Ireneparalegal
08-03-2005, 01:48 AM
John Amos is a burly balding black actor with a gently gruff screen presence. He played Esther Rolle’s husband on Good Times, WJM’s weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the adult Kunta Kinte on Roots, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on The West Wing. He was also the Mayor on Craig T. Nelson’s The District, and owned the fast-food restaurant where Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall briefly worked in Coming to America.
He wrote for Leslie Uggams’ short-lived 1969 CBS variety show, and later wrote the play Halley’s Comet, about an old man whose memories are intertwined with the comet he saw as a boy. Before Amos was famous, he was featured prominently in McDonald’s singing-and-dancing “You deserve a break today” commercials as a smiling shift manager.
Good Times was a groundbreaking show, milking laughs from actual issues of minority life in a rough neighborhood. But Amos, who played the family’s no-nonsense father, complained as the show gradually shifted its focus onto the silly antics (and perceived negative racial stereotypes) of Jimmie Walker’s “J.J.” character.
“It was an ongoing struggle to say no, I don’t want to be a part of the perpetuation of this stereotype,” Amos recalls. “Despite the fact that I had a writing background, they didn’t want to accept whatever ideas I had as a writer. So when I would pose arguments about J.J.’s role being too stereotypical, I was regarded as a negative factor.
“It ultimately reached a point where it was inflammable, I mean, spontaneous combustion could happen at any minute. They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history. I could have begged and they made it obvious to me that if I wanted to come back and be a good boy… but I’d rather say ‘Toby be good ******’ in Roots than say ‘Toby be good ******’ on Good Times.”
PUBLISHED JUNE 2005 BY: THE BLACK INFORMANT
He wrote for Leslie Uggams’ short-lived 1969 CBS variety show, and later wrote the play Halley’s Comet, about an old man whose memories are intertwined with the comet he saw as a boy. Before Amos was famous, he was featured prominently in McDonald’s singing-and-dancing “You deserve a break today” commercials as a smiling shift manager.
Good Times was a groundbreaking show, milking laughs from actual issues of minority life in a rough neighborhood. But Amos, who played the family’s no-nonsense father, complained as the show gradually shifted its focus onto the silly antics (and perceived negative racial stereotypes) of Jimmie Walker’s “J.J.” character.
“It was an ongoing struggle to say no, I don’t want to be a part of the perpetuation of this stereotype,” Amos recalls. “Despite the fact that I had a writing background, they didn’t want to accept whatever ideas I had as a writer. So when I would pose arguments about J.J.’s role being too stereotypical, I was regarded as a negative factor.
“It ultimately reached a point where it was inflammable, I mean, spontaneous combustion could happen at any minute. They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history. I could have begged and they made it obvious to me that if I wanted to come back and be a good boy… but I’d rather say ‘Toby be good ******’ in Roots than say ‘Toby be good ******’ on Good Times.”
PUBLISHED JUNE 2005 BY: THE BLACK INFORMANT