Meeting Darth Vader
It was 2009. I was in London with the HUE program, enjoying one of the greatest semesters of my career. As a teacher of British Lit, I was living the dream, visiting sites I had read about for years. From watching the guards at Buckingham Palace to staring down Dr. Moriarty at the Sherlock Holmes Museum; from gazing up at the dome of St. Paul’s to standing in the houses of Dickens, Keats, and Handel — every day was an adventure with my name on it.
London is a wonderful city for theatre. While the highlight was seeing “As You Like It” at the Globe — it was simply magical — I also caught the long-running play “The Mousetrap” and was enchanted by the one-man show of famous Italian quick-change artist Arturo Brachetti. Many of our students saw the big musicals like “Wicked” or “Les Mis,” but my show-biz splurge was to get tickets for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
This groundbreaking adaptation of the Tennessee Williams classic was directed by Debbie Allen and featured an all-Black cast. Big Mamma was played by Phylicia Rashad, who I had grown up watching on “The Cosby Show,” years before we knew about the dark side of her co-star. But an even bigger draw for me was to see Big Daddy played by another of my childhood heroes: James Earl Jones.
The powerhouse actor — who died last week at the age of 93 — has been known for nearly 50 years as the voice of Darth Vader. It would be hard to put into words how important he was in my youth. I was 5 years old when “Star Wars” burst on the scene and changed pop culture forever. It was the first film to market a massive toy line, and I vividly remember walking into a Ben Franklin department store in my hometown and seeing a box taller than I was filled with “Star Wars” action figures. I nearly dropped to my knees.
I don’t know a single male in 1977 who didn’t try to do the Vader voice. That deep, resonant, sinister voice. It seemed to come from way down inside a well. Picture a 5-year-old, squeaky-sounding kid trying to imitate those heavy tones. Once when our dog got out of the back yard, I summoned my inner dark side and announced, “Escape is not his plan — I will deal with him . . . alone.” Yet it’s hard to pull off evil gravitas when you’re four feet tall and wearing a Sesame Street t-shirt.
If I couldn’t quite muster the voice, there was always the breathing. That perpetual gas mask wheezing, best accomplished by cupping both hands around your mouth. Nobody could breathe quite so ominously as Darth Vader. He was played by the 6-and-a-half-foot British actor David Prowse, but the vocal talents of James Earl Jones are what fans remember.
He was, of course, the voice of Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and he charmed baseball fans in “Field of Dreams,” as well as in “The Sandlot” as the old blind man with the scary dog. Equally at ease on stage, screen, or television, he was one of few performers to earn the EGOT: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. He was much in demand for voice-overs. “This is CNN,” he said nightly.
Not everyone knew that the Mississippi-born actor had a terrible stutter. From the beginning, his voice was awkward and shaky. Acting and reciting poetry saved him, he claimed. Becoming a character was all he needed to do, and the stutter would disappear.
He was fantastic as Big Daddy, the domineering patriarch of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” After the show, I headed outside to the rear of the theatre, hoping to catch a closer glimpse of The Voice of my childhood. A few others stood with me, pens and programs in hand. Phylicia Rashad and her entourage walked right past us, perhaps in a hurry to be somewhere.
There was a limousine waiting for James Earl Jones, but when the 78-year-old former Shakespearean actor saw the small group of fans, he sat in the back seat of his car and motioned us over. One by one he greeted us and signed autographs. He was pleased with the audience that night. “I think they knew the play,” he said, in a voice much softer than I expected. Of course, he had been booming on stage for two hours.It took every ounce of resolve for me not to ask him to do Darth Vader. I was not going to be that person. And it’s true: Hearing “Escape is not his plan” from the back of that limo would have sent me into orbit, into a galaxy far, far away. May the force be with you, Mr. Jones.
