This
month TV ACRES looks at:
SANFORD, Fred G. & son, Lamont
(Sanford & Son)
(
555-1079
c/o Sanford & Son Salvage
9114 South Central [also 4707 South Central Avenue]
Los Angeles, CA (Watts Area)
Fred is a 65-year-old junk dealer with an alleged heart condition.
He served in World War II as a paratrooper and got a bayonet wound in his stomach.
Lamont is 34-years-old and a reluctant
partner in the business of Sanford & Son
Salvage. One day, he hopes to make more of
himself. But, until that day, Lamont stays with
his dad and suffers his grumpiness and curmudgeonly
ways. Every time Lamont threatens to leave, Fred clasps one hand across his heart,
starts to stagger and shouts skyward to his deceased wife "I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth, this is the big one." Fred’s highest compliment
is to call someone a "Big Dummy!" The Sanford's
collect and deliver their junk and other
questionable antiques in a red 1962 Ford pickup and a 1947 Mercury M-47 truck.
After
a hard days work, Fred reaches for the soothing
refreshment of a bottle of Ripple. Over the
years, Fred's love affair with Ripple has
inspired him to create such concoctions as Mintchipple (Mint julep + Ripple); Cripple (Cream + Ripple); Champipple (Champagne + Ripple); Beaujolipple (Beaujolais + Ripple); and Manischipple (Manischewitz +
Ripple).
Fred’s relatives included Aunt Ethel [Lamont’s favorite] and Elizabeth’s Bible-thumping sister, Aunt Esther Anderson who calls Fred an "Old Fish-eyed
Fool." Fred reciprocates and calls her "Ugly" and variations on that theme].
Once, he cried “You are so ugly that if you
pressed your face in some dough...you'd have
gorilla cookies.” Aunt Esther ran the Sanford Arms, a run-down rooming house next to the junkyard. Fred’s friends included Melvin, Bubba Hoover, Grady Wilson and Nurse Donna Harris, a romantic interest and possible new wife for Fred. Lamont’s friend included his best friend Rollo Larson, Julio Fuentes, an Hispanic neighbor and Janet Lawson, a divorcee [later Lamont’s
fiancée] with a young son, Roger.
When Lamont left Los Angeles and got a job on
the Alaska Pipeline, Fred took on two new
partners: Rollo Larson & Cal Pettie. But
when Lamont returned from Alaska, he and Fred moved to Arizona after selling their house, junkyard and rooming house to
a white man named Phil Wheeler. An ever watchful Aunt Esther stayed behind and collected monthly payments on their
mortgage while Fred’s buddies Grady and Bubba took jobs as bellboy and maintenance men at the Sanford Arms.
Fred (on
left) with son, Lamont
Trivia
Note: The American TV series
Sanford and Son/NBC/1972-77 was produced by Norman
Lear and Bud Yorkin. They licensed the idea for
the show from a British series called Steptoe
& Son/BBC/1962-74, which featured the
exploits of a white cockney junk dealer played
by Wilfred Brambell as the elderly Albert
Steptoe and Harry H. Corbett as his middle-aged
son Harold Steptoe. The Sanford and Son
franchise continued as the short-lived Sanford
Arms/NBC/1977 (without Redd Foxx or Desmond
Wilson). and was revived in 1980 on CBS as Sanford
(starring Foxx and but not Wilson). Redd Foxx
was born December 9, 1922 in St Louis Missouri
as John Elroy Sanford. He died October 11, 1991
of a heart attack while on the set of his new
sitcom series The Royal Family/CBS/1991-92.
Foxx played the role of a cranky nearly retired
postal worker named Alfonso Royal who lived in
Atlanta, Georgia. Demond Wilson was born October
13, 1946 in Valdosta. Georgia. He became a
minister in 1984. In 1994 he formed the
Restoration House of America which offers
guidance and vocational training to former
inmates.
