Rolle, Esther (1920-1998)
Rolle, Esther (1920-1998)
Emmy award-winning Esther Rolle is best remembered as Florida Evans, the strong matriarch of the hit CBS television series Good Times (1974-1979). Good Times was a spinoff of Norman Lear's Maude, in which Rolle played Florida from 1972-1974. Florida was a feisty sarcastic black maid employed by Bea Arthur's loud, white, middle-aged liberal Maude Findlay. On Good Times, Florida was the female head of a lower class family of five in the Chicago projects. At Rolle's insistence, hoping to present positive role models to black Americans, the family was not fatherless. Rolle left the series in 1977 reportedly feeling the storylines involving Jimmie Walker, who played her oldest son, were reinforcing negative stereotypes. Promised changes, she returned in 1978, but ratings had slipped and the show was canceled. Rolle won three NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image awards throughout her career. She also appeared in numerous feature films. Ironically, she frequently played a maid.
—Joyce Linehan