Jones was uniquely aware of the power his voice commanded as well, and he took it as seriously as any facet of his career, including when he used it to give back to the world… even when working as a simple narrator on daytime public television.
After news of Jones’ passing yesterday, I personally thought back to many of my favorite performances of Jones, be it in The Great White Hope or, genuinely, Conan the Barbarian. I was also taken back by an anecdote about the actor provided by the producers of Reading Rainbow, a seminal series in the lives of children who grew up between 1983 and 2006—including those who saw an episode which aired during the series’ first season in ’83.
In the episode “Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain,” Jones did what he once nervously felt compelled to do in front of a high school class: he read aloud, here Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema (you can view the clip below). And according to producer Jill Gluckson in the excellent Butterfly in the Sky documentary on Netflix, Jones brought the intellectual rigor of a dramatist to the material.
“I asked if I could go to the recording of James Earl Jones, because I just had to see him,” Gluckson said in the documentary. “So we’re sitting in the studio, and he walks in, couldn’t have been nicer, and he said, ‘I’m sorry that I have to ask you this. I would like to reschedule. You can donate my fee. But I don’t feel prepared. I want to rehearse this. I want to get my voice where it should be. So if you wouldn’t mind if I could come back tomorrow.’”
Larry Lancit, who was a producer and director on Reading Rainbow, said this was a moment where they realized how seriously artists could take the task of reading a children’s book. Yet is also a specific tribute to Jones’ own dedication and sense of craftsmanship.
Not every talent, even amongst actors, would necessarily take performing a children’s story as seriously as conquering the works of William Shakespeare or Eugene O’Neill—something which Jones had experience with doing both of at that time. (When he recorded for Reading Rainbow, he was still performing Othello opposite Christopher Plummer’s Iago.) Yet the man who would be the lion king treated a children’s story, and its audience, with as sincere a respect as he would any Manhattan audience. And in so doing, he set a precedent that soon many other actors would follow on PBS’ classic series.