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Sanford and Son (TV Series 1972–1978) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
Rated X: Directed by Peter Baldwin. With Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, Nathaniel Taylor, LaWanda Page. Fred tags along to a movie casting call that Lamont and Rollo hope will make them respected black actors, not suspecting this film is blue.
- (185)
- Comedy
- Peter Baldwin
- 1973-03-16
Jealousy: Directed by Jack Shea. With Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lynn Hamilton. When Donna said she would be bringing a patient to dinner, Fred didn't expect the spry and sophisticated Osgood Wilcox.
- (166)
- Jack Shea
- TV-PG
- Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, Roscoe Lee Browne
Where to Watch. L.A. junk dealer Fred Sanford was Norman Lear's black counterpart to Archie Bunker. The gravel-voiced widower hurled outrageous one-liners at his Bible-toting sister-in-law,...
- Peter Baldwin
- 6
- Cleavon Little Was The One Who Suggested Redd Foxx as The Lead.
- Demond Wilson Didn't Think The Show Would Last Very Long When He Signed Up.
- CBS Passed on The Show, and Regretted It For years.
- Quincy Jones Composed The Theme Song.
- Foxx Wore Makeup to Look older.
- The Heavy Shoes Were What Transformed Redd Into Fred.
- Fred Sanford Was Named After Redd's Brother.
- Foxx Based The Heart Attacks on His Mother.
- Lawanda Page Would Have Been Fired If It Wasn't For Foxx.
- Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney Co-Wrote Two Episodes.
Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles) was approached to work on the project, but had to say no because of prior commitments. He suggested Redd Foxx, his co-star in Cotton Comes to Harlem(1970). In the film, Foxx played a junk dealer.
Demond Wilson caught the attention of executive producer Bud Yorkin during a guest appearance on All in the Family in 1971, where he played a burglar who broke into Archie Bunker's house. "I thought about it long and hard and decided to take a chance," Wilson later said of saying yes to Sanford and Son."Redd and I thought we could grab some quick c...
Wilson and Foxx first met each other in Las Vegas, where Foxx was doing stand-up. Four days after their first reading together, they performed in front of the All in the Family cast, where a visiting NBC vice president witnessed the future and ordered a pilot. Yorkin claimed he was unable to get any CBS officials to watch Foxx and Wilson's rehearsa...
Quincy Jones was skeptical of Sanford and Son, because he had worked with Foxx decades earlier in shows, and recalled not one word out of the comedian's mouth being appropriate for NBC. "I just wrote what he looked like," Jones saidabout his composition "The Streetbeater," the series' theme song. "It sounds just like him, doesn't it?"
Foxx, who was nicknamed "Chicago Red" because of his hair color, was only 49 years old when the series began; Fred Sanford was 65. He complained that a lot of people assumed he was Fred's age.
"Just as soon as I put those big heavy shoes on and walk out there, I become Sanford—but not until then, not until I put my shoes on," Foxx said. "I can put the rest of the outfit on, but if I don't have those shoes on, I don't walk like him, and I don't think like him."
It was the comedian's tribute to his brother, who had died five years before the show premiered. Lamont Sanford was named after Lamont Ousley, one of the two other teenagers who made up the washtub band Foxx formed when he dropped out of high school after just one year. The character Grady Wilson (Whitman Mayo) was named after Demond Wilson, whose ...
"Fred Sanford is Mary Sanford, who is my mother, but you can reverse personalities into male or female," Foxx told Sammy Davis Jr. on Sammy and Company. "My mother would do the same thing ... she would have heart attacks when I was a kid, I remember. When she wanted something done she could hardly breathe—she had emphysema, she had cancer, she had ...
LaWanda Page was the only actress Foxx wanted to play Fred's sister-in-law, Esther. Page was too nervous to give an audition producers liked, but Foxx insisted. "They were going to let me go," Page told Jet magazine in 1977, "but Redd said, 'No, you ain't gonna let her go. That's LaWanda and I knowshe can do it! Just give me some time with her.'"
The legendary comedians co-wrote two episodes of Sanford and Son together during the show's second season, "The Dowry" and "Sanford and Son and Sister Makes Three."
In the 1980s, he came into his own as an actor with a high profile role on Hill Street Blues and another memorable role as Cal, the Texas-born junkyard partner of Fred G. Sanford in Sanford, the short-lived Sanford and Son sequel from 1980 to 1981.
Jan 21, 2022 · "Sanford and Son," which aired from 1972-77, revolved around widower Fred Sanford, an irascible junk dealer in the Watts area of LA who foisted work and insults on his long-suffering son,...
