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I’m not any good at embedding videos into these posts, so if it ends up with a lot of code along with the video, so be it. My point is to get James Earl Jones and that majestic voice of his into the ears of anyone who might need to hear it on this, the day that he left us after a long and immensely impactful life.
I first heard his voice in Star Wars, as I imagine many others did. What the nine year-old that I was at the time didn’t know—nobody did, really—was that James Earl Jones did not accept any credit for his voicing of Darth Vader because he didn’t want to upstage the actor who physically played the role. He made the same arrangement with the studio for The Empire Strikes Back, as well. It wasn’t until The Return of the Jedi that James Earl Jones took any credit for what was arguably one of the most distinctive movie roles ever put onto film.
Even if his professional credits ended there, that would have been significant enough. But we know that wasn’t the case. Far from it, actually. He was the voice of CNN, and King Mufasa, and Mr. Mertle from The Sandlot, for crying out loud. “Baseball was life, and I was good at it.” It was a screenwriter who wrote those words, but James Earl Jones brought them to life with his amazing voice.
Which brings me to perhaps the best two minutes that have ever been committed to film, at least in my opinion. I once watched a DVD of Field of Dreams with the commentaries turned on, and learned that the screenwriter wrote this scene because he wanted to hear James Earl Jones speaking these words out loud. Coming from any other actor, they might have sounded soapy and ridiculous. But when delivered in Jones’ deep baritone, they were a home run that traveled deep into the Iowa cornfield.
Ed Kranepool of the New York Mets (and spending 18 seasons with the same team is something that rarely ever happens in the big leagues) also passed away today, and I’ll have something to say about that in the days to come. There are things to be said about somebody who saw his first major league action before he turned 18 years old, after all. But tonight I wanted to share my gratitude for having heard the voice of James Earl Jones and—thanks to the internet—that it will also endure into all those galaxies far, far away.