Remembering James Earl Jones, a powerhouse actor with a voice to match

You might almost think so when considering the achievement of James Earl Jones, the actor who died Monday at age 93 after a long and distinguished career in film, television and, most rewardingly and extensively, theater. He became the rare actor to have a Broadway house named for him when, in September 2022, the Cort Theatre was rechristened the James Earl Jones Theatre.

Many people may best know Mr. Jones for his voice alone, specifically the sonorous, sinister bass-baritone he deployed as Darth Vader, the bad guy of all bad guys of late-20th-century film in the first “Star Wars" trilogy. Mr. Jones did not wear the sweeping black garb or ominous face-obscuring helmet on the movies’ sets. He only rumbled forth the character’s dialogue, yet in doing so left an unforgettable impression. The voice—but more than that, the actor behind it—defined the character. Mr. Jones would continue to voice the character for decades, before bowing out in 2022. (Beginning in 1990, Mr. Jones would again have an invisible but unmistakable presence when he memorably intoned the words, “This is CNN.")

Irony: In his youth, Mr. Jones had virtually no voice. He had a pronounced stutter and was often all but mute, unable to express himself. It was only when Mr. Jones discovered that he did not have to speak his own words and thoughts, but could channel those of others by speaking poetry and dialogue from plays, that the power of his vocal cords, and his fierce devotion to theater, began to develop.

Despite a small but choice movie debut, in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove," Mr. Jones was never a movie star, but he was among the most stalwart and dedicated stage actors of the 20th century. He played Othello an astonishing seven times, most notably opposite Christopher Plummer’s Iago in a 1982 Broadway production that Mr. Jones was unimpressed with, so high were his standards for himself and the theater. Any actor undertaking the role would be wise to read Mr. Jones’s perceptive and thorough analysis of the play in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences."

Having first appeared onstage in the 1950s, Mr. Jones was still doing eight performances a week two decades into the 21st century, the voice still in sterling form. In the six Broadway performances I saw him give (he appeared roughly 20 times), Mr. Jones always impressed me with the authority and the integrity of his work.

Whether as a forcefully swaggering Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," or as the gently spoken chauffeur Hoke opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Alfred Uhry’s two-hander “Driving Miss Daisy," Mr. Jones held one’s attention without allowing the forcefulness of his presence to impede nuanced exploration of character. Mr. Jones and the great Cicely Tyson turned the thin-as-a-playing-card comedy-drama “The Gin Game" into a moving and funny portrait of the shadowy loneliness of solitary old age.

Mr. Jones won two Tony Awards, the first for his breakthrough role in the 1967 Howard Sackler drama “The Great White Hope," about a black prizefighter. The play won the Best Play Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and was later filmed with Mr. Jones. But as he wrote in his autobiography, the movie was an inferior interpretation of the material. Nevertheless, flashes of the power—and tenderness—of Mr. Jones’s performance, and his magnetism, can be glimpsed, and he received an Oscar nod, becoming the second black actor, after Sidney Poitier, to be honored with a Best Actor nomination.

The original 1987 production of August Wilson’s “Fences" brought Mr. Jones his second Tony, for his blistering portrayal of Troy Maxson, a once-brilliant baseball player in his prime before the Major Leagues were integrated. Mr. Jones evinced with searching force how racism—and self-inflicted wounds—had warped Troy’s soul without extinguishing his pride in his solid if hardly lucrative job as a garbage man, supporting a loving wife and a son.

The full production was not filmed, but on YouTube you can see a shattering scene between Troy and his son, beginning when the latter plaintively asks whether his father “likes" him. There erupts from Troy a searing defense of his ethics and his life, which concludes with a sharp lesson: Life is not about being liked, but being given the respect you are due.

Even in lesser parts, Mr. Jones brought incisive bite to his characterizations. In a revival of Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man," Mr. Jones was incongruously cast as Arthur Hockstader, an ex-U.S. president from the South (prior to 1960?).

Mr. Jones all but glowed with pleasure in the meatiness and robust humor of his role, as Hockstader toys with the presidential candidates looking for his endorsement. But he also transmitted the mournfulness of a man who knows his death from cancer is not far away. In a drama that shows its age, Mr. Jones gave a performance of such texture and vitality that when he was onstage, the play seemed to gain luster by the minute.

The mark of a great stage actor is the ability to fully inhabit, and give full-blooded humanity to, any character he or she plays, regardless of the quality of the play. Mr. Jones was an exemplar of this rare gift.

Mr. Isherwood is the Journal’s theater critic.