The “Good Times” dad and “Roots” actor was 84 years old

John Amos, the television writer-turned-Emmy-nominated actor who portrayed the stoic father Good times before he was fired from the groundbreaking sitcom for defying stereotypes and letting his temper get the better of him. He was 84 years old.

Amos died on August 21 in Los Angeles of natural causes, his son, KC Amos, announced.

“It is with deep sadness that I share with you the news that my father has undergone a transformation,” he said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest and heart of gold… and was loved all over the world. Many fans consider him their TV father. He led a good life. “His legacy will continue to be seen in his outstanding television and film work as an actor.”

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, saw his showbiz career take off after he landed a gig on Gordy Howard, the Weather Anchor WJM-TV Mary Tyler Moore’s play.

The New Jersey native received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Toby, the older version of Kunta Kinte, on the acclaimed 1977 ABC miniseries Rootsand regularly played the role of Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on NBC’s West wing.

His career on the big screen began with Melvin Van Peebles’ blaxploitation classic Baadasssss Sweet Sweetback song (1971), and also played the manager of a McDonald’s-like restaurant who employs an African prince (Eddie Murphy) and his right-hand man (Arsenio Hall). Arrival in America (1988).

Years earlier, Amos had participated in a McDonald’s training program before appearing as a fast-food employee in a famous 1970s commercial (“Get a bucket and mop, scrub the bottom and the top!”), he said. helped his children complete their studies.

After appearing a dozen times as the good-natured Gordy in the first four seasons Mary Tyler Moore’s playbarrel-chested Amos was invited to read for the role of James Evans Sr., husband of Esther Rolle’s Florida Evans and father of three children, on the new CBS series: Good times.

The 1974-79 series, created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by Norman Lear, was set in a downtown Chicago apartment located in the projects (think Cabrini-Green). Division Maude (the descendant himself Everything in the Family), Good times was the first sitcom to focus on an African-American family.

“Everybody knew who Norman Lear was,” Amos said in a 2014 interview with the Television Academy Foundation. “I saw the pilot episode Everything in the Family and I thought, “There’s no way they’re going to put this on TV.” … Indeed, it became a hit.

“So I went and read 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 then she looked at Norman and said, “He’ll do just fine.”

Amos starred on the show for three seasons, but soon condemned the silly, stereotypical storylines surrounding the show’s oldest son, JJ – played by comedian Jimmy Walker – and shared his criticisms.

“We had a lot of differences,” he said. “I felt like there was too much emphasis on JJ in his chicken hat saying, ‘Dy-no-mite!’ every third page. I felt that the same amount of attention and commitment could have been placed on my other two children, one of whom aspired to become a Supreme Court justice (played by Ralph Carter) and the other, BernNadette Stanis, who wanted to be a surgeon.

“But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy back then and (the show’s producers) got tired of people threatening their lives over jokes. So they said, “Tell me something, why don’t we kill him?” We can go on living! That taught me – I wasn’t as important as I thought to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.”

James Evans Sr. was the victim of a car accident in a two-part episode that aired in September 1976 at the beginning of the fourth season.

John Alan Amos Jr. was born on December 27, 1939 in Newark, New Jersey. His father drove a tractor and worked as a mechanic, and his mother, Annabelle, was a housewife who eventually returned to school and became a dietician.

His mom was cleaning the house of a cartoonist who drew for Archie comics, which led to Amos and his friend taking part in a radio show recording. Archie show at Radio City Music Hall in New York. “It sparked my imagination,” he said.

“I was kind of 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 caricatures and wrote columns for the school newspaper, and played a convict in a play The man who came to dinner and she was a comeback star.

Amos earned 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 direction I received from above was to become a performer, a writer. I’ve always done it and it was easy for me.”

Still, Amos didn’t give up on his dream of playing professional football, signing his first contract as a free agent with the Broncos. (One of his training camp teammates was Ernie Barnes, whose painting, Sugar Cottageappeared in the opening credits Good times.)

Amos played or attempted to play with many teams, including the Norfolk Neptunes of the Continental Football League and the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League.

After the Chiefs interrupted him a second time, coach Hank Stram allowed him to read a poem about broken dreams to the players, earning a standing ovation. “It was the first confirmation I received from my peers that I could write material that would be able to evoke emotions in people,” he said. “It was very satisfying, much more satisfying than running away from an attack or trying to take an attack.”

(Amos would play a retired player dealing with injuries from his NFL days on the HBO series Football players.)

In Vancouver, Amos performed stand-up comedy and met a television writer who encouraged him to come to Los Angeles, where he landed a job writing and appearing on a syndicated television show hosted by radio personalities Al Lohman and Roger Barkley. (McLean Stevenson, Craig T. Nelson and Barry Levinson also competing on this show.)

This, in turn, led to writing work and performing sketches for a 1969 CBS variety show The Leslie Uggams Show. Two producers there, Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis, were helping to create the show for Mary Tyler Moore and thought it would be great for it.

“They could have easily said, ‘Well, (Gordy) can be a sports announcer.’ For me, it would be (as simple as) falling off a log,” he recalled. “I liked that he was a meteorologist; this suggested that the man could think.

In the 1973/74 season MaudeAmos appeared in three episodes as Florida’s husband, organizing the premiere Good times.

James Evans had difficulty finding full-time work, but “he provided for his family with every job he could find. We survived and America loved the show. “Life was very close to how most Americans lived at that time.”

In an interview with the TV Academy Foundation, Amos became emotional when he noted that “young men in their 30s and 40s, of any ethnicity, come up to me and say, ‘You’re the dad I never had.'”

After he left Good timesLear’s company hired him to play the role of a congressman in the pilot of a new series entitled Onwards and upwards. But he also abandoned this project.

Amos had traveled to Africa several times, including living in Liberia for many months “to indirectly absorb the culture of the continent I came from” when he was asked to speak at Roots.

“It was just what I needed,” he said. “It took bad taste Good times from my mouth – not that Good times everything was bad, but the circumstances in which I left and the acrimony between Norman Lear and me… I realize that I brought a lot of this on myself. I wasn’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with and direct. I challenged everyone. (Roots) was justification, a huge sense of satisfaction.

Eventually, he and Lear came to terms with it, and Amos starred in the producer’s short-lived 1994 comedy series, 704 Hauserabout a liberal family living in Archie Bunker’s former home in Queens.

Amos also had recurring roles on other television shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airin which he played Will Smith’s stepfather; Hunter; District; Men in trees; All about the Andersonsas Anthony Anderson’s dad; and Netflix drama Ranch.

It also includes his film biography The greatest athlete in the world (1973), Let’s do it again (1975), Beastmaster (1982), Dying hard 2 (1990), Rebound (1991), Duster (1992), Night trap (1993), For better or for worse (1995), Players Club (1998), Coming to America 2 (2021) i Because of Charley (2021).

In 1972, he appeared on Broadway in It’s hard to get helpdirected by Carl Reiner.

When he had difficulty finding work in the 1990s, Amos wrote and starred in a one-man play Halley’s Cometabout an 87-year-old man who thinks about the state of the world while waiting in the forest for the arrival of a “comet”. He performed his art for over two decades throughout the United States and in several cities abroad.

He and his son recently produced a documentary Father of America.

In addition to KC (named after Amos’s days with the Chiefs), survivors include his daughter Shannon, both from his first marriage to Noel “Noni” Mickelson. THR’Gary Baum wrote in November about his children’s acrimonious relationship.

Amos was also briefly married to actress Lillian Lehman, who played Andre Braugher’s mother Men of a certain age.

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.