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TV Guide : Oct 5-11, 1974 : Article by J.R. Young
Include Him Out : Demond Wilson steers clear of any bickering on - or off - the 'Sanford
and Son set
The Tuesday night taping for the second Sanford and Son show of the new fall season was in the can -- sans Redd Foxx -- and the third show was in production. Redd was still AWOL and still threatening to "go back to Chicago and become a clothing salesman," and lawsuits were being issued with the regularity of the press releases explaining away the lawsuits. His long dispute with his producers was finally settled a few weeks later, but at this point the future of Sanford and Son was, at best, in limbo, and the word coming out of the inner circles at NBC was always: Were waiting to see what happens," followed by a quick smile of consternation. Meanwhile . . . The windowless dressing room at the end of the long green hallway was almost dark, and had all the livability of a high-rent discount house showcase den. Model 1216, plastic masculine: a low modern sofa and matching side chair; polished glass-and-chrome coffee and end tables; beige decorator lamps; bright decorater paintings (handsomely framed for modern tastes) hanging on shiny and newly nailed walnut paneling. The only things missing were price tags, velvet ropes and vinyl carpet runners.
Demond Wilson sat alone on the sofa like yet another still-life fixture in the computer tested room, as if portraying the very picture of today's young affluent black man. But he wasn't. He was just dog-tired and almost dozing, his hands folded over his stomach, and his dark eyes red after a long day of rehearsal. He wanted to go home, but business is business -- he was gracious about the delay.
But then Demond Wilson is a gracious fellow. In a professional way. It isn't any accident taht, in the recent turmoil surrounding Redd's abrupt departure from the Sanford and Son production floor, Demond was deemed "the good guy" by both sides of the squabbling factions. Whether the give-and-take was about money, working conditions, dressing rooms or whatever, Demond could be counted upon to remain coolly mute. To some it means he's a great guy who loves his work. To others, merely that he keeps his nose clean. Demond, gracious fellow that he is, accepts all such explanations neither humbly nor cheerfully, but with a thoughtful matter-of-factness. He sees the problems that put Redd up against the wall as strictly personal, and, in Demond's view, it isn't his role as a professional to take sides in such matters.
"I take some pride in being seen as the good guy," Demond says, in a soft level tone as he tries to shake off early-evening fatigue. "I try not to get upset. If I have a problem, a qualm, I wait for the right time to bring it up. Like when the season is over. I don't take any action in terms of rebelling until the right moment. Like when its time to renegotiate."
If that perhaps sounds terse and unsympathetic to Redd's plight, it would be a complete surprise to Demond. But then, he sees facts, and explains things in terms of facts. Redd may be the farther figure on the show (fact), they may both be black (fact), they may be dear friends (fact), but beyond that, there is still the overriding fact that Sanford and Son and acting are first and foremost business, and should be treated as such.
"Redd and I," Demond continues, "never went together in conspiracy on anything other than something that had to do directly with the show, such as script changes or choosing other actors. In terms of personal things, however, Redd manages his life and I manage mine. What he did was his personal business. I stayed out of it. But then, I should say, I didn't have the same problems as Redd. I havn't had the same type of life as Redd. He's basically a Las Vegas night-cl;ib entertainer. I'm strictly an actor. His grievances didn't relate to me at all."
Whereas Redd Foxx grew up street-tough and hustling, slept on New York rooftops, shot pool with skinny dude who later changed his name to Malcom X, washed dishes to earn quarters, paid show-biz dues by playing black night clubs for years, sold 10 million plus "dirty" records albums from under the counter, and eventually parlayed his quick wit and catalogue-like brain trust of "blue" humor into a $30,000 a week Las Vegas gig, Demond Wilson grew up thoroughly ensconced in the New York theater scene, and never knew hard times per se. His dues were learning the craft of the theater and the art of acting, and he began at a very early age.
Born in Valdosta, GAa., in 1946, Demond moved north with his family to New York, and into the heart of Harlem, when he was barely a month old. He remembers the crowded neighborhood back then not as a ghetto, but more as "an interesting place to live and laern and where you didn't have to lock your doors when you went out." There was no theatrical history in the family, although his mother had always wanted to be a dancer. She took her dream out on little Demond by enrolling him in a local "culture" school before he was even of school age. By the time he was a seasoned hoofer and actor of 4, he had been scouted by one exclusively black children's talent agency in Harlem, and placed in the Broadway revival of "Green Pastures."
"I think the agent saw me as a frog at a school recital," Demond muses, "and liked my stuff. It was probably the outfit. If my mother were here, she'd drag it out right now and see if I could still get into it."
Demond claims he led a normal childhood, if a semiregular scheduale of off-Broadway shows and numerous appearances in commercials and a regular spot on a children's television show are normal. He does admit, however, that the children he worked with and went to "culture" school with were "kind of advanced." He later attended the School of the Performing Arts, and acknowledges the difference between the public schools and his situation.
Strangely enough, however, Demond didn't want to be in show business during high school, but rather fancied himself as "basketball Jones", like so many other young East Coast blacks. He was shattered when he found out he wasn't tall enough to play big-time ball. As an alternative with some helpful prodding by his mother, he continued halfheartedly with the theater scene. At 14, he played Touchstone in Shakespeare's "As You Like It," and alter toured New York's underprivileged areas with the integrated Theatre in the Streets. In 1965 he was cast for a major production of "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground" but was drafted into the Army before the show opened. Four months later he was dodging bullets and mortar shells with the 4th Infantry Division on the front lines of Vietnam. He was there for 13 months.
