The father of “Good Times,” the “Roots” actor was 84

John Amos, the TV writer turned Emmy-nominated actor who played the stoic father Good times before he was fired from the landmark sitcom for going against stereotypes and, of course, letting his temper get the best of him, he died. He was 84 years old.

Amos died Aug. 21 in Los Angeles of natural causes, his son, KC Amos, announced.

“It is with sincere sadness that I share with you that my father has transitioned,” he said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold … and he was loved all over the world. Many fans consider him their TV dad. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding work in television and film as an actor.”

Amos, who played football at Colorado State University and had training camp tryouts with the NFL’s Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs, saw his showbiz career take off after landing a gig playing as WJM-TV meteorologist Gordy Howard. The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The New Jersey native received his Emmy nomination for portraying Toby, the older version of Kunta Kinte, in the acclaimed 1977 ABC miniseries. Rootsand had a recurring role as Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on NBC. The West Wing.

His big screen career began with Melvin Van Peebles’ blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss song (1971), and starred as the manager of a McDonald’s-like restaurant who hires an African prince (Eddie Murphy) and his right-hand man (Arsenio Hall) in Coming to America (1988).

Many years ago, Amos had attended McDonald’s training program before appearing as an employee of the fast-food chain in a well-known commercial from the 1970s (“Take a bucket and mop, scrub the bottom and top! ”), of which he said. he helped his children through college.

After appearing a dozen times as the good Gordy in the first four seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore ShowThe barrel-chested Amos has been invited to read for the role of James Evans Sr., husband of Esther Rolle, Florida Evans and father of their three children, in a new CBS series, Good times.

The 1974-79 show, created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by Norman Lear, took place in a downtown Chicago apartment located in the projects (think Cabrini-Green). A spinoff of Maude (himself a descendant of All in the family), Good times was the first sitcom centered on an African-American family.

“Everybody knew who Norman Lear was,” Amos said in a 2014 interview with the Television Academy Foundation. “I had seen the pilot episode of All in the family and thought, “There’s no way in the world they’re going to put that on TV.” … Of course, it became a hit.

“So I went in and read with Miss Rolle for Norman Lear, just the three of us in his office. When I finished reading Norman looked at Esther and Esther looked at me and looked at Norman and said, “He’s going to be fine.”

Amos starred in the show for three seasons, but soon disapproved of the silly, stereotypical storylines that surrounded their eldest son JJ on the show – played by comic Jimmie Walker – and went public with his criticisms.

“We had a number of differences,” he said. “I felt there was too much emphasis on JJ in his chicken hat saying ‘Dy-no-mite!’ every third page. I felt that just as much emphasis and mileage could have been obtained from my other two children, one aspiring Supreme Court Justice played by Ralph Carter and the other BernNadette Stanis aspiring to be a surgeon .

“But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy in those days and (the show’s producers) got tired of having their lives threatened because of jokes. So they said, “I tell you, why don’t we kill him? We can move on with our lives! That taught me a lesson—I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.”

James Evans Sr. was the victim of a car accident in a two-part episode that aired in September 1976 to begin season four.

John Alan Amos Jr. was born on December 27, 1939, in Newark, New Jersey. His father drove a tractor-trailer and worked as a mechanic, and his mother, Annabelle, was a housekeeper who eventually went back to school and became a nutritionist.

His mother cleaned the house of a cartoonist who drew for Archie comics, and this led Amos and a friend to attend a radio taping. The Archie Show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. “It made my imagination wide open,” he said.

“I was kind of disappointed because none of them looked like Archie or Jughead or Veronica… Some of the magic was gone, but the science of the industry became apparent to me.”

At East Orange High School, Amos drew cartoons and wrote columns for the school newspaper, played a convict in a production of The man who came to dinner and there was a star running back.

Amos earned football scholarships to Long Beach City College in California and then to Colorado State University, where the Rams had the longest losing streak in the nation at the time.

“God kept telling me, ‘I don’t want you to play football,'” he said. “The direction I got from above was to be a performer, to be a writer, something I had always done and it came easily to me.”

