1933 Double Eagle: The World's Most Valuable Coin (Part 3)

 

[This installment will conclude my series “1933 Double Eagle: The World’s Most Valuable Coin.”  We pick up the story still in the 21st century’s second decade and bring it up to the beginning of the third decade, the last coverage I could find.  As I think you’ll find, though, the fabulous gold piece has enough mojo for many more chapters; just as Dashiell Hammett’s black bird went on to a mysterious future after the book and the movie ended, I imagine the 1933 Double Eagle will have a long, if hidden life. 

[As usual, I suggest that readers return to June 5 and 8 to read Parts 1 and 2 of this series before moving on to Part 3 below.  The story begins there and I’ve included many details referred to here more completely in the earlier installments.] 

“FAMILY LOSES COINS WORTH MILLIONS IN DISPUTE WITH U.S.”
by Peter Loftus

[This follow-up report by Peter Loftus on the Langbord family’s claim of ownership of 10 Double Eagles ran in the Wall Street Journal of 20 July 2011 (Sec. A [news], on page 7, labeled “U.S. News.”).  It was posted on the WSJ website on 21 July.

[(A word about the digital posting of this and the following Wall Street Journal article: the links provided above and below lead to a site that’s only accessible to subscribers.  I tried to access the online articles through the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive, but I was unsuccessful. 

[(Readers who aren’t WSJ subscribers can get both a digital version and a PDF of the articles through Proquest, which is available on many library databases.  Many libraries also provide a WSJ database as well.  Note that many library databases are accessible from home if you have a library card.)]

PHILADELPHIA—A jury concluded that the U.S. Mint may keep 10 rare gold coins it confiscated from the heirs of a Depression-era coin dealer who obtained them under mysterious circumstances more than 70 years ago.

The jury said Wednesday that the government had proven its case that the coins—known as 1933 Double Eagles and worth millions of dollars—should be forfeited by the family.

During the 10-day civil trial in federal court, the government argued the late Philadelphia coin dealer, Israel Switt [1895-1990], obtained the Double Eagles illegally in the 1930s in cooperation with a cashier at the Philadelphia arm of the Mint.

His daughter and two grandsons—Joan [b. 1930], Roy [b. ca. 1952] and David [1955-2023] Langbord—argued there was no evidence the coins were stolen, and that they should get them back.

“We get to keep them,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney [for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania] Jacqueline Romero [b. 1970/71] after the verdict. “This was government property that was stolen.”

The case remains subject to further proceedings in which a federal judge may decide the ultimate ownership of the coins.

Joan Langbord found the 10 coins in a family safe-deposit box in 2003 [nb: this assertion will be disputed] and turned them over to the Mint to be authenticated. The Mint confirmed the coins were real, but then kept what it said was U.S. property.

The jury found the government was correct in seizing the coins because they were products of a crime—either stolen or having left the Mint illegally and were concealed.

Barry Berke, an attorney for the Langbords, declined to comment. Roy and David Langbord both declined to comment; Joan Langbord couldn’t immediately be reached.

The coins in question, which had a face value of $20 apiece, were minted in 1933. But they were part of a batch that wasn’t supposed to circulate because President Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945] ordered the Mint to stop releasing most forms of gold as part of his efforts to combat the Great Depression [1929-39].

But some coins got out, including one that sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002 for $7.6 million [see Parts 1 and 2].

The government said historical records showed no 1933 Double Eagles were supposed to be authorized for release to the public.

The family argued that a “window of opportunity” in the days after FDR took office made it unclear whether coins should go out[, and so it was possible the Mint cashier legitimately exchanged the ’33 Double Eagles for older coins brought in by members of the public. – nb: these words are not in the print edition].

[Peter Loftus is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Philadelphia, covering the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries, among other subjects.  Before joining the Journal in 2013, he was a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires since 1997.  He previously worked as a courthouse reporter at the Reporter newspaper in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.  Loftus graduated from Indiana’s University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in English and history.]

*  *  *  *
“RARE GOLD COINS BELONG TO MINT, JUDGE DECIDES”
by Peter Loftus 

[What turned out to be the last word on the Langbord’s claim to their stash of Double Eagles (there’s a coda appended below, but it doesn’t change the last court’s decision) was reported in the Wall Street Journal on 6 September 2012 (Sec. A [news], on page 3, labeled “U.S. News.”).  It was posted on the WSJ website on 9 September (see note above concerning this link).]

PHILADELPHIA—A federal judge ruled that the U.S. Mint may keep 10 rare gold coins seized from the heirs of a Philadelphia coin dealer who obtained them decades ago under uncertain circumstances.

U.S. District Judge [of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania] Legrome D. Davis [b. 1952] said in an Aug. 29 opinion that the 1933 “Double Eagle” coins—which have a face value of $20 apiece but are now worth millions of dollars—”remain the property of the United States” and “were not lawfully removed” from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

The ruling could clear the way for the Mint to decide where to store or possibly display the coins, which have been kept at the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Ky., since being confiscated several years ago.

The Mint is assessing the best way to securely exhibit the coins and expects to announce plans in the near future, a spokesman said.

The ruling is another setback for Joan Switt Langbord and her two sons, Roy and David Langbord, who had claimed ownership of the coins after Ms. Langbord said she discovered them in a family safe-deposit box in 2003.

The family said the coins were left behind by Ms. Langbord’s late father, Israel Switt, a coin dealer and operator of a jewelry and antique shop. The government disputed the family’s ownership and confiscated the coins.

The disputed coins are among the rarest and most valuable in the world. In coin vernacular, which dubs a $10 coin an “Eagle,” they were known as Double Eagles. They feature a soaring eagle and liberty figure resembling a Greek goddess etched on opposite sides, and were designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1848-1907] in the early 1900s at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919], who wanted American coins to be more beautiful. More than 445,000 Double Eagles were minted in 1933, but they weren’t supposed to be circulated because then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned the payout of gold coins to combat a financial crisis.

Most of the 1933 Double Eagles were melted into gold bars, but some escaped destruction and have surfaced over the years. One sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002 for $7.6 million.

The Justice Department argued that a cashier at the Philadelphia Mint in the 1930s was the likely source of coins that left the Mint illicitly, and they somehow got into the hands of Mr. Switt, who died in 1990. In the 1940s, the Secret Service hunted down several stray Double Eagles and concluded that Mr. Switt had sold them, according to court documents.

The Langbords said the government had no proof the coins were obtained illegally. Their attorney argued there was a legal window of opportunity in 1933 during which some coins may have legitimately left the Mint.

Following a civil trial in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, a jury concluded in July 2011 the U.S. proved its case that the coins should be forfeited by the Langbord family. However, final resolution of the case has remained on hold while the judge weighed legal motions filed by both sides.

The family had asked the judge to overturn the verdict, saying there was insufficient evidence the coins were stolen or embezzled. The government asked for a judgment that the coins weren’t lawfully removed from the Mint.

Judge Davis, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush [b. 1946; 43rd President of the United States: 2001-09], sided with the government, writing in a 54-page memorandum accompanying his Aug. 29 opinion: “Given the evidence, a reasonable jury could find that the ‘33 Double Eagles were knowingly stolen or embezzled from the Mint.” The government is “the true owner of the stolen coins [Langbord v. USA, Declaratory Judgment, 29 August 2012].”

“We are pleased with Judge Davis’s well-reasoned and thoughtful opinion,” Zane David Memeger [b. 1964], U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

The Langbord family plans to appeal the decision, their attorney said. “This is a case that raises many novel legal questions including the limits on the government’s power to confiscate property,” said the lawyer, Barry H. Berke.

[The Langbords disputed Judge Davis’s findings and in November 2013 appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.  They argued their case on multiple levels, and in April 2015, a three-judge panel ordered the Government to return the coins to the family of Israel Switt.

[The Government, however, petitioned the Appeals Court for a rehearing in front of all 13 of the Appellate Court judges.  This request, though rare, was granted. The full Court of Appeals reversed the earlier panel’s decision.

[Although the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to uphold the Government’s long-held position of ownership definitively, on 28 October 2016, the Langbord family appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.  On 17 April 2017, SCOTUS decided not to take the Langbord appeal.

[After 11 years, finality came to the litigation concerning the 1933 Double Eagles, and the Government’s long-held claims of ownership were confirmed.  

[The 10 Langbord coins are currently being held at Fort Knox by the U.S. Mint and are treated as “heritage assets.”  The Mint has stated that the coins won’t be melted and are being preserved.  They may be used for educational purposes and public exhibits in the future.

[(“Heritage assets” refer to the coins’ significance beyond their monetary value.  They’re items that hold historical, artistic, scientific, or cultural significance and are maintained for their contribution to knowledge and culture.)

[But that wasn’t the end of the story . . . .]

*  *  *  *
“A COIN SO RARE IT SHOULDN’T EXIST IS OUT OF THE VAULT”
by James Barron 

[James Barron’s report on the return of the 1933 Double Eagle to public display was published in the New York Times on 13 August 2013 (Sec. A [news]) in a column called “City Room” on a page labeled “New York.”  It was also posted on the Times website as “A Coin Is Historic, Priceless and No Longer in a Vault” on 12 August.]

