1. Redd Foxx Had to Clean Up His Act For ‘Sanford and Son’
Redd Foxx enjoyed a brilliant — but verbally filthy — stand up career prior to Sanford and Son, which Norman Lear happened to catch in Las Vegas and instantly knew he should be starring in a TV show. Lear told USA Today, “We met with him and came back to LA sky high. Miraculously, several days later a British agent came to us with the idea of making an American version of a big hit in Britain entitled Steptoe and Son. It was an instant marriage. Not that he wasn’t difficult to deal with, but he was funny as hell and that made everything possible.”
2. Demond Wilson or Richard Pryor?
Demond Wilson, a Vietnam veteran, was a stage performer in New York, had appeared in several films and made a guest appearance on All in the Family, which led to his being approached to play Lamont on Sanford and Son. Maybe.
As he told the Associated Press, “They said, ‘We were considering Richard Pryor and I said, ‘C’mon, you can’t put a comedian with a comedian. You’ve got to have a straight man.’ Dick Martin was the nut, Dan Rowan was the straight guy on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” He must have made his point, because he was cast alongside Redd Foxx.
3. ‘Steptoe and Son’
In the same way that All in the Family was based on the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part, Sanford and Son was based on that country’s Steptoe and Son. That show spanned eight seasons (or “series” as they’re referred to in the UK) for a total of 57 episodes airing between 1962 and 1974.
The show stars Wilfrid Brambell (who played Paul McCartney‘s grandfather in The Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night) as junkman Albert Steptoe (considered a “dirty old man”) and Harry H. Corbett as his son, Harold Steptoe, who is pretentious and has aspirations of lifting his societal status. Both work as junkmen and there is, naturally, generational conflict between the two of them. In addition to America’s Sanford and Son, it inspired Sweden’s Albert & Herbert, the Netherlands’ Stiefbeen en zoon, Portugal’s Camilo & filho and South Africa’s Snetherswaite and Son. There were also the feature films Steptoe and Son (released in 1972) and Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973).
4. Redd Foxx’s Actual Name Was Sanford
Redd Foxx was actually born John Elroy Sanford on December 9, 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri, which made his starring in Sanford and Son even more meaningful for him. In detailing how the change in name came, he told British interviewer Bobbie Wygant, “I was searching for a name that could be remembered by everyone, and I thought about Red Fox. A kid three or four could remember Red Fox; that’d be a good name. So I added the extra D and extra X to make it a name instead of the animal or the color an an animal. And it worked out pretty well. Now, some of my dearest friends call me Sanford, so it is odd for me to turn around and answer, because Sanford is my family name.”
5. ‘Sanford and Son’ vs. ‘All in the Family’
Back in the 1970s, there were many people who thought Sanford and Son was a spin-off of All in the Family, but outside of the fact that Norman Lear serves as executive producer of both, there were no other connections. In making the shows, Lear said, “We didn’t compare them, but the characters called it like they saw it in their own neighborhoods.”
For his part, Demond Wilson agreed, noting, “There is no comparison, really. The two shows have nothing to do with each other. I think they’re both bold shows, but they’re entirely different. Red Foxx’s Sanford is not a bigot. He’s just a cantankerous old man who will straighten out anybody if they’re wrong.”
None of which dissuaded Foxx from liking the idea of a crossover at the time. “I’ve thought about it quite often,” he said, “and I wish it could happen. Maybe somewhere they might have put a special together or something like that.”
