Robert Earl Jones

Infobox actor
name = Robert Earl Jones

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caption = photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1938.
birthname = Robert Earl Jones
birthdate = birth date|1910|2|3|df=y
birthplace = Senatobia, Mississippi, USA
deathdate = death date and age|2006|9|7|1910|2|3|df=y
deathplace = Englewood, New Jersey, USA
othername = Earl Jones
spouse = Ruth Williams
Jumelle P. Jones
Ruth Connolly
yearsactive = 1955-1993
children = James Earl Jones

Robert Earl Jones (February 3 1910 – September 7 2006) was an American actor and the father of actor James Earl Jones. While born in Mississippi, the specific location of his birth is unclear as some sources indicate Senatobia, [cite web | author=David Patrick Stearns | url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/dec/01/guardianobituaries.usa | title=Robert Earl Jones: US actor rooted in the Harlem renaissance | work=The Guardian | month=December | year=2006 | accessdate=2007-01-26] while others suggest nearby Coldwater. [cite web | url=http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=47197 | title=Robert Earl Jones | work=Internet Broadway Database | accessdate=2007-01-26] Additionally, his date of birth has been reported by different sources as anywhere from 1900 to 1911. The most likely date is 1910 as reported by the United States Social Security Administration. [cite web | url=http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi | title=Social Security Death Index Search | publisher=RootsWeb.com | accessdate=2007-05-23 A database search on Robert Jones, 121-01-1664 returns: ROBERT EAR L JONES, 03 Feb 1910, 07 Sep 2006, (V) 12564 Pawling, Dutchess, NY 121-01-1664, New York.]

Biography

Career

Jones, a grade-school dropout, was a sharecropper, and boxing prizefighter before making his way, via Chicago, to New York City and a career on stage and in film. Under the name "Battling Bill Stovall", he was a sparring partner of Joe Louis.cite news | author=Margalit Fox | title=Robert Earl Jones, 96, Broadway Actor, Dies | url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/obituaries/19jones.htm | work=The New York Times | date=19 September 2006 | accessdate=2008-04-21]

Altogether Jones appeared in more than twenty films, including "The Cotton Club" (1984) and "The Sting" (1973). Jones was a living link with the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, having worked with Langston Hughes early in his career. In New York in the 1930s, after a short career as a prize fighter in Chicago where champion Joe Louis used him as a sparring partner, Jones worked with young people on the Works Progress Administration, the largest New Deal agency, through which he met Langston Hughes, who cast him in his 1938 play, "Don't You Want to Be Free?"

Jones told the New York Times in 1974: Quotation|"It was kind of natural. Langston Hughes' aunt, Toy Harper, taught me how to read my first poem: 'I am a Negro black as the night is black/ Black like the depth of my Africa' and several other poems. It was poetic drama, put together by several of his poems. We linked them together by a narrative, and I was that narrator.

Jones' career started in 1939 with a small role as a detective in the 1939 film "Lying Lips". Jones acted mostly in crime movies and dramas after that, with such highlights as "Cold River" and "One Potato, Two Potato". Jones also appeared in several other noted films over the span of his career: "Witness", "Trading Places", and "The Cotton Club". Jones appeared in the Oscar-winning 1973 film "The Sting", as Luther Coleman, an aging grifter whose con is requited with murder leading to "the sting". Although he never achieved the fame enjoyed by his son, James, Jones found a comfortable niche in Hollywood with steady work from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

Toward the end of his life, Jones was noted for his stage portrayal of Creon in a 1988 musical version of the Oedipus legend, "The Gospel at Colonus". He also made appearances in the long-running TV shows "Lou Grant" and "Kojak". His last film was in the 1992 drama "Rain Without Thunder". One of his last stage roles was, a 1991 adaptation by another figure from the Harlem renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston of "Mule Bone".

Though blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, he was ultimately honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the U.S. National Black Theatre Festival.

Personal life

Jones died at his home in 2006, in Englewood, New Jersey, of natural causes
* Ronald Earl Jones, father
* Rebecca Sunden-Jones, mother
* Brian Jones, brother
* Mary Jones, sister
* John Earl Jones, brother
* Ruth Connoly, wife
* James Earl Jones, son
* Matthew Earl Jones, son
* Flynn Earl Jones, grandson

Work

Stage

* "Mule Bone" (1991)
* "The Gospel at Colonus" (1988)
* "Unexpected Guests" (1977)
* "Death of a Salesman" (1975)
* "All God's Chillun Got Wings" (Revival) (1975)
* "More Stately Mansions" (1968)
* "The Moon Besieged" (1962)
* "Infidel Caesar" (1962)
* "Mister Johnson (play)" (1956)
* "Fancy Meeting You Again" (1952)
* "Caesar and Cleopatra" (Revival) (1949)
* "Set My People Free" (1948)
* "The Hasty Heart" (1945)

Filmography

* "Rain Without Thunder" (1992)
* "Maniac Cop 2" (1990)
* "" (1988)
* "Witness" (1985)
* "The Gospel at Colonus" (1985) as Creon
* "The Cotton Club" (1984)
* "Billions for Boris" (1984)
* "Sleepaway Camp" (1983)
* "Trading Places" (1983)
* "Cold River" (1982)
* "Jennifer's Journey" (1981)
* "The Sophisticated Gents" (1981)
* "Lou Grant" (1978) TV
* "Proof of the Man" (1977)
* "The Displaced Person" (1977)
* "Kojak" (1976) TV
* "Cockfighter" (1974)
* "The Sting" (1973) as Luther Coleman
* "Willie Dynamite" (1973)
* "Mississippi Summer" (1971)
* "One Potato, Two Potato" (1964)
* "Terror in the City" (1964)
* "The Defenders" (1963) TV
* "Wild River" (1960)
* "Odds Against Tomorrow" (1959)
* "The Notorious Elinor Lee" (1940)
* "Lying Lips" (1939)

References

External links

* [http://www.earljonesinstitute.com/history.htm The Earl Jones Institute]
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