Demond Wilson, the actor who starred as Lamont, a young man in constant comic battle with his junk-dealer father on “Sanford and Son,” the popular 1970s series, died on Friday at his home in the Coachella Valley area of California. He was 79.
The death was confirmed by his son Christopher Wilson, who said he’d had prostate cancer.
“Sanford and Son,” when it had its premiere on NBC in January 1972, was a star vehicle for Redd Foxx, the king of bawdy comedy record albums, making his debut as a network television lead in prime time. But the show had two lead roles: the cantankerous California junk dealer (Mr. Foxx) and his long-suffering, hotheaded 30-ish son, Lamont, the older man’s business partner, who was sick and tired of being repeatedly dismissed as “you big dummy.”
Lamont’s basic role was to be a comic straight man to his father. Mr. Wilson breezed through scenes with lines like “You’ll have to excuse my father,” “Are you sure about that, Pop?” and “Hey, Pop! I’m home.” But plots often revolved around the son’s emotions, ambitions and actions. And in Season 4, when an injured tap-dancing houseguest needed a last-minute substitute, Lamont stepped in. He put on a tuxedo, took to a nightclub stage and showed off his impressive dancing talents.
When Mr. Wilson landed the role of Lamont, he was only in his mid-20s, a theater veteran but a newcomer to the screen. The show was a hit, running for six seasons, with the television critic John J. O’Connor observing in The New York Times that “the father‐and‐son act makes for unusually enjoyable” comedy.
In July 1972, Ebony magazine published a glowing feature article, “Sanford and Son: Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson Wake Up TV’s Jaded Audience.” The article observed, “It did not take long into the first show to find out” how Mr. Wilson, the lesser known of the two stars, would do. “He is excellent.”
Having a hit series felt good, Mr. Wilson said at the time: “For me, it’s like graduating from school.” The show was in the Nielsen ratings’ 10 most popular shows for its first five seasons — and in the top five for three of those years.
The two men had visible on-camera chemistry, but their personal relationship suffered when Mr. Foxx temporarily left the show in 1974 in a contract dispute. “Sanford and Son” ended its run in the spring of 1977, with the father and son characters still going at each other tooth and nail.
Grady Demond Wilson was born on Oct. 13, 1946, in Valdosta, Ga., just north of the Florida state line, where his mother, Laura (Mitchell) Wilson, a school dietitian in New York, was staying with her parents. Demond grew up in Harlem, where his father, Grady Wilson, was a tailor.
He studied dance as a child and in 1971 made his screen debut in a memorable episode of Norman Lear’s hit situation comedy “All in the Family.” Mr. Wilson and Cleavon Little played burglars hiding out at the house of the main character, Archie Bunker, making pointed comments to the Bunkers on topics like poverty, father figures and police brutality. Mr. Wilson’s character mentions an acquaintance who “was running for a bus, and the cop fired a warning shot — in his head.”
In his first film, “The Organization” (1971), a crime drama starring Sidney Poitier, Mr. Wilson was part of a group of young urban revolutionaries trying to stop heroin traffickers. His second, “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” (1972), was a comic drama about a mishap in marijuana transport.
After “Sanford and Son,” he starred in two more series. On “Baby … I’m Back!” (CBS, 1977-78), he was a husband who went on the run from loan sharks for seven years and was now home, trying to force a reconciliation with his wife and children. On “The New Odd Couple” (ABC, 1982-83), based on Neil Simon’s play about two mismatched divorced roommates, he was Oscar Madison, the decidedly more casual guy, opposite Ron Glass’s neatnik Felix Unger.
At age 12 or so, he suffered a ruptured appendix and almost died. He made a secret promise at the time that he would eventually devote his life to God. Growing up Roman Catholic, he briefly considered the priesthood, but he was also influenced by the Pentecostal services he sometimes attended with his grandmother. In the 1980s, Mr. Wilson was ordained as a minister in the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal-Holiness denomination, and began devoting his time to evangelism.
His wrote “The New Age Millennium: An Exposé of Symbols, Slogans and Hidden Agendas” (1998). Later, he published an autobiography, “Second Banana: The Bittersweet Memoirs of the Sanford & Son Years” (2009), and several children’s books.
He did not give up acting completely, however. He appeared in two comedy films, “Me and the Kid” (1993) and “Hammerlock” (2000), and for two seasons (2004-5) on UPN’s “Girlfriends,” he was Persia White’s long-lost birth father. Mr. Wilson’s last screen appearance was as a high-court judge’s ailing father in “Eleanor’s Bench” (2023).
He married Cicely Johnston, a model, in 1974. She survives him, as do their six children, Christopher, Nicole, Melissa, Sarah, Tabatha and Demond Jr.; and two grandchildren.
Mr. Wilson often talked about his disillusionment with show business. “We’ve left the rat race and false people behind,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1986, being interviewed in and near a church where he was giving the sermon that night.
“It wasn’t challenging,” he said of the films and television series he did. “And it was emotionally exhausting because I had to make it appear that I was excited about what I was doing.”
Ultimately, he was dismissive of the decade or so he had devoted to acting. “Hollywood doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said in a 2023 podcast interview. “I went to a factory.”
“For me, that’s what it was — a business,” he said. “I didn’t belong there.”
Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.
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