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.
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.