49 Fun Facts About Sanford and Son

Which cheap wine is Fred Sanford's drink of choice, the base for cocktails of his own invention?

Ripple. Fred stretches it into home-made blends with names to match, such as 'Champipple' and, with Beaujolais, 'Beaujolipple'.

Sanford and Son was adapted from which British sitcom?

Steptoe and Son. The BBC original was about a white Cockney father and son in London; the American producers kept the squabbling and recast them as a black family.

Which friend of Lamont's does Fred Sanford keep calling a convict?

Rollo. Fred is deeply suspicious of Lamont's friend, yet when the show was revived as Sanford in 1980, Rollo came back with him.

What business do Fred and Lamont Sanford run?

A junkyard. Lamont left high school to work it with his father, and stays on more out of love for Fred than for the trade.

In which community of the Los Angeles area is the Sanford family business set?

Watts. Fred came there from the Midwest, and after his wife died he was left to raise their son Lamont alone.

Which city did Fred Sanford move to Los Angeles from?

St. Louis. It was Redd Foxx's own birthplace, though he grew up in Chicago, and the city gave him a star on its Walk of Fame the year after he died.

What was the name of Fred Sanford's late wife, whom he calls to during his fake heart attacks?

Elizabeth. Clutching his chest, Fred would announce 'the big one' and call up to her that he was coming to join her.

What insult did Fred Sanford routinely fling at his son Lamont?

You big dummy. Fred thought his son gullible, though it was Lamont who had to keep watch over his father's endless get-rich-quick schemes.

Who played Fred's Bible-toting nemesis Aunt Esther?

LaWanda Page. A childhood friend of Redd Foxx, she began as a dancer billed as 'the Bronze Goddess of Fire' and was in her fifties when he brought her onto the show.

Which insult does Aunt Esther regularly hurl at Fred Sanford, usually while swinging her purse at him?

Fish-eyed fool. Esther never approved of Fred, and she backs the insults up with the heavy purse in which she carries her Bible.

Who played Fred Sanford's friend Grady Wilson?

Whitman Mayo. When Redd Foxx walked out in 1974, the writers moved Grady into the Sanford house to mind it until the star came back.

Which exclamation is a catchphrase of Fred Sanford's absent-minded friend Grady?

Great googly moogly! Grady blurts it out when something startles him, and he is so forgetful that he keeps losing the name of Lamont, his own godson.

Fred Sanford's new neighbour Julio moves in next door with which unusual pet?

A goat. Fred, who resents his new neighbour from the first day, tries to use the animal to get Julio's property condemned by the city.

Which actor had a recurring role on Sanford and Son as Ah Chew?

Pat Morita. A stand-up comic for years, he went from Ah Chew to running the malt shop on Happy Days, a decade before Mr. Miyagi made him a film star.

Who composed 'The Streetbeater', the theme of Sanford and Son?

Quincy Jones. He told a producer they could never put Redd Foxx, whom he had known for years, on national television, then wrote the theme in about twenty minutes.

The Sanford and Son theme's main melody is played on which instrument?

Harmonica. The player is Tommy Morgan, who sat in on so many film scores, TV themes and records that he may be the most-heard harmonica player of all.

Which rapper sampled the Sanford and Son theme on her debut album?

M.I.A. The tune turns up on 'U.R.A.Q.T.', which was left off the first American release of her album Arular because the sample had not been cleared in time.

Which red 1951 pickup truck do the Sanfords drive?

A Ford F1. The truck outlived the show: the same pickup was back on screen when Fred returned in the 1980 revival, Sanford.

Redd Foxx walked off Sanford and Son during the 1973-74 season over what?

A salary dispute. Foxx blamed his health, but the row was about money, and the writers had to explain Fred away for the rest of the season.

How did the writers explain Fred Sanford's absence during Redd Foxx's 1974 walkout?

A cousin's funeral. The scripts kept Fred out of town for the rest of the season and left his friend Grady in charge of the house.

Which blues legend comes to dinner at the Sanford house in one of the show's last episodes?

B.B. King. Lamont takes Fred to his concert, and Fred, who fancies himself a songwriter, tries to sell the star some of his own songs.

Redd Foxx left Sanford and Son in 1977 to do what on a rival network?

Host a variety show. ABC's Redd Foxx Comedy Hour lasted less than a year, and by 1980 he was back at NBC trying to revive Fred Sanford.

Sanford and Son twice finished second in the Nielsen ratings behind which sitcom?

All in the Family. The same producers made both, each adapted from a British comedy, so in 1972-73 and 1974-75 they held first and second place at once.

Which ABC family sitcom aired directly opposite Sanford and Son on Friday nights until its cancellation in 1974?

The Brady Bunch. Both went out at eight o'clock on Fridays, and while the NBC comedy sat in the Nielsen top three, ABC dropped the Bradys after five seasons.

Which sitcom followed Sanford and Son at 8:30 on NBC's Friday line-up in the 1974-75 season?

Chico and the Man. Freddie Prinze's comedy about a young mechanic and a cranky garage owner rode the lead-in to third place in that season's ratings.

