Posted on 02/19/2020 7:57:24 AM PST by LRoggy
Ah, I never watched Maude so I didn’t realize that show was related too.
People talk about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe was such a big development, but it looks like the Yorkin-Lear Television Universe was decades ahead of them!
Esther Rolle was supposed to be playing a mom, not a supermodel. She had a lot more depth, talent and heart than about 99% of the folks in the business.
Curiously and sadly, she didn’t have any children in real life.
She wasn’t technically playing the same character on “Maude” as she did on “Good Times.”
Not different than Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction crossover stuff.
Just like Robert Guillaume didn’t play the same Benson, as he did on “Soap”
No, that was the same character. They just apparently never mentioned his last name on “Soap.”
Wasn’t “Movin’ n Up” from the Jeffersons, an offshoot of All In The Family?
It was. George and Louise Jefferson and Maude Findlay were originally characters on “All in the Family.” Florida Evans was originally a character on “Maude.”
Thanks for the added info.
I thought that the late date on the page was pretty absurd, given the other info provided.
Must be those high wikipedia standards!
Appreciate your awesome post.
Certainly brings to life that memory of Esther Rolle’s Florida coming to grips with losing her husband, James (as John Amos chose to leave the show).
Thanks again for sharing it with me.
RIP to Ja’Net DuBois and Esther Rolle!
I enjoyed her work as well. RIP.
Had Willona gotten custody of Janet Jackson, not just of Penny, Janet would have turned out a lot better.
I think she personally clung to that “late date.” Her age was a bone of contention for years. She probably knew that the only discrimination worse than racial in Hollyweird was that of age discrimination against women. Why so many have fudged their ages.
I got in an edit war on Wikipedia with an actress trying to shave 6 years off her age. While it really seemed absurdly trivial, the problem is that in doing so meant that she was accusing a prominent director and actor of having had her do a nude/sex scene playing the wife of said actor when she was only 14 (instead of the 20 that she was). This is where you run into a serious problem, and I wasn’t letting her get away with it. Since I haven’t checked in awhile, I’ll bet she has changed it to her preferred date again (she keeps using a different IP address with each edit).
Special mention to Kim Fields’s mom, Chip, who played Penny’s abusive birth mother on the show. Really riveting dramatic work for a sitcom. I was surprised Chip Fields never got more gigs as a result. Kim was also on GT just prior to “The Facts of Life.” Chip did end up playing Kim’s (Tootie) mom on Facts, though.
As another aside about Ja’Net DuBois, she was also set to co-star in a spinoff from “Facts” in 1981. Her character was Tootie’s grandmother (in this case playing her actual age of about 50 and not the 29 or so she claimed to be on GT) and mother-in-law to Richard Dean Anderson, who was married to Rosanne Katon (Sept 1978 Playboy Playmate and close friend of Dorothy Stratten). It would’ve been like a younger version of the Willis’s from “The Jeffersons”, although theirs was a troubled marriage with the wife being a popular local tv anchor on the way up.
Anderson was fresh off of his popular run on “General Hospital.” The only problem was Anderson came off as decidedly uncomfortable in the pilot spin-off (aired as a “Facts” episode). If you had just seen him on that episode, you would not have thought he’d be taking off as a primetime tv star within the next several years.
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