MLK Day with JAMES EARL JONES

 There is so much more to his resumé than his being the voice of Darth Vader in the original STAR WARS trilogy. I have an old yet relevant movie to recommend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day viewing. It's a movie I've seen and blogged about in an older post. James Earl Jones earned high praise from theater critics and a Tony Award for his towering lead role performance in the 1967 Broadway play, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE. He repeated the role in 20th Century Fox's 1970 film version -- and became one of the first Black men after Sidney Poitier to be an Oscar nominee for Best Actor. In 1974, he starred opposite Diahann Carroll in CLAUDINE. For that film, Diahann Carroll became one of the first Black women after Dorothy Dandridge to be an Oscar nominee for Best Actress.

In between THE GREAT WHITE HOPE and CLAUDINE, James Earl Jones gave an absolutely riveting performance in an ABC Movie of the Week, a network franchise that presented original 90-minute features. He played the lead role in THE MAN based on a best-selling novel of the same name. My parents had a paperback copy of the 1964 novel by Irving Wallace. The story was about the first Black man who becomes President of the United States and how that shakes up the socio-political scene of Washington, DC plus the rest of America.

THE MAN was probably intended to be a nationwide theatrical release but Hollywood execs were nervous about the plot. THE MAN seemed to get a modest budget despite its A-list cast and was aired as a Movie of the Week on ABC. Rod Serling, the genius behind TV's THE TWILIGHT ZONE, wrote the frank, mature screenplay. I called the budget "modest" because I remember seeing THE MAN on TV when I was a teen. Some exterior shots that were supposed to be Washington, DC were really Inglewood, California. I recognized them. I grew up in South Central L.A. and I had relatives who lived in the Inglewood area.

Senator Douglass Dilman (Jones) is successor to the Oval Office after the president is killed in an accident. Politically, he's a moderate. Suddenly, he has to contend with advisors, activists, extremists, racist political figures on the Hill and some disagreements with his independent, intellectual daughter. President Dilman refers to Dr. Martin Luther King.

The novel was published a year after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The movie adaptation aired four years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Joining James Earl Jones in the cast are Lew Ayres, Burgess Meredith, Martin Balsam, William Wisdom and Barbara Rush.

THE MAN is a strong 1972 TV movie that may occasionally feel like it was released in 2009, the year Barack Obama made history as the 44th President of the United States.

To see this outstanding and under-seen James Earl Jones performance, go to YouTube and search  THE MAN JAMES EARL JONES 1972.