![]() ![]() Two of those pals were Jay Leno and David Letterman. Walker didn’t forget his friends once his television career took off in fact, he hired several of them who were still struggling comedians to write material for his stand-up act. THE SHOW PRODUCED MORE THAN ONE TEEN IDOL. She’d begun maturing at an early age, so the wardrobe department had to bind her chest with strips of gauze before each taping. Jackson was 11 years old when she started on the show and has since stated that she was unhappy during her entire run. They forewent the traditional nine-month gestation period and instead added Janet Jackson as Penny Gordon, an abused child who is abandoned by her birth mother and adopted by Willona. In an effort to transform Willona from sassy swinging single to a believable surrogate mother, the writers decided she needed a child of her own. JANET JACKSON JOINED THE CAST, BUT STRUGGLED THROUGHOUT HER RUN. Willona Woods, the gossipy neighbor and family friend, was suddenly promoted to the new maternal figure for the Evans children. So Florida married Carl and the couple moved to Arizona, where the weather would be better for his newly diagnosed lung cancer. The producers responded by asking the writers if they could write scripts that didn’t include the mother. She also voiced her dismay that the writers had given Florida a new love interest (Moses Gunn as Carl Dixon) so quickly after James’s death. #GOODTIMES TRIVIA SERIES#The show didn’t start out to be that."įed up with the turn the series had taken, in the midst of season four she demanded a raise along with better scripts. “He’s 18 and he doesn’t work,” she told Ebony Magazine in September 1975 of Walker’s character. Rolle was similarly disenchanted with the way J.J. ESTHER ROLLE ALSO GREW DISENCHANTED WITH THE SERIES’ EVOLUTION. To explain the absence of Amos, the first episode of season four showed Florida receiving a telegram informing her that James had been killed in an automobile accident while en route to Mississippi, where he’d just landed a promising new job. He also admitted that he wasn’t the most diplomatic person in those days and that the producers “got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes.”Īmos apparently complained one too many times, because he received a phone call from Lear advising him that he was considered to be a “disruptive element” and his services were no longer required. #GOODTIMES TRIVIA ARCHIVE#and his chicken hat and him saying ‘dyn-o-mite’ every third page,” he said in an interview with the American Archive of Television. “Michael aspired to be a Supreme Court Justice and Thelma wanted to be a surgeon, but all the emphasis was on J.J. character was getting versus the other two children. While Amos admired Walker as a comedian, he was unhappy about the amount of attention the J.J. PRODUCERS BELIEVED THAT RALPH CARTER WOULD BE THE SHOW’S BREAKOUT STAR. Producers agreed to her demand and hired John Amos, who’d appeared occasionally on Maude as Florida’s husband (although his name was “Henry” at the time) to continue his role. ![]() “I couldn’t compound the lie that Black fathers don’t care about their children,” Rolle later explained of her stance. Rolle stood her ground and refused to sign on for the project unless the “James” character was included. But Lear was still adamant that there should be no father in the picture. So The Black Family pilot script was resurrected and used as the basis for the new series. He decided that Esther Rolle, who played Maude’s housekeeper Florida Evans, could carry a series on her own. ![]() The All in the Family spinoff Maude became a ratings hit in 1972 and Lear smelled another spinoff in the making. IT WAS A SPINOFF OF MAUDE, WHICH WAS A SPINOFF OF ALL IN THE FAMILY. Monte and Evans objected to the change, and the project was put on the back burner. Lear liked the concept, but he wanted the family to be fatherless. They wrote a script that featured the Black family: father John, mother Mattie, and children J.J., Thelma, and Michael. Lear gave him the OK, and Evans collaborated with his friend, Eric Monte. He approached Norman Lear and asked if he could try his hand at pitching a script. Michael Evans, who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family at the time, had heard through the grapevine that CBS was interested in producing a series about a black family. Were things just as cozy backstage between the performers? Not always … 1. But despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, there was always laughter and love among the close-knit Evans family. It was the first primetime sitcom featuring an African American family, and during its six-season run it tackled such serious problems as gang violence, unemployment, discrimination, poverty, and child abuse. Good Times was a spinoff of a spinoff that premiered on CBS in February 1974. ![]()
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