Cinematic birthday greetings: James Earl Jones

January 17, 2011

I’ve been meaning to do an entry on him for awhile now. I recently saw Matewan, in which Jones — who turns 80 today — plays “Few Clothes” Johnson, a coal miner involved in a strike. What caught my attention — of course — was a scene in which the miners play a game baseball in their camp. (The video was up on YouTube until just a few days ago). Several of Jones’ fellow actors in that film — David Strathairn, Gordon Clapp, Kevin Tighe, Jace Alexander, Maggie Renzi, and Michael Mantell were also in the cast of another John Sayles production, Eight Men Out.

Jones has been in several movies and plays in which baseball plays the main role, including:

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings

The Sandlot

And, of course:

Field of Dreams

I also had the privilege of seeing him perform on Broadway in August Wilson’s Fences.

I wonder what it is that either attracts Jones to those roles, or makes the producers seek him out? If anyone out there has a contact for him, his agent, manager, etc., I’d love to do an interview with him.

0Shares

Tagged as: baseball movies, Bingo Long, Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones, Matewan

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post:

script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-5496371-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();