo, Richard Pryor as the ever-industrious Charlie Snow, and Stan Shaw as Esquire Joe Callaway, the young star with major league talent. Jones has a rollicking good time with this ensemble, and we get a little history as well. The tone is mostly light, but it acknowledges the prejudice that was always lurking for the players. Again, Jones has a silent moment that sublimely captures a series of contrasting emotions as he hears that Joe will be going to the Major Leagues. Jones lets us see Carter’s his incredulity that the offer is real transition to sadness at the opportunity he was denied to his joy that the color barrier will be broken, and finally a realization that an era is ending. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet moment all captured in a look.
5. The Greatest (1977),
Malcolm X
Five years earlier, before acting in The Greatest, Jones narrated an excellent documentary about the life of Malcolm X, the assassinated Black civil rights leader. In 1977, Muhammed Ali’s biopic The Greatest became the first film to put Malcolm X as a character on screen. Malcolm X was an important figure in Ali’s life and Jones does a memorable job portraying him in a supporting role.
6. Star Wars Franchise (1977-2019)
Again, a little cheat. James Earl Jones has a magnificent, velvety voice, which has been put to great use in multiple films as either a narrator or for a character. So, I will just highlight the one most memorable one to represent them all: voicing Darth Vader. He was also great in The Lion King (1994) as Mufasa but his work as Darth Vader is iconic. You cannot possibly imagine Star Wars without his contribution or accept any other voice as Vader. And you may be hearing his voice for years to come as Vader because Jones worked with a company called Respeecher to clone his voice for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, and he signed over permission to recreate his voice for projects after his death. So, Vader will always be James Earl Jones, and rightfully so.
7. Conan the Barbarian (1982)
, Thulsa Doom
With Darth Vader under his belt, Jones tackled another villain with delicious gusto, Thulsa Doom. Thulsa is a snake cult wizard and leader who beheads Conan’s mom and sends the boy into slavery to set the revenge in motion. Sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the beefcake attraction, and the film is based on Robert E. Howard’s pulpy novel, but director John Milius takes it all seriously and has an over-the-top flair for this kind of violent, muscular male action so the final product an operatic flair. Jones tackled the role with gravitas, and his voice alone literally has the power to hypnotize people in the film.
James Earl Jones made Thulsa the perfect nemesis to drive the plot. He is even effectively menacing in that crazy wig that was even worse than the one he had in Meteor Man. Although Jones did not chew the scenery like Frank Langella did as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe or Raul Julia did as Bison in Street Fighter, all three actors displayed an ability to have fun with their roles while still taking the work seriously and elevating the films.
8. Matewan (1987), “Few Clothes” Johnson
Writer-director John Sayles always had a good eye for casting, and he certainly knew what he was doing when he went after James Earl Jones for this historical drama about a 1920 coal miners’ strike in the hills of West Virginia. Jones was a huge score for the indie filmmaker, but fortunately, Jones was the kind of actor who moved between Hollywood and indie films with ease. Chris Cooper plays union activist Joe Kenehan who wants to bring together Blacks and whites, locals and immigrants, miners and scabs to unionize the miners and fight the ruthless mining executives. Jones plays “Few Clothes” Johnson, a Black miner brought in as a “scab” to cross the picket line of the white workers, and he is even encouraged to kill Kenehan by the anti-union faction.
Jones brings great humanity and dignity to the role. His sense of authenticity in creating his character is perfectly matched by Sayles’ determination to depict the sacrifice and determination of the miners to have decent working conditions.
9. Coming to America (1988)
, King Jaffe Joffer
James Earl Jones always had a regal bearing, so it is only right to highlight a performance where he actually got to play a King. His dignity, solemnity, and sense of tradition (all delivered with a bit of a wink) played well off Eddie Murphy’s young prince. Shades of Mufasa perhaps. Coming 2 America, more than three decades later, would prove to be Jones’ final onscreen credit. Once again Jones teases us with his comedic abilities.
10. Cry, the Beloved Country (1995),
Rev. Stephen Kumalo
Cry, the Beloved Country came out the year after Apartheid officially ended in South Africa and in the same year that Nelson Mandela was elected the country’s president. But the film, adapted from Alan Paton’s novel, is set in 1940s South Africa just before apartheid took hold. James Earl Jones plays Rev. Stephen Kumalo, who comes to Johannesburg to visit his son who has been charged with murdering a white man whose father, James Jarvis (Richard Harris), supports segregation. The two men, despite their differences, discover some common ground and common humanity, allowing the film to end with guarded hope. The film was also adapted in 1951 with Canada Lee as Kumalo, Charles Carson as Jarvis, and Sidney Poitier as another reverend.
BONUS TV movies:
I had to add these bonus picks because there are no theatrical films of Jones doing Shakespeare, and sadly no recording of any kind of him playing Othello to Christopher Plummer’s Iago. Great Performances, however, did capture his magnificent and heartbreakingly tragic performance as King Lear (1974) for Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park in New York City. Another great performance filmed for television was his one-man stage show, in which he played the great Paul Robeson and gave us one legend paying tribute to another.
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