Terrence Mann’s character in James Earl Jones’ Field of Dreams is based on a real person

Even in death, late, great James Earl Jones remains a Star Wars legend.a Broadway icon, one of the most gifted orators in modern history, and a true Hollywood titan. But if you’re a baseball fan — especially baseball the movie fan — he’ll always be Terrence Mann from Field of Dreams. Jones’ performance as the reclusive author turned baseball-watching ghost is the backbone of the classic film, anchoring the higher emotional beats. The film might have felt even more grounded if the character hadn’t been changed from the version of the character in the Barefoot Joe novel on which Field of Dreams is based.

In the book of U. P. Kinsale 1982 the writer Ray Kinsella’s protagonist is looking for is not some fictional person, but J. D. Salinger, best known as the author of The Catcher in the Rye. Although Salinger had already retired from public life when Kinsella’s novel was published, he was still very much alive, living until 2010. However, while Kinsella did not use a real writer in his book, the 1989 film adaptation decided to play things a little safe for fear of legal repercussions.

“We didn’t even consider keeping Salinger as a character for the film,” director and director Phil Alden Robinson told Joe Leydon A show of moving pictures in 1989. Field of Dreams kept the actual baseball players used in the novel, including, of course, Boss Joe Jackson himself, but it’s probably for the best that Robinson created an entirely separate character to take Salinger’s place.

The decision to exclude J. D. Salinger’s Field of Dreams was not taken on the assumption that the author might be upset. According to WP Kinsella, he was nearly sued for his portrayal of Salinger in the original novel and was sternly warned against any subsequent adaptations.

“His lawyers wrote to my publisher’s lawyers saying that he was outraged and offended by the way he was portrayed in the novel and they would be very unhappy if it was transferred to other media,” Kinsella said in an interview. McLean. “Which was legal: ‘We don’t really have enough to sue you, but we’ll try to pee on your parade if you try to put it on TV or in a movie.’ Apparently, Phil Alden Robinson and Universal Pictures took the threat seriously, although Kinsella didn’t seem to like the fact that the character changed. “The people in the movie were too chicken,” said Maclean’s author. “So they created Terence Mann.”

It makes sense that Kinsella would prefer his version, especially as a self-proclaimed big fan of Salinger’s work. However, the legal ramifications could have cost us the classic baseball ghost, as well as Terence Mann’s standout character, so it all seems to have worked out for the best.

If Phil Alden Robinson followed the idea of ​​J. D. Salinger from Barefoot Joe, Salinger might have started a lawsuit, but audiences might also have missed James Earl Jones’ greatest performance yet. As a black man, Jones would never have been cast if the studio had been looking for an actor who could pass Salinger’s role.

Jones makes Mann disappear in the cornfield end of field of dreams it’s a very impressive moment, and without his special delivery of Mann’s insightful, reassuring commentary, the film simply wouldn’t be the same. fortunately attempts to remake “Field of Dreams” failed in recent years, sparing us from watching some new actor vie to fill Jones’ impossibly huge shoes. When it comes to rebooting a classic like this, the sentiment of “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t really ring true. At the end of the day, the film’s success has more to do with emotion than how it cemented itself in the world.

As Jones said Joe Leydon in 1989: “The film insists that you participate with more heart than mind, more than important means.”