" loading="" class="lazyload size-article_feature" data-sizes="auto" data-src="" src="https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/TV-Sanford_and_Son_at_50_62485-43.jpg?w=501"/>
This mix picture exhibits Comic Redd Foxx, left, talking to journalists in regards to the causes he left the top-rated sitcom “Sanford & Son,” March 14, 1974 in New York and actor Demond Wilson collaborating in a CBS “Face the Nation” dialogue on faculty prayer on Could 5, 1984, in Washington. It was 50 years in the past this month that the sitcom “Sanford and Son” debuted on NBC. (AP Photograph)
By Lynn Elber | Related Press
LOS ANGELES — When Demond Wilson heard that Redd Foxx was going to star in a TV sitcom, the actor brushed it off as a joke.
Foxx was a killer stand-up comedian, with a trademark raunchiness that Wilson figured to be a nonstarter for the timid broadcast networks that had been tv in 1972. It was the eve of cable, and the rise of streaming was many years away.
“It will be like bringing a canine to a cat celebration,” is how Wilson described the notion of Foxx invading TV in a current Related Press interview.
However the comic cleaned up his act for the small display screen, and “Sanford and Son,” with Wilson co-starring as Foxx’s beleaguered grownup son, debuted 50 years in the past this month on NBC. An on the spot rankings smash, it opened the door for different Black household exhibits to maneuver into the just about all-white TV neighborhood.
Norman Lear, who had roiled community waters the 12 months earlier than with the topically pushed CBS sitcom “All within the Household,” mentioned serendipity led to “Sanford and Son.” Lear and Bud Yorkin, his producing accomplice, had been in Las Vegas after they caught a lounge act that includes Foxx.
“We met with him and got here again to L.A. sky excessive” about making a Foxx-centered sitcom, Lear mentioned in an e-mail change. “Miraculously, a number of days later a British agent, Beryl (Vertue) got here to us with the thought of creating an American model of a giant hit in Nice Britain entitled ‘Steptoe and Son.’”
“It was an on the spot marriage,” Lear mentioned, and one he says Foxx didn’t resist.
“Not that he wasn’t troublesome to cope with, however he was humorous as hell and that made all the pieces potential,” Lear mentioned. Foxx, who died in 1991 at age 68, skipped a part of one season amid a contract dispute with the producers.
“Sanford and Son,” which aired from 1972-77, revolved round widower Fred Sanford, an irascible junk supplier within the Watts space of L.A. who foisted work and insults on his long-suffering son, Lamont. Amongst them: “You massive dummy!” which grew to become a present catchphrase.
All episodes are on Amazon Prime Video, which licensed the sequence for streaming from Sony Photos Tv.
Wilson, a Vietnam veteran who had appeared on stage in New York, in movies and on TV, was approached in regards to the sequence after an “All within the Household” visitor position. Wilson additionally realized that the producers had one other risk in thoughts to play Lamont.
“’We had been contemplating Richard Pryor,’” Wilson recalled being advised. ”I mentioned, ‘C’mon, you'll be able to’t put a comic with a comic. You’ve obtained to have a straight man.’ Dick Martin was the nut, Dan Rowan was the straight man” on “Rowan & Martin’s Chortle-In,” he mentioned.
Wilson recounted becoming a member of TV veteran Aaron Ruben, who served as a producer on “Sanford and Son,” in Las Vegas to satisfy Foxx and watch his act: “I believed he was the funniest individual, essentially the most irreverently humorous man that I’d ever met in my life,” Wilson mentioned.
“Sanford and Son” launched viewers to different proficient actors and comics typically sidelined by Hollywood due to their race, together with solid members LaWanda Web page as Aunt Esther; Whitman Mayo as Grady Wilson; Don Bexley as Bubba, and Lynn Hamilton as Foxx’s good-natured girlfriend, Donna.
Slappy White, who’d labored the comedy circuit with Foxx, appeared sometimes on the sequence, as did Pat Morita, of future “The Karate Child” film fame, whose character’s identify, Ah Chew, and his ethnicity had been punchlines for Fred.
Whereas “Sanford and Son” repeatedly delivered such racial barbs, it not often delved into racism or different third-rail points — politics and abortion amongst them — that had been central to “All within the Household” and its spin-off “Maude.”
Was that deliberate?
“Sure. We didn’t examine (‘All within the Household’ and ‘Sanford and Son’), however the characters referred to as it like they noticed it in their very own neighborhoods,” Lear mentioned in an e-mail.
The present begat different sitcoms about working-class Black households, together with “Good Occasions,” additionally involving Lear and starring Esther Rolle and John Amos, and the much less profitable “What’s Taking place!!” from Yorkin, who died in 2015. (Lear’s “The Jeffersons” was uncommon in that includes an prosperous Black couple.)
Whereas Black viewers lastly obtained to see a model of themselves on display screen, it was principally one restricted to these in struggling neighborhoods and created by nearly uniformly white producers, writers and administrators on the behest of white executives.
That’s in sharp distinction to the Twenty first-century comedies created and steered by Black writers, producers and actors, together with ABC’s “black-ish,” HBO’s “Insecure” and FX’s “Atlanta,” and their wide-ranging and nuanced views of Black life.
Eric Deggans, TV critic for Nationwide Public Radio, sees a “double-edged high quality” to the older-generation sitcoms. They showcased performers beloved by Black audiences, and, beginning with “Sanford and Son,” proved that a sequence a few household of shade might be extensively profitable.
The comedies additionally had been trustworthy about depicting some real-life Black challenges, Deggans mentioned. However they finally relied on racial stereotypes and settled for laughs.
The exhibits made poor areas “look livable and even enjoyable, versus the problems that they actually confronted,” Deggans mentioned.