Foxx, Redd 1922–1991
Redd Foxx 1922–1991
Comedian, actor
Sanford and Son Created a Star
Nurtured Career of Richard Pryor
Criticism for Sanford Characterization
Comedian Redd Foxx will undoubtedly be best remembered for his role as cantankerous junk dealer Fred G. Sanford on the hit 1970s television series Sanford and Son. His tribulations with TV son Lamont, best friend Grady, and nemesis Aunt Esther—especially when feigning heart attacks with the oft-heard lines “I’m coming Elizabeth. This is the big one”—will live long in the minds of viewers. Ironically, it was during the filming of his latest television series, The Royal Family, that Foxx finally succumbed to “the big one” while friends and cast members looked on helplessly.
Born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 9, 1922, Foxx was the second son of Fred and Mary Sanford. When Foxx was four years old, his father deserted the family; his mother moved to Chicago to find work, leaving her sons to live with their grandmother. It was around this time that Foxx became interested in show business while listening to radio broadcasts of his favorite comedy programs. He soon left St. Louis to live with his mother in Chicago.
A few years later, at Chicago’s DuSable High School, Foxx’s dream of a show business career began to take shape. After forming a washtub band with two friends, Lamont Ousley and Steve Trimel, Foxx dropped out of school and in 1939 ran away from home in hopes of striking it big in New York City. Playing on the street corners and subways of Harlem led to the band’s—at that point called the Bon-Bons—big break: second prize on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour and a week’s booking in a Newark, New Jersey, nightclub.
The band soon broke up, however. Foxx was then turned down for Army service in World War II. So “Detroit Red,” as Foxx was nicknamed because of his red hair and fair complexion, found himself working in a variety of odd jobs, including a stint as a dishwasher at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem, where he worked with “Chicago Red,” later known as Malcolm X. It was during this time that, according to Douglas C. Lyons of Ebony magazine, “[Foxx] adopted the stage name Redd Foxx because of his red hair, his foxy style of dress and his admiration for the famed baseball player Jimmy Foxx.” Years later Foxx clarified his reasoning to People: “The extra letter was so people would remember it.”
In 1942 a friend, singer Jo Ann Baker, told Foxx that a
At a Glance…
Born John Elroy Sanford, December 9, 1922, in St. Louis, MO; died of a heart attack, November 11, 1991, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Fred (an electrician) and Mary (a domestic worker and radio preacher; maiden name, Carson) Sanford; married Evelyn Killibrew (divorced, 1951); married Betty Jean Harris, 1955 (divorced, 1974); married Yun Chi Chung (divorced); married Kaho Cho, 1991; children: Debraca (stepdaughter).
Comedian and actor. Began career in various musical groups, including the Bon-Bons, 1939-1941; performed as comedian in nightclubs and on recordings, 1941-1991; performed with Slappy White, 1947-1951. Television series included Sanford and Son, 1972-1977; The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour, 1977-1978; Sanford, 1980-1981; The Redd Foxx Show, 1986, The Royal Family, 1991. Selected television appearances included The Today Show, 1964, The Tonight Show, Here’s Lucy, The Addams Family, Mr. Ed, all 1965, Green Acres, 1966, The Lucy Show and Grady, 1975, The Captain and Tenille Show, 1976, Diffrent Strokes, 1979, and the television movie Ghost of a Chance, 1987. Film appearances included Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970, Norman … Is That You?, 1976, and Harlem Nights, 1989.
Awards: Golden Globe Award for best television actor in a musical or comedy, 1972; Emmy Award nomination for best actor in a comedy series, 1971, 1972, and 1973.
Baltimore club called Gamby’s was looking for a master of ceremonies. Since employment in New York City was scarce, Foxx headed south. At Gamby’s Foxx began to develop his stand-up comedy routine. Foxx told Lyons, “Baltimore was tough. No use in me lying; that was the toughest [town] on earth to work. I don’t care who you were. If you were bad, and they thought so, you were going to know it.”
After the war Foxx moved back to New York to play the “chitlin’ circuit” of black nightclubs. In 1947 he teamed up with Slappy White; the two enjoyed a moderate success, sometimes earning as much as $450.00 a week. Their partnership ended abruptly, however, when they bombed at the Palace on Broadway. In the winter of 1951 blues singer Dinah Washington invited Foxx to California to join her show. Unfortunately, the new gig lasted only a month. Foxx found California much more segregated than New York, and was forced to supplement his show business career with a part-time job as a sign painter. Then, in 1955, while playing a downtown Los Angeles club called the Brass Rail, he was spotted by Dootsie Williams, owner of Dooto Records. Williams persuaded Foxx to record Laff of the Party, the first of 54 albums that would sell well over 20 million copies.
