Spun off from progressively minded writer-producer Norman Lear’s earlier successes All in the Family (1971-79) and Maude (1972-78), Good Times – the first network show overseen by Black creatives, centred on a family getting by in Chicago’s housing projects – blended social themes with crowdpleasing comedy, paving the way for such later hits as The Jeffersons (1975-85) and The Cosby Show (1984-92).
Years after the show passed into television history, Amos discovered the eternally job-seeking James had been a demographic-spanning model of fatherhood: “Young men in their thirties and forties, of every ethnicity imaginable, come up to me and say, ‘You’re the dad I never had’.” Yet behind the scenes, there had been unrest.
Over the show’s first three seasons, the comedy grew ever broader, prompting Amos to object to what he deemed stereotypical writing: “I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy in those days, and [the producers] got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes. So they said, ‘Tell you what, why don’t we kill him off? We can get on with our lives!’ That taught me a lesson – I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show.”
James Evans was duly dispatched – in an offscreen car accident after the character finally landed employment – as Good Times’ fourth season began. Yet Amos’s popularity with the viewing public proved crucial to his casting in Roots, a cannily packaged confrontation of slavery and its legacy that became appointment television – and then something of a small-screen phenomenon – as the Seventies played out.
An estimated 130 million people, half the US population in 1977, tuned in on the miniseries’ initial run; the concluding instalment remains the second most watched series finale in US TV history, after M*A*S*H’s 1983 signoff. For Amos, who spent months in Liberia researching the role, the show’s success was “a revelation… because I saw my country [had] finally reached a point where it’s ready to look at its past and say, yes, we did this, and some of these things were terrible.”
Roots went on to win a Peabody Award, a Golden Globe, and nine Emmys from a total of 37 nominations, including a reaffirming nomination for Amos himself: “It was just what I needed. It took the bad taste of Good Times out of my mouth… I realise that a lot of it I brought on myself. I was not the easiest guy in the world to get along with, or to direct. I challenged any and everybody. [But Roots] was a vindication, a tremendous feeling of satisfaction.”
John Allen Amos Jr. was born in Newark, New Jersey on December 27, 1939 to mechanic John Amos Sr. and his housekeeper wife Annabelle. As a boy, he attended East Orange High School; he subsequently studied sociology at Colorado State University. A keen athlete, he boxed to Golden Gloves level and signed a contract with gridiron’s Kansas City Chiefs before pivoting to entertainment.
After trying stand-up in L.A., Amos got his first break as a writer for The Leslie Uggams Show (1969) before landing a recurring onscreen role as the weatherman Gordy in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77). Early movie credits included cult classics Vanishing Point (1971) and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971).
Further film work followed, most memorably Cleo McDowell, the renegade burger shack manager in Coming to America (1988). Yet Amos’s strongest roles were on stage and TV: he won an NAACP Award for his role as a retired cop in Dennis McIntyre’s play Split Second and was alternately genial and combative as Percy Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in The West Wing (1999-2006).
He spoofed Good Times – with a talking dog – in a 2010 episode of 30 Rock and continued working until his death: one of his final appearances will be in the upcoming legal spin-off Suits: L.A. (2024-). Yet he remained level-headed about the actor’s life, telling one journalist: “There are three stages in an actor’s career: ‘who is John Amos?’, ‘get me John Amos’ [and] ‘get me a young John Amos.’”
He married three times, to Noel Mickelson, Lillian Lehman and Elisabete de Sousa; all three marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his two children with Mickelson.
John Amos, born December 27, 1939, died August 21, 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment