“Good Times” father and “Roots” actor was 84

John Amos, the TV writer and later Emmy-nominated actor who played the stoic father on “Good Times” before being fired from the groundbreaking sitcom for protesting stereotypes and admittedly letting his temper get the better of him, has died. He was 84 years old. Amos died of natural causes on August 21 in Los Angeles, his son KC Amos announced. “It is with deep sadness that I inform you that my father has made the transition,” he said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold… and he was loved around the world. Many fans consider him to be their TV father. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding work as an actor on television and film.” Amos, who played football at Colorado State University and attended training camps with the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, experienced the breakthrough of his showbiz career, after landing a gig as WJN-TV weatherman Gordy Howard on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The New Jersey native received his Emmy nomination for portraying Toby, the older version of Kunta Kinte, in the acclaimed 1977 ABC miniseries “Roots,” and he had a recurring role as Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the NBC series “West Wing”. . His big screen career began with Melvin Van Peebles' blaxploitation classic “Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song” (1971), and he played the manager of a McDonald's-like restaurant who loves an African prince (Eddie Murphy) and his right-hand man (Arsenio). hires Hall) in Coming to America (1988). Many years earlier, Amos had participated in McDonald's training program before appearing as an employee of the fast-food chain in what he said was a well-known commercial in 1971 (“Take a bucket and a mop, scrub the bottom and the top!”). , he helped let his children study. After appearing as the good-natured Gordy a dozen times in the first four seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the barrel-chested Amos was invited to read for the role of James Evans Sr., the husband of Esther Rolle's Florida Evans father three children, in the new CBS series Good Times. Created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by Norman Lear, the 1974-79 show was set in a downtown Chicago apartment located in the projects (think Cabrini-Green). Good Times was a spin-off of Maude (itself a descendant of All in the Family) and the first sitcom to focus on an African-American family. “Everyone knew who Norman Lear was,” Amos said in a 2014 interview for the Television Academy Foundation. “I had seen the pilot episode of All in the Family and thought, 'There's no way they're going to put this on TV.' …In fact, it became a hit. “So I went in and read for Norman Lear with Miss Rolle, just the three of us in his office. When we finished reading, Norman looked at Esther, and Esther looked at me, and looked at Norman, and said, 'He'll do well.'” Amos starred on the show for three seasons, but soon disapproved of the silly stereotypes storylines that surrounded her eldest son on the show, JJ – played by comedian Jimmie Walker – and he went public with his criticism. “We had a number of differences,” he said. “I felt there was too much emphasis on JJ with his chicken hat and 'Dy-no-mite!' said. every third page. I felt that just as much emphasis and success could have been given to my other two children, one of whom, played by Ralph Carter, wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice and the other, BernNadette Stanis, wanted to be a surgeon. “But I wasn't the most diplomatic guy at the time, and (the show's producers) were tired of their lives being threatened over jokes. So they said, 'Tell you what, why don't we kill him?' We can move on with our lives!' “That taught me a lesson: I wasn't as important to the show or Norman Lear's plans as I thought.” James Evans Sr. was the victim of a car accident in a two-part episode that aired in September 1976 to open the fourth season .

