Voices and Silences

Jones, James Earl and Penelope Niven. Voices and Silences. New York: Scribner 1993 Print.

First Sentences:

Early in my awakening memory, two grown men lean on a rail fence talking about livestock. It is spring of 1935. Since I am only four, they seem very tall to me.


Description:

Seems I've been in the auto-biography reading mood lately, so with he recent death of the actor James Earl Jones, naturally I hunted up his personal memoir, Voices and Silences, and was tremendously impressed. Not only is his recalling of his life story honest, intriguing, and thorough, Jones is a wonderful writer (along with co-author Penelope Niven) who tells his history with a confident , clear voice. (I only wish there was an audiobook with him as the reader. What a narrative voice that would be).

Since I knew nothing about Jones beyond his acting roles, it was fascinating to learn of his upbringing. Abandoned by both his father (to pursued an acting career) and mother (a mentally unstable person prone to wandering away from home for days), he was relocated from Mississippi to a farm in Michigan to be raised by his grandparents.

 

Soon after joining this new home, he began to stutter, an affliction so great that he simply did not speak for eight years, from age six to fourteen. Teachers accepted his silence and tested him through his written answers. Eventually, a teacher discovered Jones had composed some poetry and asked Jones to read something of his in front of the class. Surprisingly, Jones found he could read lines of writing perfectly without a stutter, thereby opening a door to script-reading and acting.

Because of my muteness, I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint,

After high school and a short army career (where he read Shakespeare plays in his off-hours), he decided to try to pursue acting, using the GI Bill to attend The American Theatre Wing in New York City.

 

To get enough money for living, he reconnected with his father and together they refinished floors, worked as janitors, and made sandwiches at a local diner. For summers, he joined a summer theater to perform for tourists and lived in the theater's "haunted" bell tower to save money.

I was twenty-four years old. I had given up all the certainty I had ever known -- farming, the university, the Army. I knew acting was risky business. I did not let myself dwell on the difficulties all actors face. I simply set to work, as hard as I knew how to work, at the acting classes, and the menial jobs that kept me fed while I studied. I did not know what else to do but to work, and trust that with work and time any talent I had would come out.

Jones performances with the American Theatre Wing were noticed by Joseph Papp and Lee Strasberg. Strasberg had taught the Method Acting technique to Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and many others. Jones unsuccessfullly auditioned to take Strasberg's acting classes for seven years. Later, in talking with Strasberg, the teacher explained that he and Elia Kazan felt:

There were actors such as George C. Scott and me who, by following their own particular drumbeat, had already found an effective technique....Rather than pull them back and teach them the Method, they said, 'We'd better let them go on their own paths.'

In 1966, Jones bumped into Papp on the sidewalk and was offered a small part in Henry V for Papp's brand new Shakespeare Festival, "Shakespeare in Central Park," a series of free outdoor plays for the public.

Roles started to pile in as more and more directors saw Jones perform. Meanwhile, he and his father, while had never really reconciled, found common ground discussing the character and motivations of Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice. It was a role Jones' father had studied for years and readily gave his opinions to his son prior to James Earl first playing that great role.

Othello, like me,, like my mother and like my father, was a stranger in a strange land....My father had never played Othello in a major production, but as I studied the role with him, I was apprenticing to a master, although an unfulfilled master.

It was fascinating to read Jones' thoughts about taking on new roles, some of which were unsuccessful (Paul Robeson and Nat Turner) as well as the ones in which he triumphed Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, Lenny in Of Mice and Men, Othello). He praises actors like Jane Alexander (who called him "Jimmy Jones") who played opposite him in his breakout Broadway role in The Great White Hope, and his other leading ladies, two of whom he married who had played Desdemona to his Othello. 

 

Jones is analytical over every aspect of acting, from directors to scripts to messages that he felt the plays should project. For example, he discusses why, in his mind, the theatrical version of The Great White Hope was so powerful and successful while the movie, a popular film that earned him an Academy Award, had changed the original script so much to make his Jack Johnson character and therefore the film a failure.

 

As he aged, the long runs of plays became too much for Jones. He then turned more to television and voice acting. 

In the early days of my television career, I seemed to be typecast as a doctor, a detective, or a tribal chief....In one of my more memorable scenes [on Tarzan], the Supremes appeared clad demurely in habits, playing African nuns. I appeared more flagrantly attired in the stereotypical loincloth and feathers assigned to the African tribal chief. For reasons now obliterated from my memory, the script called for the nun-Supremes and the tribal chief to sing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." And we did, habits, feathers, loincloth, and all.

By now you can certainly understand that I loved this book, learning about James Earl Jones' background and his rise to fame; about the acting profession; the challenges he faced; his relationships with fellow actors and the public; and his role as a Black man with a powerful voice. I am all in for this book and hope that others who enjoy this wonderful man's acting will pick it up for a look. You certainly will not be disappointed.

Acting can never really be taught. It must be learned in a thousand ways, over and over again. Learning to act is ongoing, a lifelong process, and the responsibility rests with the actors....The challenge is not intellectual, but emotional: how deeply in tune you are with the emotional, imaginative planes of being.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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          (and an Intro to The First Sentence Reader) 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Wilson, Victoria. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True: 1907-1940.   

A towering biography about one of film's most versatile actresses. Highly-detailed, but so full of interesting people, conversations, films, and behind-the-scenes dealings that the book flies by. Highest rating.  (previously reviewed here)