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TV Guide : Feb 14-20, 1976 : Article by Michael O'Daniel
When Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford, shining shoes in
Chicago; or Chicago Red, washing dishes in Harlem and sleeping on rooftops, he dreamed of
some day making it big in show business. He used to go to the movies, taking a bag
of oatmeal because he was too poor to buy popcorn, and fantasize that one day he would be
larger than life on the screen.
Today Foxx has achieved a popularity matched by few performers in
movies or television. His Sanford and Son series has been No. 1 on NBC since its
debut in January 1972. When Sanford leads off prime time on Friday night, its like
leading off the battling order with Babe Ruth. Sanford and Son not only guarantees
NBC a convincing ratings victory on Friday night, but it pulls up the ratings average for
the rest of the week.
As the show moved up the secluded hilltop in Beverly Hills. In
his driveway are a silver Mercedes 450 SL, a Rolls Royce Corniche, and a Panther modeled
after the original Jaguar SS 100. He has so many clothes that he had to covert one
bedroom into a walk-in closet. He always has a sizable roll of bills in his pocket.
And yet, with six episodes still to be taped, Redd Foxx walked off
Sanford and Son in 1974. At the time he was making $10,000 an episode and had 7
percent of the show. The industry was stunned. What the hell did he
want? Didn't a contract mean anything t him? Was that any way to show
gratitude for the biggest break he would ever get in his life? And wasn't he taking
a big chance? People had walked off shows before and were never heard of again.
Redd Foxx is a gambler, but this time he was playing with a stacked
deck. He was confident that Sanford and Son without Fred Sanford wouldn't make
it. Fan mail poured into his office that told him he was right and encouraged him to
hold out for what he wanted.
Word leaked out of Tandem Productions, producer of Sanford and Son,
that Foxx had gone off his rocker. He was asking for "whatever Carroll O'Conner
[of All of the Family] gets, plus a dollar." He wanted more to say about the
writing and the casting of his show; he felt the approach taken by producers Bud Yorkin
and Aaron Ruben was too regimented. The rehearsal halls at NBC weren't to his
liking. He wanted a private dressing room. Might as well put a window in that,
too.
Foxx was testing, a time honored technique perfected by streetwise
blacks in dealing with the white man. If whitey gives you what you ask for, don't
say thank you and go home; throw him a curve and ask for something else. If he
doesn't want to give you what you ask for, ask for something really outrageous. You
know what you'll settle for, but he doesn't.
Television has had black stars before Foxx, but either they weren't in
a position to rock the boat or did not feel inclined to. For Foxx, success came
late. He didn't have time to wait.
And people missed the point. Foxx was after something more
important to him than big dough. He wanted respect. Asking for a window was
his way of saying, "I'm turning out a Number 1 show that makes money for the producer
and the network. If a window in the rehearsal hall will make it easier for me to do
the show, why should I even have to ask for it? Why doesn't somebody ask me what
they can do to make things more mellow.
When Foxx returned to work, he probably had the best contract of any
half-hour series star who doesn't produce his own show; $25,000 an episode for 24 episodes
a year, up to $5,000 for reruns, and 25 per cent of the producers net profits.
Yorkin and Ruben were gone from the set; Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein were the new
writer-producers. He also had his dressing room and his rehearsal hall, both with
windows, and a golf cart to speed down the endless corridors of NBC.
Last Year NBC made a profit of $66 million. Sanford and Son was
one of the major contributors. What every star wants is for his network to put him
in the production business with money to develop properties and commission scripts and
guarantees of pilots or even series that he will own. Despite the current screams of
independent producers about deficit financing (meaning that a show costs more to produce
than a network will pay for it), the real money and power are in producing, not
performing.
The days when a network would put a Lucille Ball or a Raymond Burr in
business, or hand a Jackie Gleason or a Milton Berle a huge chunk of cash for a long-term
personal-services contract, seem to have passed. Foxx feel that, its time they came
back.
In February 1975 he went to the network to ask for a piece of the pie
and was offered a crumb. On that same day newspapers announced that Bob Hope had
signed a three-year, $18-million deal with Texaco and NBC. Allowing for press
agentry and the fact a sponsor was guaranteeing the tab, that news was still hard to
explain to the man whose series is No. 1 on NBC.
I speak with some authority, because I was there. For 10 months I
was Redd Foxx's personal manager. When he fired me, I became his third ex-manager in
the space of 14 months. I know that, despite his success and his new contract, he
still isn't happy.
I think Redd Foxx is a genius. I don't think he knows how good he
really is. He is far from reaching his peak artistically or financially. If
he so chooses, Sanford and Son could be just the beginning. He could make an
excellent deal with another network when his contract expires at the end of the 1976-77
season. He could go on to a career in movies. He could also become a creative
force behind the camera, writing and producing films and TV shows for himself and others.
He could become the first black man in television to build an empire. It is
sad to see a man of his talents apparently bent on self-destruction, talking of being
tired of the business and wanting to retire.
Redd Foxx has been in show business for 41 years but he is still only
53 years old. He was born Dec. 9, 1922, in St. Louis. He has been a musician,
a singer, an emcee, and a nightclub comedian. He has developed a mastery of timing,
pacing, ad libbing and working to an audience. He has had no formal training; his
Actors Studio was a street corner where he "played the dozens" with other black
performers. (This is a particularly brutal form of insult one-upmanship, a combination of
put-on and put-down.) Instead of Carnegie Hall, he played the Apollo Theater and
other black vaudeville houses. Instead of the Copa, he scuffed in bust-out joints
along the Chitlin Circuit. And he learned to do by instinct what a trained actor
spends years learning to plot out in advance. In everything Foxx does, there is a
sense of power and energy beneath the surface. Fred Sanford may be an old fool, but
he is not senile. He is a man.
Foxx probably contributes more to his show creatively than any other
comedy star on TV in terms of characterization, dialogue and bringing a script to
life. He prefers to work on his own, but he's usually ready on Friday, when the
cameras roll. "I'll have it by Friday" is the company slogan. During
the 1974-75 season, he missed almost as many rehearsals as he made. On more than one
occasion he didn't come in at all until Friday.
Much of his absence was due to illness. Until acupuncture cleared
up the problem, a pinched nerve in his neck caused him severe pain, and at least twice he
got out of a sickbed and did a show on guts alone. But he also missed quite a few
days when he simply didn't feel like getting up because of the previous evening had
extended well into the morning. After four years, he still had not adjusted from a
Las Vegas schedule of two 45-minute sets a night to the routine of a weekly TV show.
His self-prescribed remedies for physical and emotional problems made matters worse.
Something everyone seems to have overlooked, though, is that the
1974-75 season, his first under the new contract, was Foxx's best season yet in the top
three and was No. 1 several times.
It was also a year in which, instead of building a solid foundation of
financial security, Redd Foxx faced (or refused to face) the possibility of severe
financial problems.
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