Though his name was memorable mainly because of his considerably more famous son, the actor Robert Earl Jones, who has died aged 96, had a face that, once seen, was never forgotten. Whether he was pleading with Robert Redford after being felled on the mean streets of Joliet, Illinois, in The Sting (1973), or using his grey eminence as Creon in The Gospel at Colonus (1985), Jones was a presence as commanding as that of his son James Earl Jones - minus the well-known voice.
The elder Jones was a living link with the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, having worked with Langston Hughes early in his career. Though blacklisted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 1950s, he was ultimately honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the US National Black Theatre Festival.
While navigating the New York theatre world and doing odd jobs in the 1950s, Jones lived with his son, though they were reported to have been out of contact until recent years. The relationship, by several accounts, was complicated: the elder Jones, born in Senotobia, Mississippi, was a grade-school dropout and a sharecropper, according to the Los Angeles Times, before leaving his wife shortly before the birth, in 1931, of James Earl, who was raised by his maternal grandparents. After that, Jones led a life more varied than many of the characters he played. A railroad job in Memphis evaporated as the depression wore on, according to a New York Times interview, prompting him to move to Chicago and a new, but short, career as a prize fighter. Heavyweight champion Joe Louis used him as a sparring partner.
After moving to New York, Jones worked with young people on the Works Progress Administration, the largest New Deal agency, through which he met Langston Hughes, who cast him in his play, Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938). "It was kind of natural," Jones told the New York Times in 1974. "Langston Hughes' aunt, 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."
Photographs of Jones taken at that time, during which he also appeared in the all-black Oscar Micheaux films Lying Lips (1939) and The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940), show him as a lean, moderately handsome presence, yet to acquire the more substantial look and thunderbolt brow that would make him immediately recognisable. In 1945, he made the first of several Broadway appearances, in The Hasty Heart by John Patrick, and was also in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra in 1949. Blacklisting in the 1950s, as a result of his association with leftwing groups, stymied his career, but during that time he studied acting formally through the educational American Theater Wing, founder of the Tony awards. This was a period when his son was also in New York studying acting, and the pair eventually appeared in the off-Broadway play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl by the Trinidadian playwright Errol John.
Jones's film career slowly took shape, his biggest role being that of Luther Coleman in The Sting. Though only in the first minutes of the film, his death scene gave gravity and meaning to a movie that might otherwise have been just a smartly produced period piece about Chicago gamblers. Though Jones was often a naturalistic actor, his Luther Coleman had an almost classical theatre stylisation that clearly telegraphed the importance of his character as a plot pivot.
Altogether Jones appeared in about 20 films, including The Cotton Club (1984), and his stage portrayal of Creon in a 1988 musical version of the Oedipus legend, The Gospel at Colonus, had been filmed for television three years earlier. He also made appearances in the long-running TV shows Lou Grant and Kojak. His last film was a small role in Rain Without Thunder (1992). One of his last stage roles was in Mule Bone, a 1991 adaptation of writings by another figure from the Harlem renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, produced by Lincoln Center Theater.
Both his marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by a second son, Matthew Earl, in addition to James Earl Jones.
· Robert Earl Jones, actor, born February 3 1910; died September 7 2006