On the AITF spinoff series, The Jeffersons, Jenny and Lionel’s relationship would continue to develop from the point where it began on AITF. The Huffington Post BlackVoices has compiled some of the show’s most poignant–and most hilarious–examples of discussing race on television. Bentley works as a Russian-language interpreter at the United Nations. He is known as a kind, gentle fellow, but George mostly finds him to be weird and annoying, frequently slamming the door in his face. Marriage to a house painter shortly after high school graduation resulted in three children in quick succession, Pamela, Eric and Sanford—”I felt like an assembly line”—and a separation after only a few years.
LOS ANGELES — Ned Wertimer, who played Ralph the Doorman on all 11 seasons of the CBS sitcom “The Jeffersons,” has died. Wertimer’s manager Brad Lemack said Tuesday that the 89-year-old actor died at a Los Angeles-area nursing home on Jan. 2, following a November fall at his home in Burbank. Ned Wertimer, a prolific character actor who perhaps was best known for playing Ralph the Doorman for 11 seasons on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, has died.
“Laundry Is A Tough Town” , where George goes into a battle with another dry-cleaners, only to retire after Louise is crowned the millionth customer at the other cleaners. “The Jeffersons Go To Hawaii” where George and Louise go on vacation for health reasons while the Willises extend their vacation at the same time; they end up staying in the same hotel. Still, it was the first series to prominently feature a mixed-racial couple, Helen and Tom Willis. A duplex is a multi-family home that has two units in the same building. These two units always share a common wall, but the floor plan can vary. Units can be arranged either side by side or stacked on top of one another, each occupying an entire floor or two of the building.
This was ground-breaking television, especially for a family of color. In one particularly dark episode, Florence reaches a breaking point. It wasn’t common to discuss the signs that someone may be thinking about hurting themselves so this was important television. Even though the subject matter was serious George managed to break the tension with a snappy line. Florence asked what was so wrong with suicide, she was just doing god’s work.
Hemsley also played Judge Carl Robertson on the NBC series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. For his work on The Jeffersons, Hemsley was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award. The Jeffersons’ best friends were Helen and Tom Willis, an interracial couple from apartment 14F.
Later in the series, after Gil Cunningham died, the Jeffersons discovered that Gil never desired to be enemies with George. It was revealed that Gil’s wife (played by future L.A. Law star Susan Ruttan), had been the motivator behind this competition all along. But in the end, after finding Gil’s letter, George turned the tables on Mrs. pretzel in spanish Cunningham by bringing her all of the laundry from all seven of his cleaning stores and thereby forcing her to pay him a dollar for every pound, which amounted to $10,000. George’s brother Henry Jefferson, played by veteran character actor Mel Stewart, appeared in All in the Family during the lead-up to the spin-off of The Jeffersons.
It was launched as the second spin-off of the parent series, but actually ran to become a bigger hit. Roxie Roker, who played Helen Willis on The Jeffersons, was Lenny Kravitz’s mother. One very interesting fact is that the musician used to visit the set of the show when he was little, which must have been a lot of fun. Isabel did not know anything about the show being canceled until a member of her family told her that they read about it.
