R.I.P. Demond Wilson: ‘Sanford and Son’ Actor Who Performed Lamont Sanford Lifeless at 79

Demond Wilson, the actor finest identified for portraying Lamont Sanford, the perpetually put-upon son on NBC’s traditional Nineteen Seventies sitcom Sanford and Son, has died. He was 79.

Wilson died Friday at his house within the Palm Springs space of Southern California as a result of issues associated to most cancers. His publicist, Mark Goldman, confirmed the information in an electronic mail to NPR.

“I had the privilege of working with Demond for 15 years, and his loss is profoundly felt,” Goldman mentioned. “He was an unbelievable man, and his influence won’t ever be forgotten.”

Wilson was in his 20s when he landed the position of Lamont Sanford, the level-headed counterpoint to his on-screen father Fred Sanford, performed by Redd Foxx. Whereas Foxx delivered lots of the present’s most memorable punchlines, Wilson anchored the collection with a quieter, grounded efficiency that made the father-son dynamic resonate. He later mirrored on his time on the present in his 2009 memoir, Second Banana: The Bitter Candy Memoirs of the Sanford and Son Years.

Produced by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, Sanford and Son was tailored from the British sitcom Steptoe and Son and proved groundbreaking for its depiction of Black household life on community tv. “The character between the son and the daddy was very fascinating to me and to Norman within the sense that, even though they lived collectively and complained and so forth, they couldn’t stay with out one another,” Yorkin mentioned in a 2008 interview with NPR.

After Sanford and Son ended, Wilson continued working steadily in tv and movie. He starred as a struggling gambler within the late-Nineteen Seventies sitcom Child… I’m Again! and later appeared in The New Odd Couple, a TV adaptation of Neil Simon’s play. His movie credit included Cotton Involves Harlem (1970), The Group (1971), Full Moon Excessive (1981), and Hammerlock (2000).

Born in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1946, Wilson was raised in Harlem in a working-class Catholic household. He studied dance as a baby, carried out on Broadway, and later served within the U.S. Military through the Vietnam Battle. After getting back from army service, he appeared in on- and off-Broadway productions earlier than shifting to Los Angeles. In 1971, he was forged in an episode of All within the Household, a task that led to his breakout on Sanford and Son the next 12 months.

Religion remained central to Wilson’s life. After surviving a ruptured appendix at age 12, he dedicated himself to Christianity and, within the Nineteen Eighties, was ordained as a Pentecostal minister. He went on to stability parallel careers in appearing and preaching and authored a number of books, together with The New Age Millennium: An Expose of Symbols, Slogans and Hidden Agenda, which critiques the New Age motion and Freemasonry from a Christian perspective.

Wilson is survived by his spouse, Cicely Johnston, their six youngsters, and two grandchildren. In a press release emailed to NPR, his son Demond Wilson Jr. mentioned his father was “a faithful father, actor, creator, and minister.”

“Demond lived a life rooted in religion, service, and compassion,” the assertion learn. “By means of his work on display screen, his writing, and his ministry, he sought to uplift others and go away a significant influence on the communities he served.”