Father of the Comedy Album
This first “party album”—spoken comedy with no music—was a big hit in basements and rec rooms across the country, even though its featured four-letter words and “blue” humor forced many conservative outlets to sell it under the counter. “Emerging as the dean of blue comedy in an era before [Richard] Pryor and [Eddie] Murphy launched their attacks on social taboos on race and sex,” wrote Donald Bogle in Blacks in American Films and Television, “Foxx became a master of wicked standup satires on sex and other topics. Even when young, he was often a bit of a dirty old man, using the vulgar and the profane to shatter middle-class pretenses.” In fact, many people credit Foxx with creating the genre of comedy albums.
By the late 1950s Foxx was considered one of the funniest comedians around, though his appeal was limited to the black community. It wasn’t until 1959, when he played New York’s predominately white Basin Street East—to great applause—that he started to get the recognition he deserved. Within one year he was playing Las Vegas; first at a small club known as the Castaways, and then at the plush Aladdin, where he performed for a year. Then, in 1962, Foxx appeared for the first time as a headliner at the Summit on the famed Sunset Strip in Hollywood.
Broke Into Television
For the next couple of years Foxx enjoyed great success playing prestigious clubs on the West Coast. In 1964 television journalist Hugh Downs caught his act at the Sugar Hill club in San Francisco and invited the comedian to make an appearance on the Today show. “Until then,” Richard Pearson wrote in the Washington Post, “television had been leery of Mr. Foxx. He was thought of as a comic that, though gifted, was limited by his off-color material.” But Foxx’s television appearance proved to be so successful that he was soon called upon to appear on all the popular talk shows of the day, including those hosted by Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Steve Allen, Mike Douglas, and Virginia Graham.
The last half of the 1960s was an exciting and busy time for Redd Foxx. Not only was he offered continual work at various nightclubs around the country, including the renowned Apollo in Harlem, but he was also getting requests to appear in guest spots on some of the most popular television shows of the time, including Here’s Lucy, The Addams Family, Green Acres, Mr. Ed, and The Lucy Show. His popularity was growing so quickly, in fact, that in 1968 Hilton International Hotel offered him a contract for $960,000 for 32 weeks of performances. And just as it looked as though things couldn’t get any better for Foxx, he was offered his first part in a movie. In 1970 he appeared in Cotton Comes to Harlem as Uncle Bud, an elderly junk dealer.
Sanford and Son Created a Star
Although his part was a small one, Foxx’s performance was good enough to catch the eye of television producers Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, who were casting a new situation comedy based on a long-running British television show called Steptoe and Son, On January 14, 1972, Sanford and Son, starring Foxx as curmudgeonly Watts junk dealer Fred Sanford, premiered on NBC-TV to rave reviews. The Washington Post’s television writer, Laurence Laurent, called it “a small step in television’s progress in showing members of a racial minority with respect, warmth and affection.” Audiences seemed to agree with Laurent’s views; for the first four years of its five-year run, Sanford and Son ranked among the top 10 programs on television. The show’s popularity earned Foxx one of the highest salaries paid to a television star at the time—approximately $35,000 an episode. According to Time’s David Gates and William Slate, “[Foxx] knew how to spread it around: by the end of the show’s second season, he owned five homes, a TV production company, a theatrical-management agency, a Los Angeles nightclub and a Hollywood beauty shop.”
Foxx had finally made it in “the business,” but he never forgot his roots or the long struggle to get where he was. In fact, he has been credited with giving several comedians their big breaks. According to Raoul Abdul in Famous Black Entertainers of Today, “Flip [Wilson]’s first exposure to national television audiences came about when Redd Foxx was asked by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show whom he considered the funniest comedian around. Redd replied, ‘Flip Wilson.’” This single remark launched Flip Wilson into the limelight.
Nurtured Career of Richard Pryor
Another popular comedian whom Foxx took under his wing was Richard Pryor. “I learned a whole lot working at Redd’s club,” Pryor told Walter Leavy of Ebony. “I got to watch him work every night, and he gave me inspiration and encouragement so I could be more me and do what I like to do in my act.” But Foxx’s generosity did not end there. He often invited old friends to appear on his shows, made frequent appearances at charity events, donated his time to prison shows, and entertained troops in Vietnam with Bob Hope. And, in true Redd Foxx fashion, several of the leading characters on his hit television show—Fred G. Sanford, Lamont, and the Reverend Trimel—were named in honor of his brother, who had died five years before the show premiered, and his first two band partners, respectively.
