Here’s why he was famous:
- The voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa
- The ultimate baseball fan in Field of Dreams
- “This is CNN”
Here’s why he was great:
I have seen many of the greatest modern stage actors live on the boards, like Derek Jacobi, Richard Kiley and Richard Harris, and I’ve seen recorded performances of the legends like Olivier, Mark Rylance, Nicol Williamson and Richard Burton. I’ve always loved the theater, and did some bad stage acting of my own when I was young and even more foolish than I am now.
And I’ll say this:
Some of the gentlemen I mentioned may have been greater stage actors than James. People wiser than I say so. But of all the performers I’ve ever seen, no man or woman has ever commanded a stage the way James Earl Jones did in The Great White Hope, which I saw when I was in college. When he was a young man, his legs were lightning, and his voice was thunder. His voice didn’t just go through you, it was all around you. It was everywhere. When he spoke, that voice became your universe. If the lord god is real and has a voice, he won’t be needing it any more. He now has James Earl Jones to speak for him.
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Something fascinating: James Earl Jones’s father, Robert Earl Jones, in One Potato, Two Potato (1964):
James Earl Jones worked with Robert Earl Jones on stage in a 1962 production of a play named “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl.”
No fucking way. Honest to god, I was watching The Big Bang theory with him in it moments before I read this. Crushed. He was a giant. For those who have not seen it, watch the movie “Scorchers”. I am heartbroken.
PR
That’s a great episode.
At the end in the sauna when James Earl Jones is telling Sheldon the anecdote about James, Marlon Brando and Beau and Jeff Bridges messing about in Angie Dickinson’s pool and she sets the dogs on them. Sheldon says “Who is Angie Dickinson?”
Perfect.
Ray, 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.
Guy was very forthright. He had a nude love scene with Diahann Carroll in Claudine. On the dvd commentary, he talked about how he couldn’t get it up in bed with her and it was so embarrassing since he was very attracted to Diahann. But Diahann related it another way, she said he had no shame and walked around the set naked. I got the sense from both that she yanked on his Jones to get him going. Dream gig.
Assuming this wasn’t a hard core porn, why was it necessary for Jones to get it up doing the scene?
There certainly wouldn’t be. If they did talk about any of this in the dvd commentary then it was probably just bs to try to make the commentary more interesting to help sell the dvd. I doubt that Claudine would be a movie that a lot of people would be running out to buy.
My understanding is that other than in actual porn, it is considered a big negative if an actor does get an erection during a sex scene and that actors have to use tremendous self control to try to prevent it. I don’t know how they do prevent that on a consistent basis, because the physical contact in some of those scenes looks pretty close and a penis can have mind of its own.
There’s a quote, attributed to Sean Connery, “Before every sex scene I say to the woman, ‘I’m sorry if I get aroused and I’m sorry if I don’t.'”
That’s a great line. 😀 Thanks for passing it along.
When I was acting in the Theatre, one strived for the concept of “stage presence”. The goal was to make the audience look at you and only you. James Earl Jones achieved stage presence, just by his voice. I loved him in the Jack Ryan movies as Admiral Greer. He was great in “Blood Tide” opposite my friend Lydia Cornell. But, I will always get a chuckle about his playing himself on “The Big Bang Theory”.
This was from a deleted scene in The Empire Strikes Back.
In the scene where Darth Vader is in his chambers and you see his mask being lowered back onto his head, when it was originally filmed Darth Vader is grousing about the emperor complaining “I’m so badly paid I even need to moonlight!” Then he goes to a recording device, breathes his heavy voice, turns the device on and says “This is CNN.”
Robert Earl Jones also played Luther in “The Sting”.
How many people remember that he played the first Black president in a movie with a script written by Rod Serling and co-starring Jack Benny? The Man (1972) can be watched on YouTube.
I enjoyed it
I found the film really interesting.