His Own Way: John Amos (1940-2024)

John Amos was a pioneer in more ways than one. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a barrel chest, a winning smile, and an arsenal of “You’ve got to be kidding me” looks, he stood out in TV ensembles spanning four decades, from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Good Times,” and “Roots” in the 1970s to “Two and a Half Men,” “The West Wing” to the more recent “The Ranch” and “Suits” (as himself!). Amos chose his roles with care and was an advocate for worthwhile roles for Black actors, not just in terms of positive role models but inventive and lively writing (he wasn’t averse to playing villains, and played an especially intimidating one in “Die Hard 2”). He wasn’t averse to calling out what he saw as negative trends and detrimental policies in the entertainment business. It cost him work, but he stuck to his principles. He made his own way.

When Amos started out in TV in the 1960s, there were very few Black actors in recurring roles on major series. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he got into television as a writer after an early career as an athlete. He was a football player at Colorado State University, where he got a degree in sociology and also boxed, then played for three pre-NFL leagues before signing an off-season contract to train with the Kansas City Chiefs, basically a tryout. Coach Hank Stram cut him from the team, but was so impressed by a poem called “The Turk” that Amos had written that he told him, “Son, you are not a football player. You are a young man who happens to be playing football. But I have a feeling that you might have another calling.”

That other calling at first seemed to be writing. Amos got a job in the writers’ room of “The Leslie Uggams Show” (1969-70), which was notable not just for being the first variety series starring a Black woman but the first variety show where the ensemble and most of the guests were also Black. Two of Amos’ writing colleagues were Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis, who were then involved in developing The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and they said they always enjoyed watching him act out sketches for guest performers and wondered if he’d be interested in trying out for a role on the new show. Amos ended up being cast as Gordy, the TV station’s weatherman, at a time when Black men employed at local American TV stations tended to be restricted to sports. “That was indicative of [creator] Jim Brooks’s and [co-producer] Allan Burns’s sensitivity,” Amos told Vulture in 2014. “They did not pander to the lowest common denominator in terms of stereotypes or cheap humor. In fact, they were so skilled as writers, they had Cloris Leachman — her character Phyllis — assume I was a sportscaster, because I was a fairly large guy and I was Black. And those were the only faces you saw in any prominence on the TV screen in those days. So they played against that.”

In 1974, Amos got the role he’d forever be identified with: James Evans, Sr., the patriarch of the family on “Good Times,” a rare sitcom about a working-class Black family struggling to survive in a rough economy. “Good Times” was a project from Norman Lear, probably the most powerful and influential sitcom creator of the 1970s. It was a spinoff of a spinoff: costar Esther Rolle’s character Florida Evans, James Evans’ wife, had been the maid of the title character on “Maude,” which was itself spun off from “All in the Family.” “Good Times” very quickly established its own identity. It was warm but rough-edged, dramatizing urban social problems that the other Lear shows only addressed in comedic arguments. 

Amos was proud of the series, which was innovative, critically acclaimed, and a big ratings success. The problem was that one supporting character, a clown, became an audience favorite—the Evans’ eldest son J.J. (Jimmie Walker), who strutted into rooms with flamboyant invention and had a catchphrase, “Dyno-MYYYTE!” Audiences loved him and the writers started building more and more episodes around him, and pretty soon “Good Times” felt like it was turning into “The J.J. Show.”

“We tackled subject matter that nobody touches today, things like seniors being forced to eat pet food because of financial constraints,” Amos said. “J.J. getting shot by a gang member. You can’t open the paper today without seeing some subject we covered 40 years ago. I knew I was in a blessed situation. And also, I was carrying the weight of being the first Black father of a complete family, and I carried that responsibility seriously.” So he started complaining to Lear and other producers that the show was abandoning its mandate to tell meaningful stories by catering to viewers who just wanted to watch J.J. be silly. 

“That led to their dissatisfaction with my dissatisfaction,” Amos told PBS’s “American Masters,” “which ultimately led to me being killed off the show.” And so James Evans died, leaving Florida a widow. The audience never found out the cause, though fans of the series remember Rolle’s heart-wrenching reaction as Florida learns of her husband’s passing, crying, “Damn! Damn! Damn!” 

“A lot of people are of the opinion or under the mistaken impression that I quit,” Amos continued. “I did not quit the show. I was fired during a hiatus and told that while the show was picked up, my services would no longer be needed because I’d become ‘a disruptive factor.’ And I concede that my objections to the scripts and the way they were going, the way the characters were being described and developed, was not to my liking. And I was not the most diplomatic guy in those days. In fact, I’ve said a number of times, and I even said to Norman, ‘I don’t blame you. I would have fired me, too.’” Lear and Amos remained friends, however, and when Lear created another spinoff of “All in the Family” in 1994 titled “704 Hauser,” about a Black family buying Archie’s old house, he hired Amos to star as the main character, Ernie Cumberbatch. 

Amos was continuously employed in television and films for five decades as an actor, including playing the elder Kunta Kinte in the original “Roots,” and he continued to write his own material, including the one-man play Haley’s Comet. He was married twice, to artist and equestrian Noel Mickelson and then to actress Lillian Lehman, a professor emerita of theatre and graduate of California State University, Northridge. 

Amos died August 21, but the news was not released until three months later, and Amos’ daughter Shannon said she didn’t find out about her father’s passing until Amos’ son K.C. announced it. There had been accusations of elder abuse last year after Shannon Amos filed a claim against K.C., but it was closed due to lack of evidence. Shannon said in an Instagram post,“We are devastated and left with many questions about how this happened 45 days ago, learning about it through the media like so many of you. This should be a time of honoring and celebrating his life, yet we are struggling to navigate the wave of emotions and uncertainties surrounding his passing. Still, there is some semblance of peace in knowing my father is finally free.”