B'way Update: James Earl Jones; POTUS

James Earl Jones, whose theatrical career spans six decades, will become the second African-American theatre artist and the only living person to have a Broadway theater named after them when the Cort Theater is renamed the James Earl Jones Theater. (Playwright August Wilson was the first African-American to be so honored.) The Cort Theater, built in 1912, has had extensive renovations done during the COVID pandemic shutdown and will be formally reopening with a dedication ceremony this coming summer.

Jones made his full Broadway debut in 1958 at the Cort in Sunrise at Campobello. (He was an understudy for a flop called The Egghead in 1957.) He has since won two Tony Awards for The Great White Hope (1968) and Fences (1987); seven Drama Desk Awards; the Kennedy Center Honor; a National Arts Medal; and two Emmy Awards in the same year (1990) for Gabriel's Fire and Heat Wave. His numerous additional Broadway credits include Les Blancs, The Iceman Cometh, Of Mice and Men, Paul Robeson, Othello (opposite Christopher Plummer), On Golden Pond, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Driving Miss Daisy, You Can't Take It With You, and The Gin Game. At the Central Park's Delacorte Theater, he has played the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, Claudius in Hamlet, and the title role in King Lear (captured on video for PBS' Theater in America series). Also Off-Broadway he appeared in The Blacks, Boesman and Lena, and The Cherry Orchard. Probably best known as the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films, Jones's movie roles range from Dr. Strangelove and The Comedians opposite Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to Coming to America with Eddie Murphy to Field of Dreams.

James Earl Jones and
Paul Sorvino in
King Lear