James Earl Jones was 'the voice' who inspired a generation

National Post, 14 September 2024

Despite his exemplary work on stage, it was as the disembodied voice of Darth Vader that the renowned actor was most famous for

The voice has been stilled.

At the end it must have been faint, even a whisper. Likely difficult to understand. It is the way of all flesh. Yet that that voice should now be still seems somehow not possible.

Inevitable of course, but at the same time not possible. For the voice came from somewhere beyond, possessing a preternatural power that ought to have exempted it from the laws of diminishment and death.

His voice did reach from beyond the grave, for Darth Vader was more dead than alive. The machines that forced breath into his singed lungs and through his scorched larynx kept the spiritually dead man physically alive.

James Earl Jones gave voice to that mystery.

I was boy when Star Wars formed the imaginative architecture of a generation. The voice of James Earl Jones, who died this week at 93, did not impress itself upon me though as Darth Vader. That impression would come later, when as young man I listened to a recording of Jones in “Lincoln Portrait.”

Written by Aaron Copland in 1942, the orchestral work frames written texts from Abraham Lincoln. Over the decades, various notable personages have narrated the texts, including actors from Charlton Heston to Katharine Hepburn. A 1993 recording featured Jones reading Lincoln. That was the occasion that that voice captured my imagination.

“The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion,” recited Jones. “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

Thirty years later I can hear the “disenthrall” of Jones in my aural memory, as clear as a photograph.

Were Lincoln’s words waiting for a voice equal to their unsurpassed quality? The depth of the Jones baritone allowed Lincoln’s words to soar. While Darth Vader will remain his most infamous role, I prefer to remember Jones as Lincoln, the giant of history doing his part such that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish, rather than as the fictional tyrant.

Jones was a Black voice. When reading Lincoln, that gave profound poignancy to the words. When playing Stephen Kumalo, the Christian Zulu priest in Cry the Beloved Country, it mattered that the Black voice was a voice with dignity.

When shooting Star Wars, the actor inside Vader’s suit, David Prowse, recited the lines. But his voice was rather high, more mocked than menacing. George Lucas wanted a “darker” voice, which did not mean Black, but Jones did fit the bill.

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