James Earl Jones Remembered with Photographs by Hugh Bell
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Jean Genet's The Blacks. © The Estate of Hugh Bell, courtesy GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
GME remembers legendary actor James Earl Jones with photographs taken by Hugh Bell, which capture Jones and his co-stars in the original off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s play The Blacks.
Jones passed away on September 9th, 2024, at the age of 93.
In a career spanning nearly 70 years, James Earl Jones — who was renowned for his basso profondo voice and for being a pioneer for Black actors in the entertainment industry — appeared in countless films and television shows and was the recipient of various accolades for his work. Yet, to quote the New York Times' September 10th, 2024 tribute, "New York, however, will remember Jones for his contributions to theater, for which he received three Tony Awards (including one for lifetime achievement in 2017) and, in 2022, a rare distinction: the renaming of a Broadway theater in his honor."
The son of actor Robert Earl Jones, Jones made his Broadway debut in the 1958 play Sunrise at Campobello before appearing in a number of plays by William Shakespeare (including a critically-acclaimed turn in Othello in 1964) for Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Jones would carve out a distinctive theatrical career in the years that followed. He received an Obie Award in 1965 for his performance in Bertolt Brecht's Baal, and won two Tony Awards for Best Actor: first in 1969 for playing boxer Jack Jefferson (modeled after real-life boxer Jack Johnson) in the original Broadway production of The Great White Hope, and again in 1987 for originating the role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences.
© The Estate of Hugh Bell, courtesy GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
Long before his career-defining performances in those plays, a young Jones co-starred with Roscoe Lee Browne, Louis Gossett Jr., Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Charles Gordone, Ethel Ayler, and Helen Martin, in the 1961 off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks. With his poetic and naturalistic photographic style, Hugh Bell captured this troupe of mostly unknown Black artists on the precipice of major careers.
As explicated by Theatre Royal Stratford East in their 2007 revival of Genet's play: “A troupe of Black actors re-enact the trial and ensuing murder of a white woman before a kangaroo court… [with] five of the 13 Black actors don[ning] Whiteface to play establishment figures.” Genet, however, thought it unlikely that the show would be performed for a Black audience:
This play, written, I repeat, by a white man, is intended for a white audience, but if, which is unlikely, it is ever performed before a black audience, then a white person, male or female, should be invited every evening. The organizer of the show should welcome him formally, dress him in ceremonial costume and lead him to his seat, preferably in the first row of the orchestra. The actors will play for him. A spotlight should be focused upon this symbolic white throughout the performance.
The Blacks was noted for its experimental and explosive approach to tackling themes of racism and injustice. Audiences responded enthusiastically, and Genet's play ran for 1,408 performances.
© The Estate of Hugh Bell, courtesy GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
As highlighted by the Times: "In a fortuitous move, the strands of Jones's theatrical career came together in what turned out to be his final appearance at a New York theater: He appeared in a revival of the two-hander The Gin Game with Cicely Tyson, his castmate from The Blacks, back in 1961."
Hugh Bell was a renowned art and commercial photographer of Afro-Carribean descent who worked in New York City over the course of his entire professional career. GME exclusively represents the Bell photography collection for placement in a cultural institution, the organization of museum exhibitions, and the licensing of his photographs for documentary films and book publications. For inquires about the Bell collection, please contact GME’s Fine Arts Curator, David Deitch, at david@gartenbergmedia.com.