The entertainment world is in mourning today as the legendary actor James Earl Jones – who has perhaps the most iconic voice in Hollywood history – has passed away at 93 on Monday.
While he is a three-time Tony Award winner, two-time Emmy Award winner and a Grammy winner – just an Oscar shy of the EGOT – Jones is certainly best known for voicing two of cinema’s most iconic characters: Star Wars’ Darth Vader and The Lion King’s Mufasa.
Ironically, the screen icon rose not only from humble beginnings in Depression-era Mississippi, but he also overcame a speech impediment as well.
Jones was born in Arakbutla, Mississippi in January 1931, though from the age of 5 on, he was raised by his maternal grandparents on their farm in Dublin, Michigan, moving north as part of the Great Migration.
The move – with his mother and 13 cousins – was so traumatizing that it lead to a speech impediment… which Jones told Daily Mail back in March 2010 that he originally thought was a ‘curse.’
The entertainment world is in mourning today as the legendary actor James Earl Jones – who has perhaps the most iconic voice in Hollywood history – has passed away at 93 on Monday
While he is a three-time Tony Award winner, two-time Emmy Award winner and a Grammy winner – just an Oscar shy of the EGOT – Jones is certainly best known for voicing two of cinema’s most iconic characters: Star Wars ‘ Darth Vader and The Lion King’s Mufasa.
The Lion King’s Mufasa, voiced by the late legendary actor James Earl Jones
‘I had an Uncle Randy – who passed away last year – who was my brother really. I was the youngest grandchild and he was the youngest child and only four years older than me,’ Jones began.
‘Randy stuttered while we lived in Mississippi and I feel that I mocked him. I used to imitate him. I don’t know whether I was imitating him to keep him company or to embarrass him. And then I ended up stuttering myself. I feel I was cursed,’ he said.
While he was not actually cursed, there is still no exact cause known for why people start to stutter, though for Jones it was so bad for him he was practically mute for eight years of his childhood.
‘As a small child, I would communicate to my family, or at least those who didn’t mind being embarrassed by my stutter or my being embarrassed,’ Jones explained.
‘I did communicate with the animals quite freely, but then that’s calling the hogs, the cows, the chickens. They don’t care how you sound, they just want to hear your voice,’ he added.
‘Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I’d try to read my lessons and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter,’ Jones said, though he admitted that stuttering is ‘funny’ to him.
‘Well, I knew I was funny. I still know why it is funny. I think stutterers are funny. And I know it’s rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is OK because I know why they’re funny,’ he said.
Jones would explain, ‘They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.’
‘I had an Uncle Randy – who passed away last year – who was my brother really. I was the youngest grandchild and he was the youngest child and only four years older than me,’ Jones began
‘Randy stuttered while we lived in Mississippi and I feel that I mocked him. I used to imitate him. I don’t know whether I was imitating him to keep him company or to embarrass him. And then I ended up stuttering myself. I feel I was cursed,’ he said
Jones would explain, ‘They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness’
The actor said that the stuttering continued when he started school, and it got so bad, ‘that I gave up trying to speak properly.’
‘There was another pupil who sat behind me who was also a stutterer and the teacher, who was young, would shake him, and I’d say, “L-l-lll-l-let me teach him” and I took over his studies, or when he had to talk. I understood him. I understood that shaking him was not going to help. She was relieved,’ Jones added.
The one teacher that truly helped him though was an English teacher and poet named Donald Crouch, who Jones calls, ‘the father of my voice.’
‘He was a contemporary of Robert Frost, and memorized a poem every day in case he ever went blind so he might have poems he could read in his head,’ Jones recalled… adding later that ironically Crouch
‘I had started writing poetry in high school and he said of one of them, “Jim, this is a good poem. In fact, it is so good I don’t think you wrote it. I think you plagiarised it. If you want to prove you wrote it, you must stand in front of the class and recite it by memory. Which I did. As they were my own words, I got through it,’ Jones revealed.
The teacher said that if Jones, was interested in being ‘involved with words,’ he would have to say them in front of the class and work on his stuttering.
His teacher argued that if James Earl wanted to be ‘involved with words’ he would have to be able to say them and read to the class and work on the stuttering problem.
‘And he got me engaged in the debating class, the dramatic reading class and so on. He got me talking, and reading poetry – Edgar Allan Poe was my favourite,’ Jones said.
The actor said that the stuttering continued when he started school, and it got so bad, ‘ that I gave up trying to speak properly’
By the time he went to study drama at the University of Michigan, Jones had enough of a handle on his stuttering… though it never fully went away for good
By the time he went to study drama at the University of Michigan, Jones had enough of a handle on his stuttering… though it never fully went away for good.
‘I’ve learned that sometimes the synapses in your brain trip up, like stumbling on a sidewalk,’ he explains, with consonants like M still a struggle for him.
Jones made his stage debut in the 1950s and quickly became known as one of the best Shakespearean actors of his era, starring in Othello, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to name a few.
He won his first Tony in 1969 for playing boxer Jack Jefferson (based on real-life boxer Jack Johnson) in The Great White Hope, then earning his first Oscar nomination for reprising that role in the 1970 film adaptation.
When George Lucas thought David Prowse’s voice was unsuitable for Darth Vader, Jones was brought in for what would be one of the most iconic voice roles ever.
Jones retired from acting in 2021 after reprising his role as King Jaffe Joffer in Coming 2 America.
He also signed a deal in 2022 with Respeecher and Lucasfilm, authorizing the companies to use his archived audio for future Darth Vader voice performances.