“The Jeffersons” star Sherman Hemsley died Tuesday in his El Paso, Texas home at the age of 74.
Celebrities and fans alike have mourned the loss of a TV icon, but a television series story editor says he was nothing like his most famous role in real life.
“Sherman was not at all like the George Jefferson character,” Sharon D. Johnson, who worked on his last regular TV series “Good Behavior” in 1996, told the Los Angeles Times. Hemsley played an ex-con ordered to live with his estranged son (Dorien Wilson) as part of his probation.
“He was not brazen. On the contrary, he was a little shy,” Johnson said. “He was very approachable, he loved kids and he was always very professional. He wasn’t afraid to be funny, but he wanted to be much more than that.”
Hemsley played George Jefferson on “All in the Family” and its sitcom spinoff “The Jeffersons,” which ran on CBS from 1975 to 1985. The actor made the wise-cracking, egotistical character a loveable figure who inspired many that “movin’ on up” is always possible.
As Entertainment Weekly put it, he made “George a vital, three-dimensional character, and an important advance in the depiction of black characters in sitcoms.”
But Hemsley felt typecast by the role, according to the Los Angeles Times, and missed out on the one role he wanted to play before the end of his career: Willy Loman.
“He wanted to do ‘Death of a Salesman,'” director Oz Scott, who directed 40 episodes of “The Jeffersons,” told the Times. “I spoke to him about a year and a half, two years ago, and he said he had this last dream, to do ‘Death of a Salesman.’ We had a few talks about doing it.”
Scott added that Hemsley was always professional and “an actor first,” coming out of the theater.
In addition to guest-starring roles on shows like “Family Matters,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The Hughleys,” Hemsley also starred as Deacon Ernest J. Frye on NBC’s “Amen” from 1986 to 1991.
The Washington Post said his portrayal of black church life on “Amen” was important to remember because he “showed that Christians are still human. They make mistakes, but it’s their attempt to walk the less traveled, and more righteous path that makes them special.”