For 10 months, the world’s most valuable coin sat wrapped in plastic on a folding chair in a little cagelike compartment behind a bright blue door at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was only a step or two away from billions of dollars’ worth of neatly stacked bars of gold bullion.

On Monday, a man in a dark suit stashed the coin in his briefcase and coolly walked out of the Fed’s heavily guarded limestone-and-sandstone building, a couple of blocks from the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan. He nodded politely to the guards on the front steps of the Fed. They did not stop him.

The man with the briefcase, David N. Redden [1949-2024], an auction-house executive [Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s], was not pulling off a heist. He was taking the coin on a 6.7-mile ride to the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West.

“It’s history,” Louise Mirrer [b. ca. 1952], the president of the historical society, said of the coin after Mr. Redden had turned it over to curators who fitted it into a display case. “We have lots of priceless objects, but it’s always exciting to have the most valuable anything.”

The coin is valuable — Mr. Redden auctioned it at Sotheby’s for $7,590,020 in 2002 [see Part 1], at the time the highest price any coin has ever sold for — because it should not exist. That is why it has inspired four books, a documentary for the Smithsonian Channel and an episode of the cable-television drama “The Closer.”

[Four books, both fiction and nonfiction (there are certainly more) are: David Tripp, Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle (Free Press, 2004); James Twining, The Double Eagle (HarperTorch, 2006); Alison Frankel, Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World’s Most Valuable Coin (W. W. Norton, 2007); and Steven P. Gower, The Secrets of the Majestic Meridian (US Books Publisher, 2024); the documentary is: “Why This 1933 Double Eagle Coin Will be Worth Millions,” Smithsonian Channel (YouTube), 20 May 2013; the TV series episode is: “Fool’s Gold,” The Closer (Season 7, Episode 17; 16 July 2012) on TNT.]

Known to coin collectors as a double eagle because it was worth twice as much as a $10 eagle gold piece, it was struck in 1933, the year in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. He also ordered that year’s run of $20 pieces destroyed, except for two that were earmarked for the Smithsonian Institution.

The double eagle that Mr. Redden put in his briefcase somehow escaped that fate. It apparently made its way to Egypt and back, and was seized by the Secret Service in a sting operation at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 1996 [all in Part 1].

Compared to all that, the trip to the historical society was somewhat short on drama. The crowd-pleasing chaos of “Die Hard With a Vengeance,” a [1995] Bruce Willis movie with a bad guy who broke into the Fed underground after a subway crash and made off with lots of gold in a dump truck? No. Mr. Redden made off with a tiny amount of gold — the double eagle is only 34 millimeters wide and weighs just under an ounce — in a black sports-utility vehicle with an armed former police officer at the wheel and another in the front passenger seat.

“For collectors,” he said as the S.U.V. barreled up the West Side Highway, “it’s almost a mystical experience to look at it.” He said this while looking at an almost identical double eagle, one from 1923 that did not have to be destroyed because it had been in circulation. He carries that coin with him everywhere, the way other people carry their cellphones. (He has one of those, too.)

Some coin experts consider the 1933 double eagle the Mona Lisa of coins. Steve Roach [b. ca. 1981], the editor of Coin World magazine, suggested a slightly different description: “The Hope Diamond of American numismatics.” It is the only 1933 double eagle that someone can own legally. On one side of the coin is Liberty, “her hair whipping in the wind,” in the words of David Tripp [b. 1951], who wrote about the double eagle [see note about books above]. On the other side is an eagle patterned after the image on pennies issued a couple of years before the Civil War.

“There are few coins that can capture the public’s imagination in the way that this coin can,” Mr. Roach said. “It’s a unique combination of beauty, desirability and mystery. It’s so rare, but it has such an interesting back story.”

One element of the back story, he said, is the current owner, who has never been identified [coming below]. “It’s one of the wonderful mysteries of coin collecting, who bought that coin,” Mr. Roach said.

Mr. Redden described the owner as “a fabulous collector who was completely captivated by the story of the coin,” but not a coin collector.

“After he bought it, he said, ‘I don’t want to take it home, I don’t want to put it in a bank vault — what should I do with it?’” Mr. Redden recalled. “I said the Fed is planning a show [see Part 2]. It was the star of that show for years.”

But last fall, the Fed sent the coin off to the vault. “The owner is interested in letting the public see it,” Mr. Redden said. The historical society beckoned, and the two security men followed Mr. Redden from the S.U.V. through the society’s back door. They watched as exhibition designers polished its case and tested the alarm, just in case.

“I don’t know what the threat level on this particular item is, because if they steal it, who’s going to buy it?” one of the security men, Louis Guiliano [b. ca. 1962], said. “If you can’t fence the coin, it’s not valuable. It’s only valuable if you can get someone to pay you.”

[James Barron is a Metro reporter and columnist for the New York Times.  He’s the author of the books Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand (Times Books, 2006) and The One-Cent Magenta (Algonquin Books, 2017), and the editor of The New York Times Book of New York (Black Dog & Leventhal; distributed by Workman Pub. Co., 2009).]

*  *  *  *
“A COLLECTOR DECIDES IT’S TIME TO PART WITH HIS TREASURES”
by James Barron 

[At long last, the name of the winner of the 2002 auction of the 1933 Double Eagle has been revealed.  This James Barron report ran in the New York Times on 11 March 2021 (Sec. C [“Arts”]) and was also posted on the paper’s website as “He Owns World Famous Stamps and a Prized Coin. Now He’s Selling” on 10 March.”  (The online version of Barron’s article includes illustrations from the print edition: the “treasures” auctioned, including the 1933 Double Eagle.]

On the day in 1918 when the Postal Service [then the Post Office Department (until 1971); a Cabinet department from 1872] began selling stamps with an image of a newfangled airplane, a 29-year-old stockbroker’s clerk and stamp collector went out on his lunch hour to buy some. He emerged from the nearest post office with a single sheet of 100.

Soon federal agents were hunting for him and demanding them back.

The airplane on the stamps was — uh-oh — upside down. The clerk had stumbled across one of the most celebrated stamp mistakes in history, the famously misprinted Inverted Jenny.

A block of four stamps from that single sheet — the only one known to exist — will go on display, by appointment, at Sotheby’s in Manhattan on Thursday in preparation for an auction June 8 [2021].

The quartet, known to collectors as the “plate block,” is one of three rarities owned by Stuart Weitzman [b. 1942; shoe designer, philatelist, and founder of the eponymous shoe company], the designer and entrepreneur known for creating strappy gladiator sandals, thigh-high boots and other shoes that have been worn by everyone from Kate Moss [b. 1974; English model] in his advertisements to Kate Middleton [Catherine, Princess of Wales; b. 1982; wife of William, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne] in paparazzi photos.

The other two items in the auction are also marketed with superlatives. Weitzman is selling the world’s most valuable single stamp, the 1856 One-Cent Magenta from British Guiana [British colony on the northern coast of South America, until 1966, when it became the independent nation of Guyana], which he bought in 2014, and one of the world’s most valuable coins, a $20 U.S. gold piece that was minted in 1933 and is known as a double eagle. Weitzman paid $7.6 million for it in 2002, at the time the highest price any coin had ever sold for.

[It’s noteworthy that James Barron, the author of this report, wrote a book entitled The One-Cent Magenta about this very stamp in 2017 (see brief author’s biography above).  It tells the stories of those who have bought, owned, and sold “the most valuable stamp in the world” (including Stuart Weitzman). It may or may not be coincidental.]

Weitzman, 79, said that owning the three items had fulfilled a boyhood dream of collecting that began as a rookie with stamps and coins. As an adult, he said several years ago, he focused on pursuing one-of-kind items with lasting value. Now, though, he said, it was time to plan ahead.

“No one takes a U-Haul to the cemetery,” he said. “We have to figure out what to do with all this stuff.”

“The reason I’m doing the selling is my children don’t want to inherit these items,” added Weitzman, who sold his company to the luxury fashion house Coach in 2015 for $574 million [$774.5 million today]. “They say, ‘It’s great to do with them what you did, but we don’t want to have to worry about them, fuss with them, protect them, figure out what to do with them.’”

The money from selling the three items — as much as $37 million [$43.7 million today], based on Sotheby’s presale estimates [the actual auction price will be reported in the last article in this post] — will go to charitable ventures, including the Weitzman Family Foundation.

[The Weitzman Family Foundation is a private, grantmaking foundation that funds charitable organizations and causes. It financially supports organizations involved in left-leaning advocacy on issues like environmentalism, criminal justice, health care, housing, voting, immigration, media, and the arts.]

Richard Austin, head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s, said it was “very difficult not to use hyperbole” in describing any one of the three. “For one person to accumulate all these treasures is unusual,” he said. “It’s a childhood collecting fantasy that he was able to make come true. I don’t even know if Stuart appreciates how unusual this is.”

Robert G. Rose [b. ca. 1943], chairman of the nonprofit Philatelic Foundation, which authenticates stamps, was similarly impressed. “You’re talking about two of the most iconic pieces in all of Stamp World, all of philately,” he said. “And of course there’s the coin. It’s one of a kind as well.”

