Robert Earl Jones
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| Robert Earl Jones | |
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 photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1938. |
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| Born | Robert Earl Jones 3 February 1910 Senatobia, Mississippi, USA |
| Died | 7 September 2006 (aged 96) Englewood, New Jersey, USA |
| Other name(s) | Earl Jones |
| Years active | 1955-1993 |
| Spouse(s) | Ruth Williams Jumelle P. Jones Ruth Connolly |
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 actual location of his birth is unclear as some sources indicate Senatobia,[1] while others suggest nearby Coldwater.[2] 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.[3]
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[edit] Biography
[edit] 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.[4]
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:
"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.
[edit] 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
[edit] Work
[edit] Stage
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[edit] Filmography
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[edit] References
- ^ David Patrick Stearns (December 2006). Robert Earl Jones: US actor rooted in the Harlem renaissance. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
- ^ Robert Earl Jones. Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
- ^ Social Security Death Index Search. RootsWeb.com. Retrieved on 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.
- ^ Margalit Fox. "Robert Earl Jones, 96, Broadway Actor, Dies", The New York Times, 19 September 2006. Retrieved on 2008-04-21.
