Michigan history: Manistee's James Earl Jones born

Award-winning actor and voice of CNN James Earl Jones, who grew up in Dublin, Manistee County, was born on Jan. 17, 1931.

The Mississippi native graduated from Dickson High School, also in Manistee County; it was there that a teacher helped Jones overcome a stutter that had developed in childhood, the result of the traumatic childhood move to live with his grandparents in Michigan after his mother abandoned him. The teacher asked him to memorize and then recite a poem he'd written about grapefruit before the class, intuiting that poetry's rhythm would help.

Jones attended the University of Michigan, originally a premed student before he tried acting. Back home, he was part of the Manistee Summer Theatre Company.

He briefly used the stage name Todd Jones, a nod to singer-actor Todd Duncan, but reverted to his birth name after meeting his father, actor Robert Earl Jones, who'd left before he was born.

Jones went on to an illustrious acting career — an Oscar nomination for best actor for "The Great White Hope," an honorary Oscar in 2011, and Tony Awards for his performances in "The Great White Hope" and "Fences."

His films include "Field of Dreams," "Cry, the Beloved Country" and "Patriot Games." Among his most well-known voice work is Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" series and Mufasa in "The Lion King."

"One day my uncle Randy, who was only four years older than I was — I was 8 — we were bragging about what we wanted to be. I said I'm gonna be an actor on the stage. My grandfather gave me a slap on the head. 'Don't you dare,' he said. He knew my father was an actor and he felt he was a vagabond, that actors led unstable lives. At U. of M., I only said I would be a doctor to validate for him my spending all that time and money," Jones told the Free Press in 1988.

Contact Zlati Meyer: 313-223-4439 or zmeyer@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @ZlatiMeyer