[del]George Jefferson[/del] Sherman Hemsley has died..
I think he was a better presence than the shows he was on, in general. I hope he felt appreciated.
So you are saying he finally moved on up to a penthouse in the sky?
Maybe Archy Bunker will be his neighbor up there.
RIP “George”. I always got the impression that in real life he was just a nice guy.
Looking at ages of the cast of the Jeffersons, it appears Weezy was guilty of statutory rape.
Isabel Sanford was born in 1917
Sherman Hemsley was born in 1938
Mike Evans and Damon Evans (First and 2nd Lionel) were each born in in 1949
D’Urville Martin who played Lionel in the AITF pilots was born in 1939.
Florence and Lionel #2 are about the only cast member still living (Marla Gibbs is in her 80’s). Show doesn’t seem like it is that old to have almost all the regular cast members dead.
RIP George, Hope you have deluxe apartment in the Sky. Try to save me a piece of the pie.
Another strange thing:
The other major hit 1970s sitcom about a black couple was Good Times. Like The Jeffersons it was also a Norman Lear show, and like The Jeffersons it was also a spin-off of a longer running Norman Lear show, and like The Jefferson it also featured an actress almost 20 years older than the actor playing her husband (Esther Rolle was 19 years/1 month older than John Amos).
Jenny (Lionel’s wife) and Ralph the Doorman are also still alive (though both were recurring more than regular).
Norman Lear got a lot of mileage out of All in the Family, at least in terms of spinoffs. The Jeffersons was a direct spinoff of AITF, and Good Times was a spinoff of Maude, which was a spinoff of AITF. (Florida Evans was Maude’s housekeeper.)
There was also Archie Bunker’s Place, the direct sequel to All in the Family, and Gloria.
The Jeffersons spawned a completely forgotten very-shortlived spinoff called Checking In. It revolved around Florence (Marla Gibbs) getting hired as head-of-housekeeping by a 5 star hotel’s eccentric owner (played by Ralph Bellamy) and butting heads with the chief of security (played by Larry Linville).
I heard Marla Gibbs give a speech a few years ago in Georgia and she told the story of that show. In real life, Gibbs married in her mid-teens, was a divorced mother of three kids by her late 20s, and pretty much dead broke for most of her 30s while she tried to break into acting. A famous and true story about her is that she was working as a ticket reservationist for an airline when she was first appeared on The Jeffersons, and when she was moved up to a series regular she kept the airline job… for an entire season! She was, understandably, terrified of being left broke and unemployed if the series got cancelled.
Gibbs also knew, of course, that high paying roles for any kind of actor aren’t common and for middle aged not-particularly-attractive black actresses you’re talking blue unicorn tusk rare, so once she was sure enough of The Jeffersons lasting a while to give up her other job she wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize her job on the show. When they approached her about the spinoff, she hated the idea. She didn’t like the script, she didn’t like the concept, she much preferred the idea of being a supporting player on a hit than star of a flop and she didn’t think Checking In would work, but network bigwigs insisted she shoot a pilot and when it was a hit with test audiences they were after her to commit to starring in the show.
Gibbs still didn’t want to, even when they offered her a lot more money (since she would now be the star of the show), and she wasn’t contractually obligated to do another series for them, but if she left The Jeffersons she’d be out of a job if the new show flopped (just like Norman Fell and Audra Lindley were when The Ropers flopped the year before). Finally she agreed, but only if it was made ironclad that
1- She got the big raise for starring in Checking In (earning roughly what Hemsley and Sanford were making for Jeffersons)
2- She could return to The Jeffersons if the show failed, no matter how they’d written out the Florence character
3- If she returned she got the same amount of money as she was paid as the star of Checking In
The network was so convinced Checking In was going to be a hit they agreed. They hired a new actress to play the Jeffersons maid (Liz Torres).
Of course it turned out Gibbs was right- the new show flopped- and they had to honor her contract and return her to The Jeffersons (writing Liz Torres’s character out) and keep paying her at the much higher rate.
I always liked that story.
Thanks for the laughs, you hilarious little man.
He’s in a deeeeluxe apartment in the sky eye eye.
I wonder why he chose to live in El Paso. He was from Philadelphia originally and his fame came in NYC and L.A… While I can understand wanting to get out of L.A. to somewhere cheaper, but El Paso just seems sort of an odd choice for somebody with no apparent connection to the area.
Hemsley had money troubles and ultimately declared bankruptcy back in the '90s, all related to violating Max Bialystock’s first rule of show business: “Never put your own money in the show.” (Anyone know the second rule?) He lost a ton on a movie he financed called Ghost Business (among other titles) that went straight to video. However, I’m guessing the dust from that settled, and with his SAG pensions [which are based on how much you paid in and top years of earning, and being the star of two hit series he paid in a lot] and Social Security and whatever savings he had there was probably enough to live very comfortably almost anywhere that wasn’t Beverly Hills or Park Avenue.
He was rumored to be gay, but who knows; all that’s known is he was a lifelong bachelor with no kids. I seem to remember reading that he lived on a commune at one point before the height of his success.
No idea of how true it is, but here’s a really weird Sherman Hemsley story.
Marla Gibbs spoke at my high school graduation because her grandson was in my class!
Merged duplicate threads.
Without bothering to research, I’m going to relate that I remember Hemsley saying in an interview once that he got ready to declare bankruptcy, but at the last minute decided not to do it.
To most of us, he was of course George Jefferson, but to me he was also Mr. Richfield, Earl Sinclair’s boss on Dinosaurs.
Amen was actually an underrated show, IMHO. It had some really memorable episodes and good supporting characters.
I loved Amen. It was a “black people” show that actually felt kinda-sorta real to me. I recall that it aired on Saturday nights right after “227” but before “Golden Girls”. Deacon Frye was a trip.
The secret was they used real black people. (Except for the housekeeper, Elsa Raven, who later drowned on the Titanic.)
Linky no worky.
Belinda Tolbert who played Jenny is still alive
I liked Helmsley in that episode of Amazing Stories, the one in which he played a professor of mathematics that was having problems with a difficult equation.