Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (13 page)

As we taped, at night I worked with Landesberg on getting more jokes into the script. The next day I would go to Ralph and Bern Nadette, who won the role of Thelma, and say, “How about we try this?” I showed them what we had come up with.

“What are you talking about?” they said, being the professionals that they were. “We have a script. No one told us about any changes.”

Lear and Elinson came down together to have a talk with me. “We love the idea of you putting in new things,” they said, “but try to give our stuff a little chance before you make these changes.”

From then on I operated by sneak attack. Before we taped I ran my ideas by the stage manager, Buddy, and one of the cameramen, Vito, who hoped to write, produce, and direct someday. Sometimes they said, “Nah.” Sometimes they said, “That’s alright.” Sometimes they said, “Hey, that’s funny!” Then, as the tape rolled, I would throw in “funny.”

The other people on stage would be surprised and maybe not happy, but the live studio audience would laugh. After the first run-through, Lear would ask me not to repeat what I had done. “You’re doing something different from the rest of the cast!”

“Yeah, I’m trying to be funny!”

“That’s not the point,” he said, as the argument escalated.

“Did it get a big laugh, Norman?”

“Everything does not have to be a laugh. Sometimes there are just moments.”

“I don’t want ‘moments,’” I told him, “I want jokes. I want laughs.” Other cast members wanted acting “moments.” That was fine with me. Just give me the jokes!

“We have messages we want to get across too,” Lear said.

“If I wanted to deliver messages, I’d work for Western Union,” I shot back.

Lear hated to hear that. I would win when I got a laugh, but he had me eating crow when something I tried did not work.

“This is the kind of thing that can tear a cast apart, tear a show apart,” he would lay on me. “This is the kind of thing that might make writers not want to write for you.” But the writers did want to write for me—because they knew I could deliver laughs.

Manings recognized that I was a different cat. He later said, “He did the first show. He heard the first laugh. He played the audience from then on in. When the show was over, I said, ‘O.K., hell of a nice show, friends. Now we’re going to stay and do it without the audience.’ They said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I can’t edit anything because (he looked at me) you’re always looking out there (toward the audience).’ So I said, ‘I’m going to sit here and when you (meaning me) say the joke looking at the actor, I’m going to go, ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’ He said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you wanted singles. I’m sorry I hit homeruns.’ But he took off. I thought the young kid would take off. And he took off.”

The first directors had problems too, but not with me. Perry Rosemond was hired to direct the pilot. But Esther wanted a friend of hers, Donald McKayle, to direct. McKayle was a pioneering black modern dance choreographer and stage director. Lear agreed to have them direct together. Donny directed us like a stage play, Perry as a TV production. That was doomed to fail.

After a rehearsal we would all sit down and get notes, critiques on our performances. At one such early session, Perry was there, of course. On the table in front of him was his briefcase, open and overflowing with the shooting script and other pertinent papers. Also there was John Rich, who directed nearly every episode of
All in the Family
its first few seasons. Seemingly he was present just to observe and consult.

Lear popped his head in. “Hey, Perry, I need to talk to you for a second.” Perry walked out of the room.

Within a minute Lear’s secretary came in, gathered up Perry’s papers, put them in his briefcase, and left with them. We never saw him again.

That’s show business, folks.

Rich took over as director. Even though he was officially credited on only the second episode, he oversaw the shows credited to McKayle. After just a few episodes McKayle was axed. That ticked Esther off. Accepting Rich as director was even harder for her and others in the cast because they despised him. He was in your face and brutally honest. That is probably why I loved him.

When a cameraman complained that he could not get in the right position for a particular shot, Rich spoke through the PA system, “Hold on a minute.”

He came down from the booth, walked to that camera, and moved it into the correct position. He looked at the cameraman, saying, “Got it now, asshole?”

When I would throw in a line that worked, he would say, “That’s brilliant, man. I love that. Let’s keep that in.”

When one would not work, he would say, “Where did that come from?”

“I made that up.”

“Well, fuckin’ take that out! It sucks!”

You knew exactly where you stood with John Rich.

During a rehearsal for the first show—Lear loved having rehearsals—I threw in a word out of the blue.

JAMES

Well baby, I got ’til 5 o’clock to get us 72 dollars. I don’t know but one way to get it.

FLORIDA

James, don’t you dare go into that closet!

THELMA

What’s he gonna do, mama?

FLORIDA

He’s getting his pool cue.

J. J.

Dyn-o-mite!

It was not in the original script.

But no one on the staff reacted.

