“Luke, I am your father.” All of you reading that seminal line from The Empire Strikes Back likely did so in a low, metallic, baritone voice, perhaps the most recognizable in Hollywood history. James Earl Jones, the legendary actor who brought Darth Vader and countless other characters to life, passed away last week at the age of 93, leaving behind a legacy that cements him as one of the most influential actors of all time.
Born in Mississippi in 1931 with a debilitating stutter, Jones was abandoned by his father as a child and raised by his grandparents in Michigan. According to Jones, “I was a stutterer. 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.” In high school, Jones turned to drama and poetry as ways to regain his voice and suppress his stutter, kindling a lifelong relationship with the arts which would eventually blossom into one of the most impactful entertainment careers in history. Before taking to the stage, he enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1949 as a pre-med major, training to be a combat field medic during the Korean War. When he returned from training, he decided to focus on his passion, graduating as a drama major in 1955. The poetic justice of a stuttering kid becoming the most iconic voice in film history should be lost on no one.
After graduating college in 1955, Jones moved to New York to study acting, supporting himself as a janitor and by taking small roles or stagehand jobs. Jones eventually became a prolific Shakespearean performer in the 1960s and became one of the best-known stage actors of the era. It was here, by luck, that he got his start in Hollywood. Looking to cast one of the co-stars in Dr. Strangelove, director Stanley Kubrick happened to see Jones in a Shakespeare in the Park rendition of The Merchant of Venice and decided to bring him on the project.
Post-Dr. Strangelove, Jones enjoyed a relatively quiet film career, acting in a few smaller films, notably The Comedians, where he starred alongside future Star Wars co-star Alec Guiness (Obi-Wan Kenobi). It seems the invisible string theory was at play. Jones didn’t really need Hollywood to be a star; in 1969, he became the first Black actor to win a Tony for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope.
Then, in 1976, Jones got a call from George Lucas, a director working on an underfunded pipe dream across Death Valley, Hertfordshire, and Tunisia. It was a project using clay models for spaceships, pulleys and strings for the Force, and a cast of mostly unknown actors to tell what would be one of the most impactful stories of all time. I am talking, of course, about Star Wars. The miraculous chronicle of how this cultural behemoth was made is an article unto itself, but we’ll leave that for another day. For James Earl Jones, Star Wars wasn’t an astonishing undertaking or leap of faith, as it was for so many others on that first film. For Jones, Star Wars was a quick phone call and a $7,000 three-hour recording session in which he instantly became the greatest villain of all time.
It is astonishing that Jones was able to voice-act in three hours at a level never seen before or since, when in today’s Hollywood, actors will take weeks or months to complete a voice acting role. My god, how many other performances are able to strike fear into the hearts of audiences just by the sound of their breathing? How many other performances are able to completely transcend genres and generations, to the point where I’d wager that anyone born in between 1950 and today, Star Wars fan or not, knows the name Darth Vader?
I can speak on Jones’ incredible talent all day long, but his powerful humility deserves recognition as well. Where most people would bask in the glory of the success of Star Wars, Jones requested credit for Darth Vader be given to David Prowse, as “When it came to Darth Vader, I said, no, I’m just special effects.” Jones would continue to refuse credit until 1983, when by then, according to him, “It became so identified that by the third one, I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll let them put my name on it.’”
Over the next few decades, Jones would take on many more iconic roles. Whether it was Terence Mann in Field of Dreams, King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America, or Mufasa in The Lion King, he was an unstoppable force in American pop culture. Jones went on to win two Emmys in 1991 for his portrayal of Junius Jackson in Heat Wave and Gabriel Bird in Gabriel’s Fire, a Grammy in 1977 for spoken word poetry, and an honorary Oscar in 2011 for his lifetime of astonishing performance. That Oscar cemented Jones as the first Black man in history to be awarded EGOT status in 2011, a club of 21 that includes some of the most legendary figures from pop culture history, including Elton John, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, and Viola Davis. Jones’ status as an EGOT winner is controversial given his Oscar was honorary, a ridiculous argument given he has a greater impact on the history of film then almost anyone else in the last century. 50 years later, his work is regarded as some of the greatest of all time, a dream career for anyone, let alone someone born with a stutter and practically mute for the first 14 years of his life. Simply put, James Earl Jones will always hold his EGOT.
In addition to his individual accolades, his bevy of work and trailblazing story have netted him several lifetime awards. In 1992, he received the National Medal of the Arts from President George H.W. Bush at the White House, followed by the Kennedy Center honors in 2002. In 2017, he was honored with a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement, as well as an honorary doctor of arts degree from Harvard. His acceptance speech was one line: “May the force be with you,” and met with deafening applause.
For all of his career achievements, I think the most remarkable thing about James Earl Jones was his perseverance and unshakeable spirit. And so, I think it prudent to leave you with words from the legend himself: “If you expect someone else to guide you, you’ll be lost.” I hope we all can muster some semblance of Jones’ courage in our daily lives, to become perhaps not a Dark Lord of the Sith or a proud lion, but the best version of ourselves.
Jordan Wasserberger ’27 (jwasserberger@college.harvard.edu) hopes that readers will take two hours out of their day to go watch (or-rewatch) Star Wars and think about how lucky we are to have been born within a century of James Earl Jones.