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| Mt. Sterling native who wrote ‘Ray’ dies |
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7/31/2015
By Tom Marshall
Senior Advocate writer
James L. “Jimmy” White, the Mt. Sterling native who wrote the screenplay for the Ray Charles movie “Ray,” died July 23 at his home in Santa Monica. He was 67.
White told the Advocate in a 2005 interview that he read stories to his dog Bobo as a child growing up on Jackson Street dreaming of being a successful writer.
White went on to write the screenplay for “Ray,” the 2004 biographical film about singer Ray Charles that was nominated for a best picture Oscar.
Despite his success, White never forgot home.
White regularly visited Mt. Sterling to catch up with friends, who told the Advocate they were saddened by White’s somewhat unexpected death.
White had still been taking meetings until 20 days prior to his entry into the hospital, friends said. He had liver and pancreatic cancer.
Friend Michael Darnell said White was working on screenplays about Bessie Smith and Diana Washington at the time of his death.
Darnell, who had last seen White during Court Days in 2013, said he had no idea his friend was as sick as he had become.
“It was a shock to me,” Darnell said.
Another longtime friend, Norman Cunningham, said he was shocked as well, but White had discussed his illness with him. They talked four or five times a month, Cunningham said.
“He always said, ‘Me and God have got this together,’” Cunningham remembers.
Cunningham said he is taking White’s advice to not concern himself with things he cannot change—like his friend’s death—and focus instead on acceptance.
Prior to his death, White had discussed coming back to Mt. Sterling this fall for Court Days, Cunningham said.
Cunningham and Darnell said White had a natural magnetism that drew him to others.
“I don’t know anybody that didn’t like the brother,” Cunningham said. “I’m going to miss him.”
“He seemed like he had a smile on his face every time you saw him,” noted Darnell.
While growing up in Mt. Sterling, White attended Dubois High School before it burned in 1964. He spent his last two years of high school at Mt. Sterling City School, where he was member of the football and track teams.
After high school, White served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, then used the G.I. Bill to enroll in the University of Massachusetts. He later moved to southern California to pursue a career as a screenwriter.
White worked several jobs, including car salesman, before meeting with success.
It was 1978 when he met his future wife, Elizabeth. They had three children together, James II and daughters Monee and Martina.
In the early 1990s, White had a meeting with producer Stuart Benjamin who was trying to put together a Ray Charles biopic. Benjamin, the Los Angeles Times reported, admired White’s writing samples and there were similarities in the backgrounds of the singer and writer—both were black men who grew up in the South and endured integration.
Because Benjamin didn’t have funding for the script White pursued another project in 1992 writing the script for the thriller “Red Money” at the request of actor Sidney Poitier, the paper reported.
White credited Poitier for giving him his start as a screenwriter.
The success of the movie “Ray” also opened other doors for White, who was particular about the projects he took on, his son, James White II, told the L.A. Times, which did an extensive story on his father upon his death.
One of those pet projects was a biopic on blues singer and songwriter Robert Johnson—who died in 1938 at age 27—that White hoped to direct as well as write, according to the paper.
White had reportedly also worked on a biopic of star athlete, Bo Jackson.
In the 2005 interview, White told the Advocate he became engrossed in books that allowed him to imagine life beyond his hometown.
“Books allowed me to go away in my mind from Mt. Sterling and I discovered I wanted to write,” he said then.
To his friends, however, he didn’t talk much about writing.
Cunningham said he knew his friend would be a success as a writer, but even he was surprised by how far White had come.
“He exceeded all my expectation,” Cunningham said. “I knew how he was very talented, but I had no idea he would go as high he went and do the things he did.
“I wasn’t surprised when he did what he did because I knew how determined he was,” Cunningham added. “He was the kind of guy when he set his mind to something he was going to do it.”
Darnell, likewise, said he would have never believed his good friend could reach such heights.
“I would never would have thought he could have gone on to something like this,” Darnell said. “He did pretty good for himself.”
White requested that no funeral service be held.
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