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Florida Evans
- Obsessed with hiring a black housekeeper so she can "liberate" her, Maude meets her match in Florida Evans of "Good Times" fame.
www.imdb.com › title › tt0793152
Mar 23, 2022 · Maude (Bea Arthur) has found a sister for life in Florida (Esther Rolle), and today we want to celebrate their friendship by tracing back their story, from Maude hiring Florida to the beginning...
- 11 min
- 159.2K
- The Norman Lear Effect
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Maude Meets Florida: Directed by Robert H. Livingston. With Bea Arthur, Bill Macy, Adrienne Barbeau, Conrad Bain. Obsessed with hiring a black housekeeper so she can "liberate" her, Maude meets her match in Florida Evans of "Good Times" fame.
- (140)
- Comedy
- Robert H. Livingston
- 1972-09-26
- “Lionel Jefferson” Helped to Create It
- It Was A Spinoff of Maude, Which Was A Spinoff of All in The Family.
- Producers Believed That Ralph Carter Would Be The Show’S Breakout Star.
- John Amos Was Deemed A "Disruptive Element."
- Esther Rolle Also Grew Disenchanted with The Series’ Evolution.
- Janet Jackson Joined The Cast, But Struggled Throughout Her Run.
- The Show Produced More Than One Teen Idol.
- Walker Recruited A Few Soon-To-Be-Famous Faces.
- Esther Rolle Returned For The Final season.
Michael Evans, who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Familyat the time, had heard through the grapevine that CBS was interested in producing a series about a black family. He approached Norman Lear and asked if he could try his hand at pitching a script. Lear gave him the OK, and Evans collaborated with his friend, Eric Monte. They wrote a scri...
The All in the Family spinoff Maude became a ratings hit in 1972 and Lear smelled another spinoff in the making. He decided that Esther Rolle, who played Maude’s housekeeper Florida Evans, could carry a series on her own. So The Black Familypilot script was resurrected and used as the basis for the new series. But Lear was still adamant that there ...
The next actor to be hired after Rolle and Amos was 12-year-old Ralph Carter, who was cast as the youngest son, Michael. Michael was nicknamed the “Militant Midget” by James because of his outspoken views on anything to do with politics or civil rights. Producers believed that Carter would be the “breakout” character of the show, not only because h...
While Amos admired Walker as a comedian, he was unhappy about the amount of attention the J.J. character was getting versus the other two children. “Michael aspired to be a Supreme Court Justice and Thelma wanted to be a surgeon, but all the emphasis was on J.J. and his chicken hat and him saying ‘dyn-o-mite’ every third page,” he said in an interv...
Rolle was similarly disenchanted with the way J.J. was evolving. “He’s 18 and he doesn’t work,” she told EbonyMagazine in September 1975 of Walker’s character. “He can’t read and write. He doesn’t think. The show didn’t start out to be that." Fed up with the turn the series had taken, in the midst of season four she demanded a raise along with bett...
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. 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. Jackson was 11 years...
Walker was the breakout star of the show, but both Carter and BernNadette Stanis (who played Thelma Evans) achieved bona fide teen idol status thanks to their exposure on Good Times, and were in steady competition with the Jackson brothers and Diana Ross in the Hollywood gossip columns. Carter launched a successful singing career during his spare t...
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. Two of those pals were Jay Leno and David Letterman. Walker finagled a small guest spot on Good Times for Leno during season three. Years later, after Good Times had been...
Following the death of James Evans and Florida’s sudden move to Arizona, audience interest in Good Timesbegan to wane. Eventually, producers decided that Amos and Rolle may have been right—that losing the “family” element of the series may have lost them some viewers as well. So they went back to Rolle and asked her to return; she repeated her prev...
The characters originated on the sitcom Maude as Florida and Henry Evans, with Florida employed as Maude Findlay 's housekeeper in Tuckahoe, New York, and Henry employed as a New York City firefighter.
Whereas Maude took place in New York, Good Times took place in Chicago, with numerous other differences in Florida's situation, such as her husband being called James Evans [4] – "Henry" being the name of James's long-lost father.
Maude (Bea Arthur) has found a sister for life in Florida (Esther Rolle), and today we want to celebrate their friendship by tracing back their story,...
Good Times was about the family and J.J. was the oldest son and an aspiring "artiste". So, he always had a good reason for being in the show. It's just that with "DIE-NO-MITE!!!!" the character devolved into a catchphrase character.