Sotheby’s expects to sell the Inverted Jenny plate block for $5 million to $7 million [$5.9-8.3 million] in 2025] and the double eagle for $10 million to $15 million [$11.8-23.6 million].

Weitzman’s identity as the owner of the double eagle is being revealed here for the first time. Sotheby’s never revealed the buyer after the 2002 sale, and even internally some Sotheby’s employees referred to the purchaser simply as “Mr. Big.” There was speculation that the owner was Bill Gates [b. 1955; businessman and philanthropist; co-founder of Microsoft in 1975] or Steve Jobs [1955-2011; businessman, inventor, and investor; co-founder of Apple Inc. in 1976]. The coin was on display at the New-York Historical Society from 2013 until last month, but the museum merely labeled it “Property of a Private Collector.”

The double eagle is unique: No other double eagles can be privately owned. The 445,500 that were made were supposed to be melted down. But 20, including Weitzman’s, were stolen from the mint. Some ended up in the hands of a Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer who sold nine of them in the 1940s. In 2004, when his daughter discovered 10 others in his safe deposit box, the government challenged her claim of ownership, and won. The 10 were taken to Fort Knox, leaving Weitzman’s double eagle the only one from 1933 that can legally be sold.

The One-Cent Magenta is also unique — apparently the others printed with it were discarded — and is considered by some collectors to be the “Mona Lisa” of stamps. In the 1920s, it was owned by a textile entrepreneur who was said to have outbid King George V [1865-1936; King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India: 1910-36] when he bought it for $32,250 [$603.1 million in 2025].

Weitzman purchased it from the estate of a later owner, John E. du Pont [1938-2010; philanthropist and convicted murderer], an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune who had acquired it in 1980, before he went to prison for the murder of Olympic wrestler and coach Dave Schultz [1959-1996; Olympic and World champion wrestler]. The killing served as the basis for the 2014 film “Foxcatcher.”

[DuPont shot Schultz to death on 26 January 1996 and he was arrested two days later after a stand-off with police at his Pennsylvania farm estate, Foxcatcher. On 25 February 1997, he was convicted of third-degree murder, but determined to be mentally ill, but not insane. He was sentenced to 13 to 30 years' incarceration.  He was transferred to prison on 15 May 1997 and died in prison at the age of 72 on 9 December 2010, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).]

Like the One-Cent Magenta’s past owners, Weitzman left his mark, a stiletto heel, on the back of the tiny stamp. Among stamp collectors, it is not unusual for the owners of great rarities to put their initials or a symbol on [the] backs of the stamps. Purists cringe, but many philatelists say that doing so — carefully, and tinily — does not damage a stamp or detract from its value.

As for the Inverted Jennies, there is only one plate block, the corner of the original sheet with the number identifying the plate used on each page of stamps at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. The sheet of 100 was broken up by Col. Edward H.R. Green [1868-1936; businessman and politician], a fanatical collector whose mother was the stingy financier [Henrietta “Hetty” Green; 1834-1916; “the richest woman in America” during the Gilded Age] known as the “Witch of Wall Street.” The other 96 stamps on the sheet have been sold one by one, but the four adjacent to the plate number have remained intact.

Green was the third owner of the sheet. For the first owner — William T. Robey [ca. 1889-1949], the stockbroker’s clerk — it was the lucky find of a lifetime. He paid $24 [$508 today], the face value of the 100 stamps, when he went to a Washington post office on the day they went on sale.

Robey soon turned a profit of $14,976 [$317.2 million in 2025], selling the sheet of 100 stamps for $15,000 [$317.7 million today], enough to buy a new car, which he is said to have driven through the wall of the garage that came with his new house. The dealer who purchased them promptly turned a profit of $5,000 [$105.9 million] by marking up the price $20,000 [$423.6 million] for Green. The plate block has changed hands several times since then, most recently when Weitzman acquired it in 2014.

For years, Weitzman kept quiet about his collecting, not wanting the publicity. In 2012, 10 years after he had bought the double eagle, it was the centerpiece of a display at the Federal Reserve in Lower Manhattan. David Tripp, the special consultant to Sotheby’s on coins, did not know who owned the coin when, at the opening of the exhibit, he was approached by David N. Redden, the Sotheby’s executive who had handled the auction in 2002. Redden had two people in tow.

“David said, ‘I’ve got a friend here with his daughter. His name is Stuart. Tell him about the coin,’” Tripp recalled.

Tripp, unsuspecting, went on to describe the particulars of the coin to the man who owned it.

“Years later,” Tripp said, “when David told me Stuart Weitzman was the owner, Stuart Weitzman the great designer of shoes, I clicked on Google and said, ‘I’ve met that guy before.’”

*  *  *  *
“THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE COIN
SELLS AT AUCTION FOR $18.9 MILLION”
by Nora McGreevy 

[The online Smithsonian Magazine of 11 June 2021 contained extensive coverage by Nora McGreevy of the auction of some treasures of now-former owner of the famous 1933 Double Eagle once owned by Egypt’s King Farouk.  This was the latest news report pertaining to the storied gold coin I found on the ‘Net.

[Somehow, I doubt it’s the end of the saga, though.  You’ve heard of a bad penny.  This is about a badass gold piece.]

Three collectibles, including a 1993 gold “Double Eagle” and the world’s rarest stamp, fetched more than $30 million at Sotheby’s

Three small collector’s items, each small enough to hold in the palm of one’s hand, broke records on Tuesday [8 June 2021] when they sold for more than $30 million [$35.4 million today] in New York City.

Luxury shoe designer Stuart Weitzman auctioned off the rare objects, dubbed the “Three Treasures,” at Sotheby’s, reports James Barron [b. 1955] for the New York Times. The trio included a shiny gold coin, a set of famously misprinted stamps and a small scrap of magenta paper popularly called “the world’s rarest stamp.”

Of the three, the 1933 “Double Eagle” stole the show, becoming the world’s most valuable coin by selling for a whopping $18.9 million [$22.3 million in 2025]. (The buyer did not want to be identified. [I checked: his name is still unrevealed as of this posting.]) Per a statement, Weitzman purchased the gold $20 coin for $7.59 million [$13.5 million today] in 2002; this time around, it was estimated to fetch between $10 and $15 million.

The Double Eagle coin was the last gold currency struck in the United States, reports Reuters. The newly sold specimen’s value stems from its status as the only legally privately owned 1933 Double Eagle known to survive today.

President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the coin in the early 1900s from the country’s then-preeminent sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. [nb: This statement is slightly misleading. The first Double Eagle was authorized in 1849 by President James K. Polk (1795-1849; 11th President of the United States: 1845-49); see my note about the 1907 design in Part 2.] Battling terminal cancer at the time, the artist took up the assignment cautiously.

“I have long wished to do what little I could to improve the shameful condition of our money, but now that I have the opportunity I approach it with fear and trembling,” wrote Saint-Gaudens to a scholar and collector in 1905, according to the Sotheby’s listing.

The Double Eagle’s final design is widely lauded as one of the most beautiful of all time. First minted in 1907, the coin features an image of Lady Liberty striding forward on its obverse and an eagle in flight on its reverse. As Owen Edwards reported for Smithsonian magazine in 2008, the sculptor based the figure of Liberty on Harriette Eugenia Anderson [1873-1938], a well-known model of African American descent from South Carolina.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt moved the country off the gold standard in hopes of bolstering an economy ravaged by the Great Depression. The following year, the U.S. Mint’s director ordered the melting of all 1933 Double Eagles, which had been struck but never issued. Two specimens were given to the Smithsonian Institution, which now houses the coins in the National Museum of American History’s collections.

Despite the Mint’s best efforts, a handful of the rare coins escaped destruction and ended up in private hands. A tangled web of lawsuits and criminal investigations ensued, but the government eventually recovered the stolen coins—aside from this one. Due to a legal battle between the U.S. Treasury and the coin’s previous owner, the record-breaking Double Eagle is the only of its kind that a private person can lawfully own, notes Oscar Holland [b. ca. 1988] for CNN.

Outside of the Double Eagle, the Sotheby’s sale also sought to make stamp collecting history. But as Neda Ulaby [b. 1970] reports for NPR, the auction’s two stamp lots failed to break previous records.

Carrying an estimate of $10 to $15 million, the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta sold for the still-hefty figure of $8.3 million [$9.8 million in 2025]. (Weitzman purchased the stamp in 2014 for $9.48 million [$11.2 million].) According to Alex Palmer of Smithsonian, the unassuming pink paper is the only known specimen of its kind and has long represented a kind of Holy Grail for stamp collecting enthusiasts.

Shaped like octagons, these small stamps were issued by a local newspaper in the South American colony of British Guiana (now Guyana) during a stamp shortage. Most collectors assumed that the one-off stamps were lost to time, but in 1873, Vernon Vaughan, a 12-year-old Scottish boy and budding stamp enthusiast, discovered a specimen among his uncle’s papers. He sold it for six shillings—the equivalent of about $11 today [and $13 in 2025].

The One-Cent Magenta’s notoriety grew when it came into the possession of famed stamp collector Count Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary [1850-1917] in 1878. The stamp’s list of wealthy, well-known owners has only lengthened over the decades.