"That's when I initially made up my mind that I really wanted to get into show business. It gave me something to look forward to; and when my mom would send me clippings of what my friends in the theater were doing, that convinced me."
When Demond returned to New York and civilian life, the long absence had left him Demond Who? to the agents he contacted, and he had to rely on the trade papers for information about open auditions. His break finally came with the road-show prodction of "The Boys in the Band," the first major play dealing explicitly with the theme of homosexuality.
"I didn't know anything about the play, and when I arrived for the audition, I was surrounded by 300 guys who all had to be in it. I thought at first I was in the wrong place, but no. There was one black role, but only two blacks auditioning. Me and Richard Roundtree [who later became Shaft], and we became friends right there in a real hurry. For our own protection." Demond laughs. "One of the lines when I read the part was "Well, there was Peter. I think I loved him all my life, but I don't think he knew I existed!' When I read that, I thought, 'He? I think I loved him?' I paused a whole lot before I figured it out."
But he got the offer for the role, and when the producer named a salary figure, Demond said he had to ask his agent. He walked to the nearest phone booth, dialed time, stood there nodding his head, hung up, walked out, and announced, "He said to take it."
After two years on the road with the play, Demond returned to New York and was soon cast in a series of good off-Broadway shows. It was a hot run for him, and led to roles in two films. "Dealing" and "The Organization," both films as a villian. By then he was spending as much time in Hollywood as in New York as offers to do more films and TV poured in. Enough so that he moved to Los Angeles permanently, and landed yet more villainous roles in Mannix, a Movie of the Week and Mission: Impossible.
It was during the filming of Mission: Impossible that his agent called him on the set one afternoon, and told him to get over to CBS immediately to audition for a role in All in the Family. Demont, not exactly a TV buff ("I turn it on to sleep by"), had never heard of the show, but at his agents insistence, he had a stuntman drive him over. It was that day that he first met Normal Lear and John Rich of Tandem Productions. They signed him to play a buglar who invades the Archie Bunker household and, a few months later, when they were putting Sanford and Son together, Demond was their first choice as Son.
"From the beginning it was Redd's show," Demond acknowledges. "I didn't come into it with a name, but the show centered on two people. And it still did when Whitman Mayo was filling in for Redd. But then the responsibility shifted about more. There was a strange edge at first when Redd left. In fact, to be perfectly honest, everybody panicked. People screamed. Tempers flared. But it ironed itself out when everyone found we could handle it." This season especially, although Demond admits the shows arn't as good as he would like them to be. "I havn't been too happy with the scripts, but it's getting better. It was hard with producers who haven't done black shows before. If I were producing, and I tell Bud Yorkin all the time that I'd like to, I'd make the ideology a little stronger. I'd try and portray the situation with more emphasis on what it's like out there for blacks."
Saul Turtetaub, one of two new producers of the show, credits Demond with much of the smoothing-out process, and reflects a keen sense of gratitude, both personally and professionally, when speaking of his star.
"Demond is very intelligent, and we look to him for help as a person and as an actor. He has very definite ideas, and a concern about the show beyond the fact of its being just a hit. He has been the leader, the one the other actors look up to, and the one offering the most encouragement. He's been very helpful to us as new producers. He made us welcome, and consequently everyone else did, too. All I can say is I'm very grateful."
Whitman Mayo seconds the notion. When prompted by the question, gee, has Demond ever lost his cool? Whitman only laughed.
"Sure, he's been known to get angry, but it passes just like that," and he snapped his fingers. "But the position he was in for a man of his age was one hell of a burden. And he proved to be one hell of a cat. And if he's under that much control now, he's going to be super-dynamite in five years."
Meanwhile, Wilson's eyes are growing heavier as he looks at his watch and yearns to get home to his new house in mani-exclusive Trousdale Estates above Beverly Hills, and to his beautiful wife Cicely, a former stewardess and now part-time model. They are expeting their first child in November. They are also in the process of redecorating the house and if Demond could just remember his new address he's call the carpet people and tell them where to make the delivery.
But thats all personal, and Demond is more reticent when the discussion turns to matters outside the studio walls. He doesn't attend the "right parties," or frequent to the "right spots." He prefers the privacy and simple life of his home and few close friends (he and Cicely were married quite unceremoniously at City Hall, with Cliff Arquette standing up as the best man), and he relishes his long bike rides each morning through the winding streets while his neighbors are just beginning breakfast. Beyond that, it's all work, and the future. He already is looking beyond Sanford and Son, and sees himself back in the movies. Good movies. Not black exploitation films.
"I think those black films are a fad. They're good in that they make it possible for blacks to work. They're bad in that as soon as the fad is over, it will be worse for blacks in films thatn before. And they're bad in that they glamorize crime. To black and Chicano kids who are stuck without any real future, glamorized crime is their out. That's bad."
For himself, however, he isn't worried about the film situation, because he knows where he's going, and quite obviously has already seen tangible results that tell him he's on the right track.
"I'm obsessed with success in a nice way," he says. "I set goals for myself a long time ago. Sometimes I think I'm moving slower than I should, but impatience is a luxury for the young. I tend to be impatient, but I'm learning. I find things often happen even faster when you're patient, because getting upset isn't oing to make anything happen faster. And after all, the final goal is just to be successful."
With that as the final word, he graciously excused himself, put on his sunglasses, and drove home.
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