One of the big recurring gags on Sanford and Son throughout its five-year run in the 1970s was Redd Foxx’s character, Fred G. Sanford, pretending he was having a heart attack. During a stressful situation, Fred would clutch his chest, usually yell for his wife, and sometimes even collapse while performing. It was such a regular part of the show that people have edited together clips of the character’s “funniest” heart attacks. Here’s an 18-minute compilation from the official Sanford and Son YouTube channel:
We’ve talked about how comedy can come across as strangely prescient from time to time, and this is one of the more unfortunate examples of that. In the Season 2 episode of Sanford and Son entitled “Fred Has the Big One,” Foxx’s character has an actual heart attack. He grabs onto a chair at one point before falling to the floor, with nobody around to come to his aid. Take a look below.
Nearly 20 years later, Foxx went through a very similar experience while working on another TV show. In 1991, he’d been cast alongside his Harlem Nights co-star Della Reese on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Royal Family—the working title of which, ironically enough, was Chest Pains. Foxx took a break from rehearsals one day to do an interview, but was quickly interrupted by one of the show’s producers. He didn’t have any lines in the scene they were rehearsing and was only supposed to walk behind the back of Reese’s chair, though the producer was insistent that he be present.
When Foxx found out that he had to cut his interview short for something that anyone could’ve stood in for, he was infuriated. He grabbed onto a nearby chair and fell to the ground much like he did in the earlier Sanford and Son episode, and at first, no one did anything to help him. Because of his history of faking heart attacks and doing pratfalls, everyone on set thought he was fooling around. Reese finally kneeled down next to him when she realized he wasn’t, and he repeatedly told her to get his wife.
Foxx died four hours later at the age of 68. Reese later said that the producers of the show were more concerned with how they were going to rewrite the script than with Foxx’s death. Eddie Murphy, who created and executive produced The Royal Family, stepped in to cover his friend’s funeral expenses.
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