Also on Tuesday, American billionaire and philanthropist David Rubenstein [b. 1949; lawyer, businessman, and philanthropist] made the winning bid for a 1918 24-cent “Inverted Jenny” plate block, a quartet of misprinted U.S. Postal Service [sic; Post Office Department] stamps that number among the most famous in the nation’s history. The design features a blue Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane, which was mistakenly printed upside down, as Edwards Park reported for Smithsonian in 1996.

Rubenstein purchased the “Jennies” for $4.86 million [$5.7 million today]—just under its estimate of $5 to $7 million [$5.9-8.3 million]. Despite fetching less than anticipated, the block remains the second-most valuable philatelic (stamp-related) object ever sold, after the One-Cent Magenta, according to Sotheby’s.

In a post-sale statement, Weitzman says that uniting these three rare items in one collection was a “childhood dream.” All proceeds will go to his family foundation and other charitable causes.

“I started coin collecting to pass the time in a full leg cast at the age of 12, and later became interested in stamps when my older brother left behind the stamp book he’d started when he went to college,” the designer adds. “Today truly marked the culmination of a life’s work.”

[Nora McGreevy is a former daily correspondent for Smithsonian.  She’s also a freelance journalist based in Chicago whose work has appeared in Wired, Washingtonian, the Boston Globe, South Bend Tribune, the New York Times, and more. 

[As I noted at the end of Part 1. a lengthy account of the whole story of the Double Eagles is online in “The Ultimate Coin: The 1933 Double Eagle” on the Sotheby’s website.  It’s loaded with additional details, so it’s very long (with footnotes).  You’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the story.]

Bad Writing, Part 4

 

[In “Bad Writing, Part 4,” I’m presenting a statement by Philosophy and Literature editor Denis Dutton, the originator of the Bad Writing Contest, from the Wall Street Journal and two groups of readers’ letters to the editor of the New York Times in response to “When Ideas Get Lost in Bad Writing” by Dinitia Smith (see Part 3).

[Since all of these pieces refer to articles I‘ve posted in earlier sections of this series, I strongly recommend reading Parts 1, 2, and 3, published on 19, 22, and 25 May, before reading the new installment.

[One comment concerning the reposting below of the Times letters: you will see that there are two dates accompanying the transcriptions.  The first one, in the introductions to each letter, is the date of its publication in the newspaper.  The second date is the date embedded in the published letter, presumably the date it was written, postmarked, or received.  (“Bad Writing, Part 5” will contain more Times letters; they will be similarly annotated.)]

“LANGUAGE CRIMES”
by Denis Dutton

[“Language Crimes,” Denis Dutton’s account of the evolution of the Bad Writing Contest, ran in the Wall Street Journal of 5 February 1999, in Section W (“Weekend Journal”), page 11.  The publication came two months before the published announcement in Philosophy and Literature (April 1999) of the winners of the 1998 competition, but two months after the release of the contest results in December 1998.]

A lesson in how not to write, courtesy of the professoriate.

Pick up an academic book, and there’s no reason to expect the writing to be graceful or elegant. Many factors attract people to the scholarly life, but an appealing prose style was never a requirement for the job.

Having spent the past 23 years editing a scholarly journal, Philosophy and Literature, I have come to know many lucid and lively academic writers. But for every superb stylist there are a hundred whose writing is no better than adequate—or just plain awful.

While everyone moans (rightly) about the decline in student literacy, not enough attention has been given to deplorable writing among the professoriate. Things came to a head, for me, a few years ago when I opened a new book aptly called “The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism” [University of Minnesota Press, 1993; by William V. Spanos (1924-2017)]. It began:

“This book was instigated by the Harvard Core Curriculum Report in 1978 and was intended to respond to what I took to be an ominous educational reform initiative that, without naming it, would delegitimate the decisive, if spontaneous, disclosure of the complicity of liberal American institutions of higher learning with the state’s brutal conduct of the war in Vietnam [U.S. troops present: 1955-75] and the consequent call for opening the university to meet the demands by hitherto marginalized constituencies of American society for enfranchisement.”

[The “Harvard Core Curriculum Report” of 1978 (Henry Rosovsky [1927-2022; Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences], “Report on the Core Curriculum,” Harvard University [Cambridge, MA], 15 February 1978) was a significant document that outlined a revised curriculum for Harvard College, focusing on a more structured and coherent general education experience. It emerged during a time of shifting educational priorities, where vocational training was gaining prominence over general education and called for a renewed emphasis on core curricula, highlighting the importance of general education in shaping students’ intellectual growth.

[The report sparked extensive discussions within Harvard and influenced curriculum reform efforts at other colleges and universities. It emphasized areas like communication skills, literature, history, and the sciences and led to a revitalization of core requirements and a common educational experience.]

This was written by a professor of English. He’s supposed to teach students how to write.

Fed up, I resolved to find out just how low the state of academic writing had sunk. I could use the Internet to solicit the most egregious examples of awkward, jargon-clogged academic prose from all over the English-speaking world. And so the annual Bad Writing Contest was born.

The rules were simple: Entries should be a sentence or two from an actual published scholarly book or journal article. No translations into English allowed, and the entries had to be nonironic: We could hardly admit parodies in a field where unintentional self-parody was so rampant.

Each year for four years now the contest has attracted around 70 entries. My co-editors at Philosophy and Literature and I are the judges, and the winner is announced in the journal.

No one denies the need for a specialized vocabulary in biochemistry or physics or in technical areas of the humanities like linguistics. But among literature professors who do what they now call “theory” — mostly inept philosophy applied to literature and culture—jargon has become the emperor’s clothing of choice.

Thus in “A Defense of Poetry[: Essays on the Occasion of Writing” (Stanford University Press, 1996)], English Prof. Paul Fry [b. 1944] writes: “It is the moment of non-construction, disclosing the absentation of actuality from the concept in part through its invitation to emphasize, in reading, the helplessness—rather than the will to power—of its fall into conceptuality.” If readers are baffled by a phrase like “disclosing the absentation of actuality,” they will imagine it’s due to their own ignorance. Much of what passes for theory in English departments depends on this kind of natural humility on the part of readers. The writing is intended to look as though Mr. Fry is a physicist struggling to make clear the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Of course, he’s just an English professor showing off.

The vatic tone and phony technicality can also serve to elevate a trivial subject. Many English departments these days find it hard to fill classes where students are assigned Milton or Melville, and they are transforming themselves into departments of so-called cultural studies, where the students are offered the analysis of movies, television programs, and popular music. Thus, in a laughably convoluted book on the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding affair, we read in a typical sentence that “this melodrama parsed the transgressive hybridity of un-narratived representative bodies back into recognizable heterovisual modes.”

[On 6 January 1994, while practicing for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan (b. 1969) was attacked by a man named John Stant [b. 1971?] in Detroit, Michigan. The attack was intended to injure Kerrigan, preventing her from competing. The attack was planned by Jeff Gillooly [b. 1969?] and Shawn Eckardt [b. 1967], both of whom were connected to skater Tonya Harding (b. 1970), Kerrigan’s main rival. Stant and his uncle, Derrick Smith [b. 1964/65?], were hired to carry out the attack.

[Kerrigan suffered a severe bruise on her lower right thigh and quadriceps tendon, resulting in swelling and a cut, which required her to walk with a limp, but no fracture. She missed the 1994 U.S. Championship, but recovered from her injury and competed in the 1994 Olympics, winning the silver medal. Harding received three years’ probation and was banned for life from amateur skating competition. (I couldn't identify the source of the quotation.)]

The pretentiousness of the worst academic writing betrays it as a kind of intellectual kitsch, analogous to bad art that declares itself “profound” or “moving” not by displaying its own intrinsic value but by borrowing these values from elsewhere. Just as a cigar box is elevated by a Rembrandt painting, or a living room is dignified by sets of finely bound but unread books, so these kitsch theorists mimic the effects of rigor and profundity without actually doing serious intellectual work. Their jargon-laden prose always suggests but never delivers genuine insight. Here is this year’s winning sentence, by Berkeley Prof. Judith Butler [b. 1956; see Parts 1, 2, and 3], from an article in the journal Diacritics:

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory [of or pertaining to Louis Althusser (1918-90; French Marxist philosopher; see Part 2)] that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.” [Citation is in Part 1]

To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it.

As a lifelong student of [Immanuel] Kant [1724-1804; German philosopher], I know that philosophy is not always well-written. But when Kant or Aristotle [384-322 BCE; Ancient Greek philosopher] or [Ludwig] Wittgenstein [1889-1951; Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language] are most obscure, it’s because they are honestly grappling with the most complex and difficult problems the human mind can encounter. How different from the desperate incantations of the Bad Writing Contest winners, who hope to persuade their readers not by argument but by obscurity that they too are the great minds of the age.

[Mr. Dutton teaches the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Winners of the Bad Writing Contest can be found at www.cybereditions.com/aldaily.  (This link apparently no longer works; try web.archive.org/web/19990508111036/http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/bwc.htm.)]

*  *  *  *
“ACADEMIC JARGON IS A COVER”
by Paul Hollander 

[Below are a selection of letters to the editors of the New York Times from two issues that followed the publication on 27 February 1999 of Dinitia Smith’s column “When Ideas Get Lost in Bad Writing” (Part 3).  As you’ll read, the responses vary from pro to con.

