10 Facts You May Not Know about the TV Show, “Good Times”
1) Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) was much older than James Evans (John Amos): Florida was born in 1920 and James was born in 1939. So, when show began in 1974, Florida was already 54 years old, married to a 35-year old husband.
2) JJ was an old man too: JJ, played by Jimmie Walker, was born in 1947, only 8 years later than James. He was certainly no teenager on the show, being 27-years old when the show released its debut.
3) Willona (played by Ja’net Dubois) was only 2 years older than JJ. They could have dated each other.
4) Esther Rolle was consistently annoyed that even though the show was created around her, a comedian (Jimmie Walker) was getting all of the attention.
5) The show was created by Michael Evans, who also played Lionel Jefferson on another show you might have heard of. He based the show on his own childhood.
6) The show was a spinoff of another show, called “Maude,” where Florida was a maid. They changed the name of her husband in the spinoff.
7) Jay Leno appeared on the show in an episode about STDs, one of the first in the history of television.
8) In her indignation over JJ’s role, Esther said: “He’s eighteen and he doesn’t work. He can’t read or write. He doesn’t think. The show didn’t start out to be that…Little by little—with the help of the artist, I suppose, because they couldn’t do that to me—they have made J.J. more stupid and enlarged the role. Negative images have been slipped in on us through the character of the oldest child.”
9) When John Amos left the show after failed contract negotiations, he said this about JJ’s character: “The writers would prefer to put a chicken hat on J.J. and have him prance around saying “DY-NO-MITE”, and that way they could waste a few minutes and not have to write meaningful dialogue.”
10) Esther Rolle was convinced to come back during the last season under three conditions: They would write out the character that she ran off and married after James’ death (since she didn’t think Florida would move on so quickly), they would give her a raise in salary, and JJ would have more respectable, intelligent roll. Oddly enough, that’s when the show started to tank in the ratings.
http://blacklikemoi.com/2012/03/10-facts-you-may-not-know-about-the-tv-show-good-times/
10 facts...ain’t we lucky we got ‘em.
Esther Rolle’s character was supposed to be close to 15 years younger than herself and John Amos’s was supposed to be about 5 or so years older (so around 40 when the show began). Amos had played a much older man in his 50s or early 60s (gray haired) as a contemporary/friend of Redd Foxx’s on “Sanford & Son” when he was in his early 30s.
Also, I believe Ja’net DuBois has fudged a bit about her age (not exactly unknown in the entertainment biz). I believe her to be closer to a decade older than her claimed birthyear (not 1945, but probably around 1937). The reason why is because she had a daughter, Rani, in the mid ‘50s who appeared on “What’s Happening !!” as a high school student at the same time her mother was on GT (so unlikely she was married and had a child at 11). Ja’net was also modeling in magazines in the late ‘50s, apparently not as a juvenile, so adds to the unlikelihood she was 12-14 years old at the time.
Amos has that kind of ageless look about him.