John Alan Amos Jr. was born on December 27, 1939 in Newark, New Jersey. His father drove a semi-truck and worked as a mechanic, and his mother, Annabelle, was a housekeeper, eventually going back to school and becoming a nutritionist. His mother cleaned the house of a cartoonist who drew for the Archie comics, and that led to Amos and a friend attending a taping of The Archie Show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. “It opened my imagination wide,” he said. “In a way I was disappointed because none of them looked like Archie, Jughead or Veronica… Some of the magic was gone, but the science of the industry became clear to me.” At East Orange High School, Amos drew cartoons and wrote columns for the school newspaper, played a convict in a production of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” and was a star running back. Amos won football scholarships to Long Beach City College in California and then to Colorado State University, where the Rams had the longest losing streak in the country at the time. “God kept telling me, 'I don't want you to play football,'” he said. “The instruction that was given to me from above was to become a performer, to become a writer, something that I had always done and that came easily to me.” Nevertheless, Amos did not give up on his dream of playing professional football and signed his first free agent contract with the Broncos. (One of his training camp teammates was Ernie Barnes, whose painting “Sugar Shack” appeared in the opening credits of Good Times.) Amos played or tried out for many teams, including the Norfolk Neptunes of the Continental Football League and the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League . After the Chiefs cut him a second time, coach Hank Stram allowed him to read the players a poem about broken dreams — and he received a standing ovation. “It was the first confirmation I got from my peers that I could write material that could evoke emotions in people,” he said. “It was very gratifying, much more so than running without a tackle or trying to learn a blitz.” (Amos played a retired player struggling with injuries from his NFL days in the HBO series “Ballers.” .) In Vancouver, Amos performed stand-up and met a television writer who encouraged him to come to Los Angeles, where he landed a career as a writer and actor, landing a job on a syndicated TV variety show hosted by radio hosts Al Lohman and Roger Barkley. (Also started on this show: McLean Stevenson, Craig T. Nelson and Barry Levinson.) This in turn led to them writing and appearing in sketches for the 1969 CBS variety program The Leslie Uggams Show. Two producers there, Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis, were helping develop a series for Mary Tyler Moore and thought he would be a great fit for it. “They could have very easily said, 'Well, (Gordy) can be a sportscaster.' For me that would have been (as easy as) falling off a tree trunk,” he remembers. “I liked the fact that he was a meteorologist; that meant the man could think.” In the 1973/74 Maude season, Amos appeared in three episodes as Florida's husband, preparing for the launch of Good Times. James Evans struggled to find full-time work, but “he provided for his family with whatever job he could find.” We managed to survive and America loved this show. It was pretty much the way most Americans lived at the time.” In his 2014 interview with the TV Academy Foundation, Amos became emotional when he noted that “young men in their 30s and 40s of every ethnicity imaginable came up to me and said, 'You're the father I never had.'” “After he left Good Times, Lear's company hired him to play a congressman in the pilot for a new show called Onward and Upward. But he would also give up this project. Amos had traveled to Africa several times, including living in Liberia for months “to absorb the culture of the continent from which I indirectly came,” when he was approached to appear in “Roots.” “It was exactly what I needed,” he said. “It took away the bad taste of Good Times – not that Good Times was bad through and through, but the circumstances in which I left and the bitterness between Norman Lear and I… I realize that I have a lot of things of which I caused myself. I wasn't exactly easy to get along with or direct. I challenged anyone and everyone. (Roots) was an affirmation, a tremendous sense of satisfaction.” He and Lear eventually got over it, and Amos starred for the producer in the short-lived 1994 sitcom “704 Hauser,” about a liberal family who lives in Archie Bunker's former home in Queens. Amos also had recurring roles on other television shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which he played Will Smith's stepfather; Hunter; The district; men in trees; All About the Andersons, as Anthony Anderson's father; and the Netflix drama The Ranch. His film resume also includes The World's Greatest Athlete (1973), Let's Do It Again (1975), The Beastmaster (1982), Die Hard 2 (1990), Ricochet (1991), Mac (1992), Night Trap (1993 ), For Better or Worse (1995), The Players Club (1998), Coming to America 2 (2021) and Because of Charley (2021). In 1972, he appeared on Broadway in “Tough to Get Help,” directed by Carl Reiner. When he was struggling to find work in the 1990s, Amos wrote the screenplay and starred in the one-man play “Halley's Comet,” about an 87-year-old man reflecting on the state of the world World thinks while he waits in the forest for what is to come from “the comet”. He toured the play throughout the United States and in several cities overseas for more than two decades. Most recently, he and his son produced the documentary America's Dad. In addition to KC (who was named after Amos' days with the Chiefs), survivors include his daughter Shannon, both from his first marriage to Noel “Noni” Mickelson. THR's Gary Baum wrote about his children's bitter relationship in November. Amos was also briefly married to actress Lillian Lehman, who played Andre Braugher's mother in “Men of a Specific Age.” Duane Byrge contributed to this report.