[The first group are from the issue of 3 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters.”  Some of the letter-writers, from all over the country, are other academics, some are not.]

To the Editor:

Re “When Ideas Get Lost in Bad Writing” (Arts & Ideas pages, Feb. 27): An obvious explanation for the current popularity of obscure, pretentious jargon in academic writing is the pursuit of self-aggrandizement. Those who specialize in fields whose importance is dubious and who wish to improve their self-image or professional reputations often fall back on esoteric, ponderous, pompous language that is inaccessible to ordinary human beings. Flaunting such a style is a way of hinting at hidden profundities and the insider’s arcane knowledge.

Two contemporary circumstances stimulate this unfortunate phenomenon. First is the overproduction of academics in fields like English, in which the search for being original or trendy can become desperate. Second is that convoluted language is helpful in hiding the meager or unoriginal content it seems to convey.

Amherst, Mass., Feb. 28, 1999

[The writer is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.]

*  *  *  *
“UGLY MAY BE BETTER”
by Timothy J. Clark 

[New York Times 3 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters”: “Academic Jargon Is a Cover.”]

To the Editor:

Regarding attacks on the “ponderous and obscure” prose style of academics like Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley (Arts & Ideas pages, Feb. 27): Bad writing – in the academy or elsewhere – comes in all shapes and sizes. Limpid sententiousness is often more poisonous than ordinary turgidity. Nice turns of phrase paraded self-consciously – look at me, writing like Henry James! – can make one pine for a few ugly, flailing but genuinely exploratory neologisms. Readers wishing to compile a “sottisier” of academic loftiness, House-manager moralisms and banalities trotted out as difficult truths should start by browsing the works of Ms. Butler’s critics.

[A sottisier is a borrowed French word for a compilation of silly or foolish things, like a collection of stupid sayings or writings. In the context of literature, it might refer to a compilation of banal or objectionable snippets of text from various authors. The word derives from sottise, which is French for ‘stupidity,’ ‘folly,’ ‘foolishness,’ ‘silliness,’ or ‘ineptitude.’ In turn, sottise comes from sot, which means ‘silly,’ ‘foolish,’ or ‘stupid’ as an adjective, and ‘fool’ or ‘imbecile’ as a noun.]

Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 28, 1999

[The writer is a professor of art history at the University of California at Berkeley.]

*  *  *  *
“NOT ANTI-INTELLECTUAL”
by Leslie Peters 

[From the New York Times of 3 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters”: “Academic Jargon Is a Cover.”]

To the Editor:

Re “When Ideas Get Lost in Bad Writing” (Arts & Ideas pages, Feb. 27): Confused academic writing is the product of confused academic thinking.

Perhaps that's why Joan Scott [b. 1941; see Parts 1 or 3], a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, argues that the attack on academic writing is “a kind of anti-intellectualism that is everywhere in the culture.”

It's a huge leap in logic to interpret criticism of academic gibberish as a rejection of new, challenging ideas. On the contrary, there is evidence everywhere in the culture of interest in new ideas, but before they can be embraced, they must be understood. If ideas cannot or will not be understood, what does it matter whether they exist?

Gaithersburg, Md., Feb. 27, 1999 

[The writer is a family law attorney, specializing in estate planning and probate.]

*  *  *  *
“FISH WRAP LANGUAGE”
by Brian Brennan 

[Published in the New York Times on 3 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters”: “Academic Jargon Is a Cover.”]

To the Editor:

The debate about bad writing in the academy misses the point (Arts & Ideas pages, Feb. 27). Is it a surprise that academics are drawn to writing as confusing and amazing as William Faulkner’s “my mother is a fish” or Judith Butler’s “insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony” when our popular discourse contains gems like “I did not have sex with that woman” or “Read my lips: no new taxes”?

[The Faulkner (1897-1962) quotation “my mother is a fish” is from his 1930 novel As I Lay Dying. The Butler quotation is from her first place-winning sentence in the 1998 Bad Writing Contest; the full, 59-word sentence appears in all three foregoing parts of this Rick On Theater series, plus Dutton’s Wall Street Journal column above.

[The line “I did not have sex with that woman” is infamous for being used by Bill Clinton (b. 1946; 42nd President of the United States: 1993-2001) during a televised address on 26 January 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal (January 1998-February 1999). While Clinton later admitted to “having sexual relations” with White House intern Lewinsky (b. 1973), the initial denial was a major part of the controversy and led to Clinton’s impeachment on 19 December 1998 (at which he was acquitted).

[“Read my lips: no new taxes” is a phrase spoken by American presidential candidate George H. W. Bush (1924-2018; 41st President of the United States: 1989-93) at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans as he accepted the nomination on 18 August. The pledge not to tax the American people further had been a consistent part of Bush’s 1988 election platform, but later hurt Bush politically. As president, Bush compromised with congressional Democrats to increase existing taxes. In the 1992 presidential election, Democrat Clinton cited the “no new taxes” pledge and questioned Bush’s trustworthiness. When Bush lost the election, observers suggested his failure to keep his 1988 promise was the principal reason.]

Academics struggle to imbue language with meaning when it no longer has any; part of that meaning comes from its seeming complexity.

Rather than give in to the culture of the sound bite, most serious writers seek to rehabilitate a language that, though crystal-clear, has become valuable only as fish wrap.

Pittsburgh, Feb. 27, 1999

*  *  *  *
“WRITING WELL IS HARD”
by Ellen Willis 

[This letter ran in the New York Times of 6 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters.”]

To the Editor:

None of your March 3 [see above] letter writers on obscure academic prose acknowledged what is most obvious to me as a writer, a teacher of journalism and a former editor: expressing complex ideas in clear and accessible prose is a difficult task that few people can do well.

The assumption that academics write badly on purpose stems from the widespread cultural myth that anybody with something to say can be a writer. Like Joe DiMaggio [1914-99; Major League Baseball center fielder known as “Joltin’ Joe” and “the Yankee Clipper” who played his entire 13-year career with the New York Yankees; set the still-standing record for the longest hitting streak; considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time] catching a fly ball, good writers make their craft look easy; but that brilliant paragraph of social analysis that sounds as if it flowed directly from the writer's spontaneous perception to the page has likely taken hours, if not days, of hard work.

New York, March 3, 1999

[The writer is director of cultural reporting and criticism at New York University.]

*  *  *  *
“WRITING WELL IS HARD”
by Matthew R. Kerr 

[From the New York Times of 6 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters.”]

To the Editor:

As a doctoral student in history, I welcomed a Feb. 27 Arts & Ideas pages article documenting the rise of incomprehensible academic writing. Many academics do indeed risk making themselves irrelevant unless they learn to write in a way that is understandable to educated society. This does not mean, as Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton says, that professors should pretend to be journalists, but it does mean that they should obey the principles of clear writing.

Academics lament Americans’ lack of appreciation for subjects like history, politics and economics, but then write needlessly difficult monographs that do very little to encourage an average educated reader’s interest.

Athens, Ohio, March 2, 1999 

*  *  *  *
“WRITING WELL IS HARD”
by Harold Gotthelf 

[Published in the New York Times on 6 March 1999, Sec. A: “Editorials/Letters.”]

To the Editor:

Re “When Ideas Get Lost in Writing” (Arts & Ideas pages, Feb. 27): Roy Bhaskar [1944-2014; English philosopher of science; see Part 3], a professor who won first prize in the 1996 Bad Writing Contest, wrote “of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm.” In Voltaire’s “Candide,” Mr. Bhaskar’s fictional ancestor, Dr. Pangloss (meaning “all-tongue”), is cited as a teacher of “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology.”

[The quoted phrase above is part of a single sentence from Roy Bhaskar’s Plato Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (Verso, 1994). The entire sentence, which has a word-count of 152 words, was the winning entry in the 1996 Bad Writing Contest.

[I couldn’t interpret Gotthelf’s comment about a connection between Dr. Pangloss and Bhaskar; I assume the writer meant a metaphorical “fictional ancestor.”  Voltaire (1694-1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian; Candide (1759) is his best-known work, a novella that comments on, criticizes, and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time.

[(By the way, Voltaire’s label for Pangloss’s métier is meant to be silly and belittling. It might be interesting to note, therefore, that ‘nigology’ is derived from the French word nigaud, which means ‘fool’ or ‘boob.’  ‘Nigology,’ then, would be the study of foolishness or stupidity!)]

After two centuries it seems as if some people still don't understand the difference between pretentious nonsense and effective academic writing.

Jersey City, Feb. 27, 1999

[The writer is a professor of English at New Jersey City University in Jersey City.

[The “pretentious nonsense” Gotthelf quotes above goes back at least another 160 years, to Polonius’s list of types of plays in Act 2, scene 2 of Hamlet: “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.”]

*  *  *  *

[In “Bad Writing, Part 1,” I made some remarks in my afterword about what I feel are some writing truths, and I quoted writing teacher William Zinsser (1922-2015) on one of his writing principles, “humanity.”  It’s the writer revealing who she or he really is in the prose—because, Zinsser admonishes us, “Writing is an intimate transaction between two people on paper” (On Writing Well).