Still, Amos didn’t give up on his dream of playing professional football, signing his first free agent contract with the Broncos. (One of his boot camp mates was Ernie Barnes, whose painting, Sugar shackappeared in the opening credits of Good times.)

Amos played or attempted to play with many teams, including the Norfolk Neptunes of the Continental Football League and the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League.

After the Chiefs cut him for the second time, coach Hank Stram allowed the players to read a poem about shattered dreams — and he got a standing ovation. “It was the first confirmation I got from my peers that I could write material that could evoke emotions in people,” he said. “It was very gratifying, much more so than running off the tackle or trying to start a blitz.”

(Amos would play a retired player battling injuries from his NFL days on the HBO series Baler.)

In Vancouver, Amos did stand-up and met a television writer who encouraged him to come to Los Angeles, where he landed a job as a writer and performer on a syndicated TV variety show hosted by radio personalities Al Lohman and Roger Barkley. (Also getting their starts in that program: McLean Stevenson, Craig T. Nelson and Barry Levinson.)

This in turn led to sketch writing and acting work on the CBS variety program in 1969 The Leslie Uggams Show. Two producers there, Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis, helped develop a series for Mary Tyler Moore and thought she would be great for it.

“He very easily could have said, ‘Well, (Gordy) can be a sports announcer.’ It would have been (as easy as) falling off a log for me,” he recalled. “I liked the fact that he was a weatherman; that meant the man could think.”

In the 1973-74 season of MaudeAmos appeared in three episodes as Florida’s husband, setting up his release Good times.

James Evans struggled to find full-time work, but “he provided his family with any job he could find. We managed to survive and America loved the show. It was close to the way most Americans lived at the time.”

In his TV Academy Foundation interview, Amos became emotional when he noted that “young men, in their 30s and 40s, of every ethnicity imaginable, come up to me and say, ‘You’re the father I never had.’

After he left Good timesLear’s company hired him to play a congressman in the pilot for a new show called Onward and upward. But he would also give up on that project.

Amos had traveled to Africa several times, including living in Liberia for months “to absorb the culture of the continent I came from, vicariously,” when he was approached to appear in Roots.

“It was just what we needed,” he said. “It took bad taste Good times from my mouth – not that Good times it had been very bad, but the circumstances in which I left and the acrimony between Norman Lear and myself… I realize that I brought a lot on myself. I wasn’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with or direct. I challenged anyone and everyone. (Roots) was a vindication, an extraordinary sense of satisfaction.”

He and Lear eventually got over it, and Amos starred for the producer in a short-lived 1994 sitcom, 704 Hauserabout a liberal family living in Archie Bunker’s former home in Queens.

Amos also had recurring roles on other TV shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airin which he played Will Smith’s stepfather; Hunter; district; The men in the trees; All about Andersonas Anthony Anderson’s father; and the Netflix drama Farm.

His film resume also included The greatest athlete in the world (1973), Let’s do it again (1975), Lord of the Beasts (1982), Die Hard 2 (1990), Ricochet (1991), Poppy (1992), Night trap (1993), For better or worse (1995), The Players Club (1998), Coming to America 2 (2021) and Because of Charley (2021).

In 1972, he appeared on Broadway in Hard to get helpdirected by Carl Reiner.

When he found work hard to come by in the 1990s, Amos wrote and acted in a one-man play. Halley’s cometabout an 87-year-old man who prays about the state of the world while waiting in the woods for the arrival of the “comet.” He has toured throughout the US and several overseas cities with the piece for more than two decades.

More recently, he and his son produced the documentary Father of America.

In addition to KC (nickname for Amos’ days with the Chiefs), survivors include his daughter, Shannon, both from his first marriage to Noel “Noni” Mickelson. THR’Gary Baum wrote about his children’s acrimonious relationship in November.

Amos was also briefly married to actress Lillian Lehman, who played Andre Braugher’s mother on Men of a certain age.

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.