Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

I wouldn’t presume to call James Earl Jones a friend, but I had four encounters with him that immediately leap to mind.

Some years ago, I was involved with a group attempting to revive the theater in Stratford, Connecticut. If the outfit had been successful, I was told I would become literary manager, a gig I would have loved. A play-reading was scheduled of a script I had not encountered, but I was summoned to lead the scheduled discussion after the reading.

As the company was assembling for the reading, it became apparent some of the actors had agreed sight unseen. The play played around in the realm of science fiction, but it didn’t seem to land. James Naughton was scheduled to read one of the leads. I recall he was a little grumpy, but a promise was a promise and he would soldier on. Then James Earl Jones joined us. If he had reservations about the script, it wasn’t evident. He dove in with enthusiasm, and his good nature encouraged others to loosen up and play.

The company broke for lunch, and for some reason he and I found ourselves at a table eating potato salad and burgers in someone’s back yard. He was in a mood to talk about what was on his mind, and what was on his mind were the two parts he most wished to play – Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Falstaff in the Henry IVs. And that’s what we talked about. Mostly about Big Daddy. And then we all went back to work. At the end of the event, we all said goodbye.

A few years later, he starred in a Broadway revival of Cat. The production was not warmly received, but I admired his performance greatly. He played Big Daddy as someone who believed the lie told to him about just having a little spastic colon problem. He was going to live and he suddenly found everything around him hilarious, particularly the bad behavior of his family. His joy, playing against our knowledge of the truth of Big Daddy’s diagnosis, was an original and moving take on the character.

Not long after, I attended a reading of something Austin Pendleton directed, and Jones was in the audience. I went over to say hi. I asked him, having done his Big Daddy, what were the prospects of his Falstaff? He looked at me quizzically. I reminded him that we had met in Stratford and talked about the parts that he wanted to play. “Do you have thoughts on Falstaff?” he asked me. I said yes, and he asked for my phone number.

A few days later I got a call from him, and that’s what we talked about for about an hour – Falstaff and the Henry IVs. I mentioned that they were my favorite Shakespeares and that I had even written a play that was a loose modern adaptation. I had a theory (hardly unique, I’m sure) that Shakespeare anticipated Freud by having Henry IV represent the super-ego and Falstaff the id. Hal has these two as his father figures. He metaphorically kills both of them and incorporates them into his own character as he ascends the throne, and, from then on, as he faces the challenges in Henry V, he alternates between emulating either one or the other. (The Hal who allows Bardolph to be executed is his father, the Hal who courts the princess drawing inspiration from Falstaff.) Jones started quoting bits of the plays that supported this thesis. It was enormous fun.

Some years later, I was working on a project for Yale Press on a subject that I wanted to interview him about. I called his office. His assistant said I shouldn’t get up much hope. He was preparing a part and didn’t want to be distracted. I told her, “Maybe tell him I’m the guy he had those conversations with about Big Daddy and Falstaff.” She called back in five minutes and told me, “He says he will be happy to talk to you about what you want to talk about if you are willing to talk to him about what he wants to talk about.” I told her it was a deal.

I took a train up to the town where he lived, accompanied by my pal Martha Wade Steketee, who was giving me a hand on the project. And Jones and I talked about Athol Fugard and Master Harold and the Boys. And we talked about August Wilson and Fences.

Maybe the most compelling part of the conversation was him telling me about how, when the play was trying out in San Francisco, he didn’t feel it was finished. The whole play seemed to be leading up to a one-on-one confrontation between Troy and his son, Cory, but Jones believed Wilson hadn’t written it. What he had written was a three-way scene between Troy, Cory and Troy’s wife, Rose, that Jones felt evaded the central issue. Jones said he told the producer he would not go to New York with the production if the scene weren’t fixed. He said that Wilson said he had no ideas. Then director Lloyd Richards asked Jones to clarify what he felt was wrong. Jones said that he thought that the scene had to be between Troy and Cory, which meant writing Rose out of it. “I don’t think Mary Alice [who was playing Rose] ever forgave me for that.” Lloyd Richards said something like, “OK, let’s see where we stand.” Where they stood was father and son in the back yard. With a baseball bat. And Jones and Courtney Vance improvised, bringing the bat into the scene. When the improvisation was over, Jones remembered Wilson saying, in an offhanded way, “Yeah, I think I can do something with that.” And Wilson soon brought in his version which provides one of the most electrifying scenes in the play.

“All right,” Jones said to me, “now let’s talk about what I want to talk about.” He was preparing for a run with Cecily Tyson on Broadway in D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game and he was having trouble with it. Did I know it? I said I knew it very well. He asked me to summarize what I thought the play was about. I said it was about these two old people – Weller and Fonsia – who are probably the only two people in a second-rate facility for the aged who still have all their wits about them. I said that they needed each other to stay sane and functioning. Jones said he agreed with me, but why, if both Weller and Fonsia know this does Weller keep insisting they play gin when he also knows she will beat him and he will lose his temper and likely destroy the relationship? Aware that so much was at stake, why would he engage in such risky behavior?

I asked him if he knew the story of the scorpion and frog that Orson Welles told in one of his movies. He said, “Remind me.” And I told the story. The scorpion and the frog are by a river. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river on his back. The frog says, “Why would I allow you on my back? You’re a scorpion. You’re liable to sting me and I’ll die.” The scorpion says, “What would be the sense in that? If I’m on your back and we’re in the middle of the river and I sting you, you’ll sink and I’ll drown. Why would I do such a thing?” This makes sense to the frog and he invites the scorpion onto his back. Halfway across the river, the frog feels the sting of the scorpion. Dying, the frog says, “What did you do that for? Now we’re both going to die!” And the scorpion replied, “I’m sorry, but it’s in my nature.”

I finished telling this story and there was a half second pause, and then Jones began clapping his hands together and shouting at the top of his voice, “That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!” He was in his eighties then, but James Earl Jones at the top of his voice from three or four feet away was like sitting in a beach chair as a tsunami comes in.

We wrapped up our conversation and he said goodbye and left the room. His assistant came in as I was packing up my stuff and said, “What the hell was that noise about?” Martha told her the story, and she replied, “Well, thank God. Now he’ll be fit to live with.”

On our way out, we noticed that in the outer room there were stacks of Darth Vader helmets. Martha asked what that was about. We were told that when he encountered news of a charity he wanted to support, he would pull out a Sharpie, sign a helmet and send it to be raffled off.

That fall I saw him and Tyson in The Gin Game. I have no idea if or how he used the scorpion, but it was a terrific performance. As usual.

As I look back I realize that at no point did we ever say anything to each other about anything remotely personal. It was all about Big Daddy, Falstaff and Weller.