[When I read Butler’s New York Times column in Part 1, I felt that even there she was speaking through a mask, playing a role she’d devised for herself years ago.  I felt that again reading Steve Fuller’s response to the Bad Writing Contest (Part 2).

[Martha Nussbaum’s essay in Part 2 was largely a different experience.  Even though she, too, was writing about philosophy, a difficult subject on which to write simply, I didn’t feel so much that she was falling into that William F. Buckley Syndrome I described in the Part 1 afterword.  She didn’t succumb at every turn to the temptation of using jargon and choosing the $50 word over the $5 one.  She let her humanity come through—a person talking to me.

[When I was in college, I’d characterize my prose style, when I thought about it later, as “pedantic.”  My writing always sounded pompous and pretentious—because that’s what I’d been led to believe college writing was supposed to be.  Most students thought that way.

[My first encounter with writing that meant something to me was my master’s thesis.  I’d been out of school for seven years by then, and I knew I wanted to write more conversationally—even though I was getting an MFA in acting, not a particularly literary field.  (The written thesis wasn’t the important part of the thesis work—the performance of the thesis role itself was.)  After all, though, the thesis would be put in the university library for posterity.  I’d be “on record” for anyone to read!

[I had no idea how to accomplish this, however.  I managed to find a way to get it done, though, and I sounded like a civilian rather than an actor talking shop to directors and other actors.  After that, I did little writing until I decided, after about another seven years, to go back to school—the Department of Performance Studies at New York University.

[It turned out that one of the main emphases at DPS when I was there was a clear, readable writing style.  All the faculty specifically stressed it in their classes.  All our written work was expected to be of publishable quality whether or not we intended to submit it to a journal.  My principal instructors all were editors or former editors of The Drama Review, one of the premier academic theater journals in the country, which was published out of the department.

[The constant emphasis on our writing by the faculty couldn’t help but make us conscious of our prose.  Every course had a term paper and three or four smaller papers during the semester.  I’d never done so much writing in my life to that point (not counting the army, with multiple reports daily—but all formulaic and codified). 

[I never received written comments on my papers concerning my writing, but I saw it clearly criticized on classmates' work from time to time.  One fellow student was dismissed from the program because his writing wasn’t up to departmental standards.

[Another student left the department because he wanted to be a playwright, and DPS isn’t a fine arts program—it was co-located with departments of the Tisch School of the Arts, but it was actually part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at that time (though I believe it’s now in TSOA).  It’s academic methodology was modeled after the social sciences and it demanded writing to meet that scholarly standard.

[At the same time that I started at Performance Studies, I also began teaching writing to undergrads in the Expository Writing Program, teaching two sections of the twice-weekly Writing Workshop.  Having the responsibility to guide and train students in a field in which I never before considered myself even a practitioner, much less an expert, made me examine and question my own writing even more critically.

[Teachers like Richard Schechner (b. 1934) insisted on our avoiding Latin- and Greek-based words when an Anglo-Saxon one is available.  Why write 'utilize' when there’s 'use'?  Or 'absentation of actuality' when it's simpler and clearer just to write 'absence.'  Zinsser’s On Writing Well (1976) was the writing text for the required course Resources and Methods for the Study of Performance, which was partly a writing class for DPS grad students.

[As several respondents to the Bad Writing Contest results pointed out that some subjects, philosophy prominently among them, are difficult to write about.  They require, therefore, difficult language.  There’s probably some truth in that, but it becomes an excuse for not trying to speak to the non-philosopher—like me.

[I took a philosophy class in high school, and I remember that I really loved that course.  I felt as if I were learning not so much how to think, by why we think the ways we do.  Years later, when I was at the end of my college years, I took a course in basic psychology.  (I also took a college philosophy course.)  I decided that while psych explained how our brains worked, philosophy endeavored to explain how our minds worked. 

[I do, though, only remember the fundamental stuff about philosophy—the basics.  If you’re going to throw a lot of inflated language at me, I’ll be lost—and you’ll lose me.  What’s the good of that?

[To those who say that writers who make a difficult subject accessible to the non-specialist demean and diminish it, I invoke the late Carl Sagan (1934-96; astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator), who was chastised by some of his colleagues because his books and articles, and especially his well-received TV series Cosmos (1980-81), popularized science for the layman.  Far from opprobrium, I say that’s cause for praise and gratitude.

[At bottom, all writing is basically the same: an attempt to communicate something to someone.  The only practical differences between one type of writing and another are the purposes (the “something” to be communicated) and the audience (the “someone” for whom it’s intended).  But provocative writing goes beyond this preliminary task.  I used to explain to my students that writing is a kind of conversation in print.  One writer says something and another picks up the idea, or a part of it, and says something else, and so on.  That’s how new knowledge is created, I told them.

[But here’s the most important reason for writing clearly and accessibly:

Writing well is the same as thinking well.  Writing clearly is the same as thinking logically.

[Q.E.D.]

In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 3

 

[When I received the regular e-mail from American Theatre, it included a link to an article by Phylicia Rashad.  It was a memoir about her work with James Earl Jones on the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in which she played Big Mama to his Big Daddy. 

[This was in the evening of the day that I posted “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 2.”  I immediately decided to add a third installment to the brief series so I could republish Rashad’s interesting memory piece.  Because the memoir is fairly short, I decided to accompany it with a few other pieces I though would be interesting and informative: two reviews of the production and a New York Times article from 1974 which was quoted in Part 1.

[The details of the 2008 revival of Cat, which premièred on Broadway in 1955, are laid out in Part 2 of “In Memoriam,” posted on 25 September (Part 1 was posted on 22 September), so I won’t repeat them here.  Many of Jones’s plays, films, and TV shows mentioned in the articles below are also detailed in Parts 1 or 2 for your reference.] 

Me and Mr. Jones
by Phylicia Rashad 

[Rashad’s memoir was posted on the American Theatre magazine site (AMERICAN THEATRE | Me and Mr. Jones) on 23 September 2024.]

A longtime admirer and colleague remembers the man and the questions that drove his work. 

James Earl Jones, the acclaimed actor who made his name onstage in The Great White Hope, Boesman and Lena, Fences, and countless other plays, including Othello, died on Sept. 9. He was 93.

[The U.S. premiere of Boesman and Lena by Athol Fugard (South African; b. 1932) opened Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown in Greenwich Village on 22 June 1970 and ran until 24 January 1971 for 205 performances. Jones, as Boesman, starred opposite Ruby Dee (1922-2014) as Lena under the direction of John Berry. The production won Obie Awards for Best Foreign Play, Distinguished Direction, and Best Performance by an Actress.]

It was in the spring of my sophomore year at Howard University [historically black private university in Washington, D.C., chartered in 1867; Rashad is a magna cum laude alumna of the class of 1970]. As I was leaving class, I heard a group of female students in a flutter. “He’s here!” “Did you see him? I’d heard that he was coming, but I didn’t think it was today!” “Well, it is today! He is here and he is magnificent!”

I had no idea of who had caused such commotion, but as I approached the exit, peering through the glass doors, I saw him: Mr. James Earl Jones.

The Great White Hope was in its pre-Broadway performance run at Arena Stage [1967-68]. He had taken time out of his theatre schedule to visit this historic institution of higher learning; and yes, he was magnificent! Statuesque, handsome, and strong, with an air of gentleness about him.

Fast forward to post-graduation, living in New York City. A friend had tickets to see the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs [Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, 1970]. Following the performance, we were allowed to visit Mr. Jones in his dressing room. He was very kind to receive us. My friend asked all the questions. He noted that, and with a smile turned to me and said, “You don’t speak much.” “Well,” I said, “my mother taught me that there were two times when one should be silent: When you have nothing to say, and when it’s not your turn.” He laughed at that.

More than 30 years would pass before we would perform in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Playing Big Mama opposite his Big Daddy, under the direction of my sister, Debbie Allen Nixon, had been beyond my dreams. But there we were in the rehearsal space, working it out together.

When I am asked, “How was working with James Earl Jones? What was his process? What was he like?” I pause before answering. My first observation was his interest in the “sinews” of thought. Pondering and probing the complexity of human behavior, asking questions of himself that few artists would consider, he’d come to one thought or question that he deemed most important in understanding who the person/character was; he would pursue that thought or question throughout rehearsals and performances. He had to be in the heart of the character. I would learn more about this later when we would speak about August Wilson and his portrayal of Troy Maxson in Fences [46th Street Theatre on Broadway, 1987-88].

His focus was relaxed, his level of concentration was astounding. Of everyone involved in the production (Tony, Golden Globe, and Emmy winners and an Oscar nominee among them), Mr. Jones was clearly the most seasoned and the most gracious. This was Debbie’s Broadway directorial debut. He adored her, and listened with rapt attention to everything that she had to say, eager to explore her suggestions while offering his own. Debbie enjoyed improvisation as a means of discovering “what lies beneath the written page.” Mr. Jones said, “I don’t know. I don’t do well with improvisation. I’ve never been good at it, but okay, I’ll try it!” He tried it and he liked it.

