Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
James Earl Jones, acclaimed actor
and voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93
NEW YORK | James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in Disney’s animated “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.
“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the payment in these streets looks for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.
Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three Tom Clancy blockbuster adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”
As a rising stage and television actor, he appeared in “As the World Turns” in 1965, becoming one of the first African American actors in a continuing role in a daytime drama. He performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.
Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.
When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.
“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”
Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.
Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.
At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.
In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.
True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.
Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.
In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.
“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”
Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.
“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”
‘Shogun’ wins record-breaking 14 Emmys at Creative Arts ceremony
LOS ANGELES | “Shogun” won the most Emmys ever for a single season of a television series with 14 at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Sunday night, while “The Bear” won seven including best guest actress in a comedy series for Jamie Lee Curtis.
Presenters were saying “Shogun” all night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on the second night of the two-night Creative Arts Emmys, where awards are handed out that don’t quite make the main Primetime Emmys ceremony. It broke the record of 13 set by the 2008 limited series “John Adams” before even reaching the Sept. 15 main Emmys ceremony, when it can pad its record with up to five more.
“Shogun,” the FX series about political machinations in feudal Japan, won all but two of the possible 16 trophies it could have claimed on Sunday night, including Emmys for costumes, makeup, editing, stunts and cinematography, along with a best guest actor in a drama Emmy for Néstor Carbonell.
As he accepted, Carbonell thanked the crew, then marveled at how many of them were in the audience.
“You’re all here! You’re all nominated!” Carbonell said. “I love the team sport of this.”
Curtis was emotional on stage after winning her first Emmy 18 months after winning her first Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” Curtis said backstage. “I just never thought I would get to do work at this level of depth and complexity and intelligence. It’s been the thrill of my creative life these last couple of years.”
Asked if she could win a Grammy and a Tony to make it an EGOT, she said no way.
“I can’t sing at all,” she said, “and I’ve never been on stage.”
The songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, however, did become the 20th and 21st members of the elite EGOT club when they won their first Emmy for a song they co-wrote for “Only Murders in the Building.” The duo had previously won an Oscar for “La La Land” and a Grammy and Tony for “Dear Evan Hansen.”
Curtis won for the season two “Bear” episode “Fishes,” in which she played the mother of star Jeremy Allen White at a nightmare holiday family gathering. Jon Bernthal, who played White’s big brother in the episode, won best guest actor in a comedy.
Michaela Coel won best guest actress in a comedy series for her appearance on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
“Shogun” shook up the Emmys race when it switched from the limited series to the drama series category in May and led all nominees with 25 when nominations were announced in July.
It won so steadily that the few who beat it — it lost only in two music-composition categories — felt the need to comment on it.
“I didn’t write a speech, because there was no way I was beating ‘Shogun’ tonight,” said Siddharta Khosa, who won best music composition for a series for “Only Murders in the Building.”
When Eric Andŕe was asked only one question in the media room after winning his first Emmy for his performance on his self-titled talk show, he said, with fake exasperation, “Sorry I’m not on Shogun!”
Maya Rudolph and Angela Bassett were among the Creative Arts winners on Saturday night, which focused on reality and variety TV. Rudolph won her sixth career Emmy, for her voice-over work on the animated “Big Mouth.” Bassett won her first, for her narration of the National Geographic wildlife documentary series “Queens.”
Both nights of the show will be edited into a single 2 1/2 hour show that will air on FXX on Sept. 14 and stream the following day on Hulu.
Dan and Eugene Levy will host the Primetime Emmy Awards, also at the Peacock Theater, airing on ABC on Sept. 15.
Morgan Wallen leads the 2024 Country Music Association award noms
NEW YORK | He had some help: Morgan Wallen tops the 2024 Country Music Association Awards nominations with seven.
For a third year in a row, Wallen is up for both the top prize — entertainer of the year — and the male vocalist categories.
Rounding out the entertainer of the year categories are Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Chris Stapleton and Lainey Wilson.
Post Malone’s massive radio hit, “I Had Some Help,” which features Wallen, is the main reason why the country singer leads the pack this year. It is up for single, song, musical event and music video of the year. His last nomination is a second one in the musical event category, for his collaboration with Eric Church, “Man Made a Bar.”
Single of the year is awarded to the artist, producer and mix engineers; song of the year is given to the songwriters.
Ahead of the nominations announcement, some fans speculated that Beyoncé, whose landmark country-and-then-some reclamation “Cowboy Carter” was released during the eligibility window, could receive a nomination at the 2024 CMAs. She did not.
Earlier this year, the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard country albums chart, making her the first Black woman to top the chart since its 1964 inception.
The album was five years in the making, a direct result of what Beyoncé has called “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” most likely a reference to a 2016 CMAs performance that resulted in racist backlash.
The CMA Awards are nominated and voted on by members of the Country Music Association, which includes music executives, artists, publicists, songwriters and other industry professionals.
Wallen is followed by both Cody Johnson, who is also nominated in the male vocalist category for the third year in a row, and 7-time male vocalist of the year winner, Stapleton.
Stapleton and Johnson have five nominations each.
But Stapleton could take home seven trophies, should he sweep his categories.
Stapleton is both an artist and producer on “White Horse,” up for single of the year, and “Higher,” up for album of the year.
At the CMAs, production credits are not counted as separate nominations, although they are factored into trophy counts.
First-time nominee Post Malone and Wilson, last year’s entertainer of the year winner, are tied with four nominations. All of Malone’s nominations are for “I Had Some Help.”
Louis Bell, Charlie Handsome and Hoskins are tied with three nominations for their work as producers and co-writers on “I Had Some Help.”
Jelly Roll, Combs, Kacey Musgraves and Megan Moroney also boast three nods each. The latter three could take home four trophies: Combs is both artist and producer on “Fathers & Sons,” up for album of the year. The same is true for Musgraves’ album “Deeper Well.”
And Moroney is both artist and director of her nominated music video, “I’m Not Pretty.”
The CMA Awards will air on Nov. 20 on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern. It can be streamed the next day on Hulu.
—From AP reports
