It’s the second theater named after a Black artist in Manhattan’s Theater District. The theater where James Earl Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958 has been named after him. The James Earl Jones Theatre has formally christened the Cort Theatre on West 48th Street in Manhattan’s Theater District on Monday during a dedication ceremony. The 18th-century, French-inspired structure, which seats 1,082 people, is the second major Broadway theater named after a Black artist. The other is the August Wilson Theatre, which pays tribute to the award-winning playwright known as “theatre’s poet of Black America.”
The actor’s Norman Lewis and Brian Stokes Mitchell performed at the star-studded occasion, while New York Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson, and his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, spoke about Jones’ influence on other artists. Jones, who is 91 years old, did not attend. “If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor or beat the pavement in these neighborhoods looking for gigs and doing things — one of the standards that we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Jackson remarked on Monday.
Jones, an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winner, made his theatrical debut in 1958 at the Cort Theatre as Edward in “Sunrise at Campobello.” Jones appeared in 14 Shubert theater productions and starred in 21 Broadway performances. In 2017, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Shubert Organization’s chairman and CEO, Robert E. Wankel, described Jones as “one of the most popular Broadway and film actors of all time.”
“It’s only natural that the renaming of this wonderfully renovated building coincides with a moment to acknowledge the significant contribution of BIPOC people to Broadway,” Wankel added, using an abbreviation for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. According to the Shubert Organization, “Mr. Jones’s name quickly rose to the top of the Shubert Organization’s list due to his illustrious career performing in Shubert houses, his status in the black community, and his worldwide reputation as one of the most celebrated performers to ever grace the Broadway stage,” according to the Shubert Organization.