Demond Wilson (proper) in a nonetheless from a 1974 episode of Sanford and Son. The actor performed Lamont Sanford, the disgruntled offspring of Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanders (left), within the hit Nineteen Seventies NBC sitcom.
NBC Tv/Getty Photos/Hulton Archive
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NBC Tv/Getty Photos/Hulton Archive
Demond Wilson, the actor finest recognized for taking part in Lamont Sanford, the son within the standard Nineteen Seventies NBC primetime comedy sequence Sanford and Son, has died.
The actor died from issues associated to most cancers Friday at his residence within the Palm Springs space of Southern California. He was 79. Wilson’s publicist, Mark Goldman, confirmed the loss of life in an e mail to NPR.
“I had the privilege of working with Demond for 15 years, and his loss is profoundly felt,” mentioned Goldman. “He was an unbelievable man, and his impression won’t ever be forgotten.”
Wilson was in his 20s when he landed the position of Lamont Sanford, the put-upon offspring of the cantankerous Fred Sanford, performed by Redd Foxx. The dad bought all the very best traces, however junior held his personal of their frequent disputes. Wilson reminisced about his time on the sequence in his 2009 memoir Second Banana: The Bitter Candy Memoirs of the Sanford and Son Years.
Producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin primarily based Sanford and Son on the well-known Sixties-early 70s British TV comedy sequence a few blue collar father-son relationship, Steptoe and Son. Sanford and Son was groundbreaking in providing a glimpse into Black household life not often seen on community tv on the time. “The character between the son and the daddy was very attention-grabbing to me and to Norman within the sense that, even though they lived collectively and complained and so forth, they could not stay with out one another,” mentioned Yorkin in a 2008 interview with NPR.
Wilson went on to star as a struggling gambler within the sitcom Child…I am Again! within the late Nineteen Seventies, and because the extra laid-back of the divorcees in The New Odd Couple, a TV present primarily based on Neil Simon’s hit play The Odd Couple. His movie credit embrace Cotton Involves Harlem (1970), The Group (1971), Full Moon Excessive (1981) and Hammerlock (2000).
Wilson was born in Valdosta, Ga., in 1946 to a working class Catholic household and grew up in New York Metropolis’s Harlem neighborhood. He studied dance as a baby and carried out on Broadway. He went on to serve within the U.S. Military in Vietnam. Upon his return, he appeared in numerous exhibits on- and off-Broadway, and ultimately moved to Los Angeles. In 1971, Lear solid him in an episode of the favored sitcom All within the Household. The next yr, Sanford and Son set him on a path to stardom.
Wilson carried a robust Christian religion since childhood. After struggling a life-threatening rupture to his appendix at age 12, he sought to discover a approach to dedicate his life to God. Within the Eighties, he was ordained as a Pentecostal minister, and went on to steer parallel careers in performing and preaching. His 1998 ebook, The New Age Millennium: An Expose of Symbols, Slogans and Hidden Agenda, is a critique from a Christian perspective of the New Age motion and Freemasonry, amongst different quasi-spiritual approaches.
He is survived by his spouse, Cicely Johnston, their six kids and two grandchildren.
In an announcement emailed to NPR, his son Demond Wilson Jr., mentioned the senior Wilson was “a loyal father, actor, writer, and minister.”
“Demond lived a life rooted in religion, service, and compassion,” the assertion learn. “By means of his work on display screen, his writing, and his ministry, he sought to uplift others and go away a significant impression on the communities he served.”