Which production company made Sanford and Son?

Tandem Productions. Its two founders spent the 1960s making feature films together before they turned to remaking British sitcoms for American television.

Which heavyweight boxer plays himself when Lamont Sanford lands a part in a community play?

George Foreman. Fred is so keen to meet him that he barges into rehearsals, drives the director to quit and takes over the play himself.

Jewel thieves try to use Fred Sanford as their unwitting smuggler in a three-part story set in which state?

Hawaii. Fred is there for a convention when the gang plants stolen diamonds in his suitcase, then chases father and son across the islands to get them back.

Which short-lived 1977 spin-off carried on with the supporting cast after Redd Foxx left Sanford and Son?

Sanford Arms. Viewers were told Fred and Lamont had moved to Arizona, and without its two stars the show was cancelled after four episodes.

Which singer does Fred Sanford trick into visiting his home with a sob story about his little lame son?

Lena Horne. On a studio tour Fred slips into her dressing room and tells her that poor Lamont, a grown man, looks on her as a second mother.

What is the profession of Donna Harris, Fred Sanford's long-time girlfriend?

A nurse. Lamont, afraid she would take his late mother's place, fought the match at first and nicknamed her 'the Barracuda'.

In the 1980 revival Sanford, where was Fred's son Lamont said to have gone?

Alaska. Lamont was written out as working on the oil pipeline there, and Fred's new partner was a jovial Texan who had worked alongside him.

Which Sanford and Son star was missing from the 1980 revival, Sanford?

Demond Wilson. He said he had been thinking of the ministry since the show's third year, and in 1984 he was ordained and took to the road as an evangelist.

What was Redd Foxx's birth name?

John Elroy Sanford. He gave his sitcom character the family surname, and the name Fred as a tribute to his late older brother.

Redd Foxx washed dishes in a Harlem restaurant in the 1940s alongside which future black leader?

Malcolm X. Both were redheads, so they went by 'Chicago Red' and 'Detroit Red', and Malcolm's autobiography recalls Foxx as 'the funniest dishwasher on this earth'.

Which award did Redd Foxx win for playing Fred Sanford?

A Golden Globe. It came in 1973 for a comic who said nobody had expected to see him on television, because his party records had made him known as X-rated.

When a major earthquake is predicted for Los Angeles, Fred Sanford puts the house up for sale and flees to which city?

Las Vegas. A small tremor has already shaken the house, and when Grady passes on a forecast of a bigger one, Fred decides to sell up and get out of town.

In which 1989 Eddie Murphy film did Redd Foxx appear?

Harlem Nights. Murphy wrote, directed and starred, and the part he gave Foxx turned out to be the older comic's last on film, two years before he died.

Fred Sanford throws himself into a political campaign only because which singer is working for the candidate?

Della Reese. Fred wants nothing to do with the election until he learns she is campaigning for the other side, and he changes camps at once to be near her.

The British original of Sanford and Son was set on which fictional street?

Oil Drum Lane. The address outlived the series: in 2005 one of its writers set a stage play there, in which the son has finally killed his father.

Wilfrid Brambell, the father in the British original of Sanford and Son, plays Paul's grandfather in which Beatles film?

A Hard Day's Night. British viewers knew Brambell as television's 'dirty old man', so the film's running joke is that everyone remarks how very clean he is.

Redd Foxx's small role in which 1970 film led producers to cast him in Sanford and Son?

Cotton Comes to Harlem. Norman Lear and his partner saw Foxx's performance in it, and two years later they built their new sitcom around him.

Which Beverly Hillbillies actress appeared in Sanford and Son as May Hopkins?

Nancy Kulp. Best known as Miss Jane Hathaway, she turned up in the 1975-76 season as a newcomer who moves in next door as one of the Sanfords' tenants.

Howard Platt played which good-natured white policeman, a regular visitor to the Sanford house?

Hoppy. Officer Hopkins explains everything in stiff police jargon, and his partner Smitty has to translate it into street talk for Fred and Lamont.

After Sanford and Son ended, the actor who played Lamont starred in a 1982 remake of which classic sitcom?

The Odd Couple. He played the slob Oscar Madison opposite Ron Glass's fussy Felix Unger, but the remake was gone after 18 episodes.

Who played Fred Sanford's pal Bubba?

Don Bexley. He was past sixty when his friend Redd Foxx talked the producers into hiring him, and he was an honorary pallbearer at Foxx's funeral.

Which partner of Norman Lear proposed remaking a British sitcom with Redd Foxx?

Bud Yorkin. 'It was Bud who said, let's do this black and with Redd Foxx,' Lear recalled, and Yorkin went on to run the show as its executive producer.

Which stand-up comedian co-wrote two Sanford and Son episodes in 1972, before his own film stardom?

Richard Pryor. He wrote 'The Dowry' and one other with Paul Mooney; Foxx had earlier hired the struggling young comic to perform at his Los Angeles nightclub.

How is Aunt Esther related to Fred Sanford?

His sister-in-law. She is the older sister of Fred's late wife, and her family had been against the marriage from the very beginning.