They were one of the most popular 1970s’ and ’80s TV couples: Louise and George Jefferson, played by Isabel Sanford and Sherman Hemsley. Spun off from All in the Family, the character of Louise was the sweet and easygoing wife to George’s harsh and demanding personality.
The two appeared to be perfectly compatible, but what wasn’t immediately evident was the fact that Sanford, while seeming to be the same age as her co-star, was significantly older than he.
Sanford first auditioned for the role of Louise’s sister
Within days of watching All in the Family after it began airing on CBS in 1971, Sanford stated, her agent called to let her know she would be auditioning for a role on the very same show.
“He had me to read,” she remembered, “for Louise Jefferson’s sister.
“Soon after [watching All in the Family], I don’t know, a couple of days, my agent called and said, ‘Go, you have an audition.’ I went for this audition and Norman Lear auditioned me. This was before it was an empire,” she recalled.
The cast of the TV sitcom ‘The Jeffersons’ (L-R Back Row: Franklin Cover, Paul Benedict, Sherman Hemsley, Marla Gibbs, Ned Wertimer and Berlinda Tolbert, Front Row, seated: Roxie Roker, Isabel Sanford, and Mike Evans circa 1975
‘The Jeffersons’ cast, 1975 | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Louise’s sister, Sanford explained, was a role that could be missed if viewers blinked. The character in the episode titled “Lionel Moves Into the Neighborhood,” knocks on the Bunkers’ door, asking to borrow a pail to clean up the Jeffersons’ new home for them.
The Louise Jefferson actor was horrified when she met Hemsley
When Sanford met her on-screen husband Sherman Hemsley, she was less than gratified about the prospect of filming with him. She was told a season and a half into All in the Family that Norman Lear had finally found her a husband. As she told the Television Academy Foundation in 2002, it was a real letdown.
“When I saw the man, he came, this little man and he was little then,” she began. “Thin, you know.”
The show’s director, John Rich, received Hemsley on his first day on the set and introduced him to a displeased Sanford.
She recalled: “He said, ‘Isabel, this is your husband!’ I looked at this little man that I could have squashed like a bug. I don’t see how John could think we would make a great-looking couple.”
Asked if she felt that Rich had gotten something right, Sanford laughed and said, “He apparently did because the world has been hitching us together ever since.”