Mr. Jones was a “living legend,” and we all knew it. But this iconic status—well deserved by virtue of decades of sustained excellence in performance onstage, in film, and on television—did not preclude normal interactions with people. Being with Mr. Jones was easy because of his genuine interest in each person that he met. He was present, kind, and accessible.

During the time of our work together, through casual conversations, James Earl (as I had come to call him) would share life experience and reflections: the trauma of separation from his parents at the age of 5 years old, which resulted in stuttering; the embarrassment and anguish at being mocked that was the reason for several years of self-imposed silence; the study of poetry that led to discovery of his capacity for clear, unobstructed speech [see “Stage Unites Two Jones Generations” by C. Gerald Fraser, below].

His high school English teacher gave an assignment for students to write a poem. James Earl wrote “Ode to a Grapefruit.” Students were required to read their poems aloud to the full class. The inevitability of being mocked for stuttering was terrifying; but there was no way out. He stood before the class to read his poem, knowing that it would be a disaster; but to his surprise, there was no stutter. His speech was free! Speaking the written word aloud became a pathway forward.

We spoke about many things. Our conversations were always interesting. One centered around Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences. We spoke about the language of the play; how Wilson had captured rhythmic speech. James Earl said that in his early years as an actor, it was his father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, who told him to remember his Southern roots, because “the time will come when people forget this way of speaking and you won’t be able to teach them.” When I asked about his approach to developing the character, he simply shared this reflection, “Lord, forgive me for wanting so much; but I am so wanting.” He continued by saying that the most important thing for him to know about Troy was if he was really capable of killing his son. He never answered that question—not to me, at least. If Troy Maxson had been capable of murdering his own son, it would have been completely antithetical to James Earl’s thinking and way of life.

What mattered most in life to James Earl Jones was his family. He treasured his wife, Cecilia, and his son, Flynn Earl. He was passionate about his work, relished the creative process, and valued his friends and professional associates. He was compassionate, non-judgmental, knowledgeable about many subjects, well-versed in literature, critically acclaimed as an artist, revered as a human being.

[Phylicia Rashad is an Emmy- and Tony-winning actor and director.  Like my experience with Jones, I saw Rashad on stage twice, both as replacements for the originating actresses: in April 1988, as the Witch in Into the Woods at the Martin Beck Theatre (now the Al Hirschfeld) and in June 2009 as Violet Weston in August: Osage County at the Music Box.]   

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“BLACK CAST SIZZLES ON B’WAY IN ‘CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF’”
by Linda Armstrong

[I chose two reviews of the 2008 revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to post with Phylicia Rashad’s memory article.  This one’s from the New York Amsterdam News of 6 March 2008.  I thought it would be good to spotlight the notice in New York City’s premier African-American weekly considering the historic nature of the production.]

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” sizzles with sexuality, frustration, guilt and anger. This historical production—which, for the first time on Broadway, is being performed by an all-Black cast—features powerhouse performances by Anika Noni Rose, James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Terrence Howard, Giancarlo Esposito and Lisa Arrindell Anderson.

It also has the innovative direction of Debbie Alien, who saw fit to have each scene of the three-act production introduced by a saxophone player belting out the blues.

From the time that the production starts, the audience is taken on an emotional rollercoaster. Emotions are vividly expressed by Maggie (Rose), as she speaks to her husband Brick (Howard). Maggie is an attractive woman, who has to endure being married to a man who will not touch her, a man who is disgusted to look at her because of a single act of betrayal she committed. The act she committed was so heinous that it also contributed to Brick beginning to drink alcohol. His alcoholism is so extreme that he has to drink until he hears a click in his head—a signal that his body has enough alcohol in it to escape from the problems in his life.

Maggie does most of the talking as the production begins, and she talks fast. She has to keep talking since Brick tends to give short responses. Maggie is a character who one feels a great deal of sympathy for because all the cards are stacked against her. She is a victim on so many levels. Her husband will not touch her. She is childless and the butt of cruel words by the family.

When most people think of the character of Maggie, they probably think of the movie version of “Cat on a hot Tin Roof” that starred Elizabeth Taylor in the role [MGM, 1958]. But, as you sit in the Broadhurst Theatre on W 44th Street, you won’t have time to reflect on Taylor’s performance, because Rose makes that character her own from the time that she takes the stage. She has such an energy, frustration and desperation about her that she clearly and brilliantly makes sure that the audience experiences everything that this character is going through.

In the opening scene, as I mentioned, she does a lot of talking and has opinions to share on everything from her brother[-in-law (he’s Brick’s brother)] and sister-in-law, to their five “no-neck children.”

There is simply not enough that one can say about Rose’s riveting and captivating performance in this role. An actress who most people associate with musical roles, such as her performing in “Caroline, Or Change” [2004; Rose won the 2004 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Theatre World Award], and in the movie version of “Dreamgirls” [DreamWorks/Paramount, 2006], Rose has without a doubt, proven that her training as a dramatic actress has not been wasted.

What just makes this production so wonderful is that you have a cast of Black all-stars who just click on stage. Each person holds their own with their character. Tony Award-winner James Earl Jones is absolutely hilarious at times and a bit shocking, as he does more than dabble in the expletives as his character of Big Daddy lets everyone know how he feels. Big Daddy is insulting and mean to everyone, except for Brick. He is horribly cruel to Big Mama (Rashad)—a woman he admits to disliking for 40 years.

As always, Phylicia Rashad, also a Tony Award-winning actor [2004, Best Actress in a Play for A Raisin in the Sun; 2022, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Skeleton Crew], plays her character of Big Mama to perfection. She is clearly hurt by the cruel things that Big Daddy says and is very vulnerable to his verbal attacks. She is also someone who loves him despite of how he treats her.

Terrence Howard couldn’t have picked a better vehicle in which to make his Broadway debut. He handles the character of Brick very well. He plays the character pretty low-key and is only upset when anyone brings up his friend Skipper, who committed suicide. Howard’s delivery of the character is very smooth and he seems to have a good time on stage.

Giancarlo Esposito (Gooper) and Lisa Arrindell Anderson (Mae) are absolutely perfect in their roles as the money-grubbing son of Big Daddy and his money-hungry wife. Mae shoots pure venom whenever she speaks about Maggie being childless or Brick’s alcoholism and Gooper does not care if Big Daddy is dying, he just wants to make arrangements so he can get the 28,000 acres of rich land that Big Daddy has amassed in Mississippi.

Supporting cast members who give brief, but memorable performances include Lou Myers and Count Stovall, who play Reverend Tooker and Doctor Baugh, respectively.

There are many powerful emotions expressed throughout this play and one emotion that Alien makes sure to interject, just at the right moment, is humor. Just about each time there is a very tense moment, Alien allows a character to be comic relief and break the tension. She does a masterful job directing this production, which can be emotionally draining for an audience.

I’m not going into a lot of detail about the story line. This family’s problems are something you need to experience for yourself. Due to a lot of cursing however, this production would be inappropriate for viewing by someone younger than a teenager.

[Review-writer Linda Winer of Long Island’s Newsday reported: “For the record, those naughty words were the ones Williams wanted but couldn’t use in the ’50s” (“It's good to cross black 'Cat's' path,” 7 Mar. 2005).  That would have applied to Elia Kazan’s 1955 stage production and Richard Brooks’s 1958 film version. (Kazan also famously made Williams change the ending.)]

What kept going through my mind sitting in the audience this weekend, was that this production is brilliantly performed and such a pleasure to experience. It is just so important to show that our people can bring these classic works to life as vividly as any other actors can. I am so glad that producer Stephan Byrd pursued getting the rights for this play for 14 years. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is a masterpiece by Tennessee Williams that needed to be presented with our spin. It opens tonight [6 March 2008]!!! For tickets call (212) 239-6200.

[Linda Armstrong has been a theater reviewer for over 36 years, writing for New York Amsterdam News, Harlem News (A&E Editor), Headliner Magazine, Playbill Online, Theatre Week Magazine, Show Business Weekly Newspaper, Network Journal Magazine, Our Time Press (Column: “From The Aisle”), Neworldreview.net—Theatre Editor, and Broadwaysbestshows.com.] 

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“‘CAT,’ FRESHLY SKINNED”
Terry Teachout 

[The second review I selected was from the Wall Street Journal of 7 March 2008.  The late Terry Teachout, the Journal’s chief theater reviewer, was considered a “conservative” critic.]

If you want to behold a great actor giving of his very best, the show to see is “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” James Earl Jones has turned his back on Broadway in recent years—his last appearance there since the 1987 premiere of “Fences” [1987] was in a short-lived 2005 revival of “On Golden Pond,” a synthetic weeper that was unworthy of his towering talent [Pond was a limited run that was further shortened when Jones, 74 at the time, contracted pneumonia]—and so it is a pleasure to welcome him back to town in a role that puts him to the test. Needless to say, Mr. Jones plays Big Daddy, the cancer-ridden plantation owner whose greedy children can barely wait to gobble up his estate, and watching him tear through that giant-sized part is like standing in the path of a cannonball. Alas, you’ll have to pay a high price for the privilege of seeing Mr. Jones strut his stuff, because much of the rest of this unfortunate production borders at times on the downright amateurish.