Criticism for Sanford Characterization
Foxx was also known for fighting racial prejudice, especially in the entertainment industry. Some black leaders, however, criticized his portrayal of Fred Sanford. Critics complained that Fred Sanford was, Bogle wrote, “part of the 1970s minstrelsy: the standard stereotyped good-for-nothing black roustabout.” The criticisms bothered Foxx. “That’s what hurts me more than anything else,” he told Lyons, “to see Blacks criticize a man who was making a living. [Sanford] wasn’t on relief. He didn’t ask the government for nothing and he wasn’t begging nobody for nothing.” Nonetheless, though he had won a Golden Globe Award in 1972 and four Emmy nominations for his portrayal of Fred Sanford, Foxx’s enthusiasm for the character, and the show, waned as the series became more popular and its star became a real celebrity. It wasn’t long before contract disputes, fights over creative control, and working conditions forced him to leave the show in 1977.
Foxx was quickly approached by ABC to appear in his own variety show. Unfortunately, The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour lasted only one season. Two years later he was back on NBC trying to recreate the role of Sanford in a revamping of the old show. Once again, however, the series, simply called Sanford, lasted only one season. Foxx remained unfazed by the setbacks; he returned to Las Vegas and his stand-up routine. It was at this time that the many years of lavish living began to take its toll on Foxx. He lost most of his business enterprises, as well as his luxury cars and three of his five homes. In 1983 he filed for bankruptcy protection, citing personal debts and tax problems. The Internal Revenue Service finally seized his possessions in 1989 to help alleviate the $2.5 million he owed in taxes, penalties, and interest.
Still, even when the chips were down, Foxx continued to entertain audiences in Las Vegas. In 1986 he made another attempt at a television series, The Redd Foxx Show, but once again met little success. The following year he filmed his first television movie, Ghost of a Chance, followed by an appearance opposite comedians Pryor and Murphy in the 1989 motion picture Harlem Nights. Though the movie was expected to elevate the careers of its stars, critics largely begged to differ.
Eleventh Hour TV Rebirth
Foxx was not discouraged by naysayers, however, and in 1991 he was back on television starring in another television series. “The ratings,” wrote TV Guide’s Michael Leahy, “for the first two episodes of The Royal Family had exceeded expectations.” This was good news for Redd Foxx. “Everybody says we gonna have a hit. I’d like this to be big, so I can end my career on a high note. If it’s my last hurrah, it’s gotta be a good one.”
Sadly, the good times did not last. On October 11, 1991, during a brief rehearsal for the show, Foxx was joking with the cast and crew when he suddenly fell to the floor of the stage. At first those assembled assumed he was feigning yet another Sanford-style heart attack. But reality sank in a little over three hours later when Foxx died of a heart attack at the Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. He was 68. In his last extensive interview Foxx told Leahy that, despite his life’s ups and downs, he was a happy man. “I’ve lived pretty high and good, and then it got rough, but in between, always, I been havin’ some bleepin’ laughs.”
Selected writings
(With Norma Miller) The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor, W. Ritchie Press, 1977.
Selected discography
Laff of the Party, Dooto, 1955.
Bare Facts, King.
In a Nutshell, King.
Laughin’ at the Blues, Savoy.
Matinee Idol, King.
Pass the Apple, Eve, King.
World War II, Gusto.
You Got to Live, Friends, Gusto.
Sources
Books
Abdul, Raoul, Famous Black Entertainers of Today, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1977.
Bogle, Donald, Blacks in American Films and Television, Garland, 1988.
Periodicals
Broadcasting, October 21, 1991.
Chicago Tribune, October 13, 1991.
Ebony, August 1987; June 1988; January 1990.
Jet, April 2, 1984; January 27, 1986; February 10, 1986; March 30, 1987; May 11, 1987; June 13, 1988; November 21, 1988; November 28, 1988; July 30, 1990; March 18, 1991; July 29, 1991.
Newsweek, November 19, 1984; October 21, 1991.
New York Times, October 13, 1991.
People, December 18, 1989; October 28, 1991.
Time, November 27, 1989; October 21, 1991.
TV Guide, October 26, 1991.
USA Today, November 4, 1991.
Washington Post, October 13, 1991.
—Joe Kuskowski
Foxx, Redd
Foxx, Redd
(b. 9 December 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri; d. 11 October 1991 in Los Angeles, California), nightclub and television entertainer notorious for his off-color comedy albums and the star of one of television’s most successful comedy series.
Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford, one of two sons of Fred Sanford, an electrician, and Mary Carson, a radio preacher and domestic worker. His father left home when he was four years old. His mother then moved to Chicago, where she worked as a domestic for the vice president of the Chicago White Sox baseball team. There, John Elroy acquired the nickname “Chicago Red” because of his ruddy hair color and skin tone. While attending DuSable High School in Chicago, he met Lamont Ousley and Steve Trimel, and together they formed a washtub band they called the Bon Bons. The three ran way from home together in 1939; they took a freight train to Weehawken, New Jersey, and from there they went to New York City, where they sang and performed on street corners. They appeared on Major Bowe’s Amateur Radio Show and won second prize, which was a week’s booking at a Newark, New Hersey, nightclub.
Foxx worked as a busboy, a cart pusher in the garment district, and a dishwasher in Harlem, New York, during the early 1940s, when he began using the last name “Foxx” after the baseball star Jimmie Foxx. Work was scarce, and Foxx was arrested and jailed for minor offenses, mostly for theft of food and for loitering. (During this time, “Chicago Red” met a man in a pool hall named Malcolm Little, whose nickname was “Detroit Red.” Later, Chicago Red’s friend Detroit Red took the name Malcolm X.) Although Foxx was rejected by the U.S. Army for service in World War II, the Bon Bons broke up during the war. After the war Foxx worked in a tramp band act at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. In the mid-1940s he married Eleanor Killebrew; the marriage ended in divorce in 1951.
One of his first jobs in the 1940s was performing mime and singing at a club called Mimo’s on Seventh Avenue in Harlem. This led to a job as the master of ceremonies at a nightclub called Gamby’s in Baltimore. Foxx stayed at Gamby’s for two years, developing his stand-up comedy act. He returned to New York in 1945 and worked at clubs for $5 per night. He teamed with Slappy White in 1947, and their act met with enough success that Foxx was soon earning $450 per week. In 1952 the duo was invited to California to perform with Dinah Washington. The job lasted only a month, but Foxx stayed on the West Coast. He was performing in Los Angeles and supplementing his income by working as a sign painter in 1955 when Dootsie Williams, the owner of Dooto Records, persuaded him to record a comedy album. Laff of the Party became the first of some fifty raunchy recordings that gained Foxx notoriety and widespread popularity, although they had to be albums sold under the counter at many outlets. The year Laff of the Party was released, Foxx married Betty Jeanne Harris; they had a daughter and later divorced (in 1974). Foxx quit the Dooto label over a contract dispute but was forbidden by his contract to record with anyone else. Frank Sinatra, the owner of Reprise Records, bought out Foxx’s contract and signed him. All told, the albums Foxx recorded sold between 10 and 20 million copies, but he felt that he never received proper payment.
Foxx became known to a national television audience in 1964, after NBC television host Hugh Downs saw him perform in San Francisco, where he was reportedly earning $1,250 per week. Although NBC executives were concerned about Foxx’s “blue” humor, he was invited to appear on the Today Show, and in short order he was in demand as a guest on the Tonight Show and other talk and variety programs including those hosted by Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and Steve Allen. Clubs throughout the United States clamored to offer Foxx bookings; when he performed in Las Vegas, Nevada, he was earning $4,000 per week.
In 1968 he was signed to open for Aretha Franklin at Caesars Palace. When she failed to appear on opening night, he entertained for an hour and forty minutes. Booking agents from the Hilton were so impressed with Foxx that they signed him to a contract worth $960,000. With this security he moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Foxx broke into movies in 1970, portraying a junk dealer in Cotton Comes to Harlem. The television producer Norman Lear admired his performance and tagged Foxx for the title role of an American adaptation of a British television comedy called Steptoe and Son. Foxx gave the new situation comedy its title, Sanford and Son, naming the lead character—Fred G. Sanford, a junk dealer living in the Watts section of Los Angeles—after his brother. The show, which premiered on NBC on 14 January 1972, centered on the comic disputes and foibles of Fred and his son, Lamont. The show’s comedie hook occurred when Fred was losing an argument or felt that his son’s ambition would cause him to leave the junk business: he would feign a heart attack and cry out to his dead wife, “I’m coming Elizabeth, I’m coming.” Lamont and another character, Reverend Trimel, were named after Foxx’s childhood friends in the washtub band who ran away from home with him. Additionally, Slappy White and LaWanda Page, who had worked with Foxx in decades past, were cast as regular characters on the show, which ran from 1972 to 1977 and was a top-ten hit. After the second season Foxx moved back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas. In the mid-1970s he married Yun Chi Chong; they divorced in the late 1980s.
Foxx was nominated for six Emmy Awards during the run of Sanford and Son. The show made an important contribution toward the representation of African Americans on television, with Foxx playing a lead character who was a small businessman, not a butler or a maid. However, Foxx’s salary demands threatened the show; at one point he asked for $25,000 per week plus $1, to equal and best the salary of Carroll O’Connor for his portrayal of Archie Bunker in CBS’s leading comedy, All in the Family. After Sanford and Son ended, Foxx worked in a few short-lived television shows, including one that reprised the Fred Sanford character, and he continued to work at Las Vegas nightclubs.
In 1983, Foxx’s extravagant lifestyle—which included a fleet of cars and several houses—caught up with him, and he filed for bankruptcy. In 1989 the Internal Revenue Service claimed that he owed $2.9 million in back taxes and seized his personal possessions. But 1989 also afforded Foxx the opportunity for a television comeback; that year, Eddie Murphy cast Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Della Reese in the movie Harlem Nights, and although the film was not a commercial success, Foxx and Reese stole the movie. Their onscreen chemistry inspired the creation of a television series titled The Royal Family, which began taping in 1991. In July 1991 Foxx married his fourth wife, Kahoe Cho. On 11 October 1991, shortly after the season premiere of The Royal Family, Foxx suffered a fatal heart attack during a rehearsal at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. He is buried at Palm Memorial Gardens in Las Vegas.
Redd Foxx will be remembered for Sanford and Son, but his career lasted over fifty years. He was instrumental in the creation of the comedy album and was an inspiration to many comedians.
Foxx provides autobiographical information in his Redd Foxx, B.S. (Before Sanford), edited by Joe X. Price (1979), and The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Blacky Humor (1977). Dempsey J. Travis chronicles his life and career in The Life and Times of Redd Foxx (1999). Current Biography Yearbook (1972) contains an entry on Foxx. The genre of “black comedy,” and Foxx’s contributions to it, are reviewed in Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying— the Underground Tradition of African-American Humor That Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor (1994). Obituaries are in the Los Angeles Times (12 Oct. 1991), and Washington Post and New York Times (both 13 Oct. 1991).
Anthony Todman
Foxx, Redd
Foxx, Redd
December 9, 1922
October 11, 1991
Comedian Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, the second son of Fred Sanford, an electrician, and Mary Alma Hughes Sanford, a minister. Foxx's father deserted the family when Foxx was four, and Foxx was raised first by his grandmother, and then in Chicago by his mother, who at that time was employed as a domestic.
Foxx quit high school after one year to play in a wash-tub band with two friends, Lamont Ousley and Steve Trimel. In 1939 they ran away to New York City, called themselves the Bon-Bons, and earned money performing on street corners and in subways. World War II broke up the band, and Foxx, rejected by the military, began to play in a tramp band act at the Apollo Theater with Jimmie Lunceford.
About this time, Foxx adopted his professional name. Called "Red" because of his red hair and light complexion, he added an extra d to "Red" and took the name "Foxx" with the term "foxy" (and the baseball player Jimmy Foxx) in mind. He began landing nightclub jobs, where he developed his stand-up routine. After four years of teaming with comedian Slappy White (1947–1951), Foxx worked on the West Coast. In 1956 he recorded the first of what would become more than fifty "party records"—comedy albums specializing in raunchy humor.
Although Foxx had never done any straight acting, he accepted the small role of Uncle Bud in the 1969 film Cotton Comes to Harlem. Executives at NBC developed the character into the situation comedy Sanford and Son and cast Foxx in the title role of a cantankerous junk dealer who spent more time malingering and badgering his son than working. The program, which premiered in 1972 and ran through 1977, brought Foxx considerable acclaim and popularity. He attempted to recreate his role as Fred Sanford in a series that ran in 1980, but was unable to revive the original program's appeal.
While Sanford and Son made Foxx wealthy, in 1983 he filed for bankruptcy protection, citing mounting debts. In 1985 the Internal Revenue Service claimed Foxx owed almost $3 million in taxes, interest, and penalties, and seized many of his possessions, including his home in Las Vegas.
Foxx was working on the set of a new NBC series, The Royal Family, when he suffered a heart attack and died in 1991.
See also Apollo Theater; Comedians; Television
Bibliography
Bogle, Donald. Blacks in American Films and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Mapp, Edward. Directory of Blacks in the Performing Arts. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1990.
Travis, Dempsey J. The Life and Times of Redd Foxx. Chicago: Urban Research Press, 1999.
susan mcintosh (1996)
michael paller (1996)
Updated bibliography