The amateur-in-chief is Terrence Howard, the erstwhile star of “Hustle & Flow” [2005, Paramount Classics] who is making his stage debut—not his Broadway debut, mind you, but his stage debut—in the role of Brick, Big Daddy’s favorite son. Mr. Howard is the latest in a long line of inexperienced innocents from Hollywood who have been offered up as burnt sacrifices to the gods of the box office, and the best I can say about his vain attempt to make an impression is that he must have had a lot of nerve to think that he could get away with sharing a curtain call with Mr. Jones. His performance is slack, flat and underprojected, and it leaves a yawning hole at the center of Tennessee Williams’s play that nothing could possibly fill.

So far as I know, this is the first all-black professional production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and it’s easy to imagine how well such a concept might have worked had it been executed by a first-rate director. Instead we get Debbie Allen, whose experience at the helm of various sitcoms and musical comedies did not prepare her for the challenge of making sense out of a grossly overwritten melodrama whose verbal extravagance approaches the operatic. Ms. Allen’s way of putting a black spin on “Cat” runs more to such condescendingly on-the-nose directorial details as having a saxophonist wander across the stage at the start of each act, playing hot licks in order to reassure the audience that this production will be racially correct.

Not only is Ms. Allen’s staging ludicrously broad, but I assume that she is at least partly to blame for the caricature-ridden acting of Anika Noni Rose as Maggie and Lisa Arrindell Anderson as Mae, both of whom made me cringe. (Not so the always satisfying Phylicia Rashad, whose Big Mama is a bit overdrawn but still affecting.) As for Ray Klausen’s dull set and William H. Grant III’s crass lighting, both are more like what you might expect to see at a second-tier regional theater rather than in a high-profile Broadway show.

Even so, you’ve got to catch this “Cat,” for Mr. Jones’s colossal performance is the stuff of stage legend. No sooner does the second act get under way than he strides into Brick’s bedroom, puffing on a 50-buck cigar and ogling Maggie from eyebrows to toenails, and from there to the end of the act you won’t want to waste a second looking at or listening to anyone else. Mr. Jones gets Big Daddy—the pride, the contempt, the half-concealed terror—and lines that in anyone else’s mouth might sound stilted come rolling out of him like lava from a volcano. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the way that Mr. Jones spit out his shocking condemnation of Big Mama: “I haven’t been able to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty years now!—even when I laid her!—regular as a piston.

What to do? You might want to consider skipping the hour-long first act and showing up at intermission, just in time to see Mr. Jones make his entrance. You’ll still get your money’s worth.

[Terry Teachout (1956-2022), the Wall Street Journal’s drama critic from 2003 until his death, blogged about theater and the other arts.] 

*  *  *  *
“STAGE UNITES TWO JONES GENERATIONS”
by C. Gerald Fraser 

[This article, which, among other topics, touches on the estrangement and reconnection of James Earl Jones and Robert Earl Jones, his father.  It ran in the New York Times of 11 February 1974.]

Nineteen years ago, James Earl Jones, then a 24‐year‐old fledgling actor, came to New York from Michigan and watched his father, Robert Earl Jones [1910-2006], play the role of Joe Mott — a secondary character in “The Iceman Cometh.” He had come seeking two goals. One was work in the theater, the other was to get to know his father, from whom he had been separated since birth.

[The production of Eugene O’Neill’s Iceman in which Robert Earl Jones played Joe Mott was staged by José Quintero (Panamanian-born; 1924-1999) at the Off-Broadway Circle in the Square Theatre Downtown (in Greenwich Village) from May to December 1956 (256 performances). Jason Robards played Hickey, the role James Earl Jones played in 1973.

[The production of Iceman in which James Earl Jones performed was staged at Circle’s theater district house from 13 December 1973-24 February 1974 (14 previews and 85 performances). It was directed by Theodore Mann (1924-2012), co-founder of Circle in the Square, with a scenic design by Clarke Dunham, costume design by Carrie F. Robbins, and lighting design by Jules Fisher. Mott was played by Arthur French and Hugo Kalmar was played by David Margulies—one of my acting teachers at the time.]

Today, James Earl Jones is playing Hickey—the lead—in “Iceman,” and there has been an interweaving of the goals in James Earl Jones's life. He found his father through the theater and found the theater through his father.

Robert Earl Jones, who turned 64 a week ago yesterday (“I was horn in 1910, the year Jack Johnson [1878-1946; the real-life boxer on whom was based James Earl Jones’s character in The Great White Hope] won the title”) begins the story of the father‐son relationship in late 1930 or early 1931 in Mississippi. His wife was then pregnant with James, and Robert Earl Jones left his family to go north—to Memphis.

He worked in Memphis for the railroad until the Depression [1929-41] cut out his job and he moved to Chicago “to seek my fortune as a prize fighter.”

In Chicago, he said, “I paid $50—it was a lot of money in that period—to Evangeline Adams [1868-1932], who was on the radio as an astrologist. I believe in astrology. And she said ‘you'll find it better before the masses.’ She said ‘you have something, and I don't know what it is, and you'll do it before the masses.’”

After Chicago, Robert Earl Jones moved to New York, where in the early thirties he got a job with the Federal Works Progress Administration working with youths in recreation.

The poet‐playwright Langston Hughes [1901-67; part of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s)] asked to use the group to put on a one‐act play. After three months' rehearsals, the protagonist got a job, Mr. Jones said, and he was asked to take over the role. “It was kind of natural. Langston Hughes's aunt, Mrs. Toy Harper, taught me how to read my first poem: ‘I am a Negro black as the night is black/Black like the depth of my Africa’ and several other poems. It was poetic drama, put together by several of his poems.

“We linked them together by a narrative and I was that narrator.” From that start he began a theatrical career that has kept him active on stage and in television and the movies. (He can currently be seen in two new pictures “The Sting” [1973, Universal Pictures] and “Willie Dynamite” [1974, Universal Pictures].)

James Earl Jones, meanwhile, left Mississippi as a child and went to live in Michigan with his maternal grandmother, who raised all of her three daughters' children. He had not ever seen his father.

“I knew of him as an actor,” he said. “But, you see, being told about dad being an actor is one thing, but being in the high school library one day and opening up and seeing it right there in print had a big impact on me. He was in the production of “Strange Fruit” by Lillian Smith, with Mel Ferrer and Jane Wyman [Broadway; 29 November 1945-19 January 1946; credited as Earl Jones]. That impressed me.”

Sitting in his subterranean dressing room at the Circle in the Square Theater he sipped tea and talked about how he got into acting.

“There are two things, I'll say aside from the old legendary thing of following in the father's footsteps. One is that from the age of 8 to 14, I guess, I was practically incommunicado, literally, because of being a stammerer. Once I got to high school and through reading poetry, starting with my own poetry, which I realized I didn't stutter or stammer at, and my professor, Donald Crouch [1891-1982], would encourage me to read poetry, just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think. In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally, again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn't speak.”

James Earl Jones continued: “Being a country boy, it wasn't easy for me to think about making a living in the world of business. It was very difficult to think about making a living in the world of science, as I sort of entertained when I wanted to he a doctor. None of that was easy.

“But the idea of making one's way as an artist did make some sense to me. I remember enjoying—aside from writing poetry—reading poetry. I enjoyed drawing, painting, that sort of thing.

And so it was that after graduating from the University of Michigan, and serving as an Army officer he came to New York to work and to get to know his father.

[Jones matriculated at UM in 1949, but in 1953, he left school without getting a degree. He’d joined the university’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and left to join the army, where he remained for two years, reaching the rank of first lieutenant. In 1955, he returned to UM, finished his degree, and graduated. At that point, he went to New York City, where he reconnected with his father and started a career as a professional actor.]

Since then the two have gotten to know each other and have performed in the same production three times: in “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl,” “Infidel Caesar,” and “Of Mice and Men.”

[Moon on a Rainbow Shawl by Errol John (born in Trinidad and Tobago; 1924-88) opened on 15 January 1962 at the East 11th Street Theatre in the East Village; James Earl won an Obie for his performance. Gene Wesson’s (1921-75) Infidel Caesar closed at the Music Box Theatre after one preview on 28 May 1962; it never officially opened. In 1967 Jones père et fils performed together in Of Mice and Men, adapted from his own novel by John Steinbeck (1902-68), at Purdue University's Experimental Theatre in West Lafayette, Indiana. James Earl later played Lennie in a production of Of Mice and Men (18 December 1974-9 February 1975) at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (now the Lena Horne).]

Looking back over the years, James Earl Jones wondered, “What's the legend?” (thinking about the story of Telemachus's search for his father [Odysseus] in “The Odyssey.”) “It's probably a basic human need . . . to follow in the footsteps especially when one doesn't have a clear identity of one's own.

[C. Gerald Fraser (1925-2015) was a reporter for the New York Times for 24 years, one of only two black reporters on the staff at that time he was hired.  He left the Times in 1991 and joined Earth Times.  At the start of his journalistic career, Fraser reported for the New York Amsterdam News from 1952 until 1956, then edited a hotel workers union newspaper and covered the United Nations for West Indian periodicals before being hired by the New York Daily News.]