“Hold it,” said Rich. “Stop!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, anticipating him telling me to “fuckin’ take that out.”

“I like that ‘dyn-o-mite’ thing,” he said.

“What about it?”

“I think we got something here,” he went on. “Here’s what I want you to do.” He demonstrated how to say the word, emphasis on the “O” and with a huge smile. When we ran the script again, he also put an iso (isolation) camera just on me, to focus on the word even more.

I asked him, “Are people going to go for this?”

He said, “It’s gonna be great.”

He was right. When I said “Dyn-o-mite!” at the taping, the studio audience howled with laughter.

For the second episode, which he codirected, Rich made “Dyn-o-mite!” the exclamation that ended the show. The audience loved it.

At first Esther did not mind, given the alternative. J. J. was a bit of a petty shoplifter in the early shows. He would have something in hand and be asked where he got it. He would answer with a sly smile, “I
found
it!” A stern Florida would say something to the effect of “I want that bought, not found.” That was originally going to be J. J.’s catchphrase—“I
found
it!” But Esther did not want Florida’s son to be a thief. She objected to the producers and writers, so that character point and catchphrase quickly disappeared from future scripts. I suppose for her, “Dyn-o-mite” was at least better than “I
found
it!”

Lear did not like it at all. He and Rich argued fiercely about that one word.

“You mean in the middle of an episode we’re going to stop and have someone stand there and yell ‘dyn-o-mite’?” said Lear. “It’s a non sequitur. And it means absolutely nothing. It doesn’t contribute to the story. It’s asinine.”

Rich answered, “It’ll work.”

“Say it with energy!” he told me. “A year from now, people are going to be yelling ‘dyn-o-mite’ out of cars, on the street, and wherever they see you.”

I never said it on the third and fifth episodes, and the word is buried in the fourth episode. John fought to get it back in. There was such a rumble about that one word that, after I said it twice on the seventh episode—and by then Esther was adamantly against it—a writer’s rule was instituted that J. J. could only say “dyn-o-mite” once per show.

I had no opinion on the subject. In fact, it may surprise some to know, I was more in agreement with Lear! I didn’t know what the point of saying “dyn-o-mite” was either. Having a catchphrase, like Flip Wilson’s “Here come da judge” or “the devil made me do it,” never entered my mind. Little did I realize at the time how one word could change your life. “Dyn-o-mite” sure changed mine.

Rich was also responsible for me wearing my lucky blue hat on the show. I wore it at the readings and rehearsals, but when the time came to tape the first episode, I combed out my hair and put on the Afro Sheen.

“Hey, where’s that hat?” Rich asked.

“In my dressing room. Why?”

“No, no, no. That hat is going to be you, baby. We need that hat for your character. I want you to wear that hat all the time. You put that hat on and make it happen!”

Esther complained about the hat.

“How come he’s wearing a hat inside? What’s the point?”

John answered, “It’s for the character. He’s wearing it.” He wasn’t concerned about hurting someone’s feelings. He was there to help create a hit TV show. As far as I am concerned, Rich stepped up to the plate twice and hit a home run each time. That’s an unbelievable batting average not only in baseball but also in comedy.

All of this happened within the first couple weeks in the life of
Good Times
in late 1973. When I told a crew member I was planning on going back to New York after the initial episodes, he said, “I think you’re going to be here for a while. You might as well get used to LA.” But New Yorkers never think they are going to live in LA. There was a classic Mort Sahl joke about a New Yorker who lived in LA for eight years and went into a liquor store to buy beer. The clerk asked, “Do you want a six-pack or a twelve-pack?” The customer said, “I’ll just take two cans. I’ll be going back to New York soon.”

Good Times
was a mid-season replacement, premiering at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, February 8, 1974. If the series failed to attract a sizable audience in thirteen episodes, we would be gone and I would be back in New York.

Days after the premiere aired William Hickey of the
Plain Dealer
newspaper in Cleveland wrote, “Jimmie Walker, who plays the teenage son, just might end up stealing the show. His portrayal of a loosey-goosey, light-fingered adolescent was priceless.” Vernon Scott of UPI called me “that toothpick of a walking sight gag . . . maybe the funniest thing to happen to television in years.”

I did not see any of that coming. I was as surprised as anyone that my character became the breakout star. J. J. was just funny and silly. But the audience decides who they will like and who they won’t, what character they will be attracted to and what character they will choose to ignore. The TV public loved J. J. He was especially popular with younger kids, and that was a demographic the network wanted. The same thing happened the very same year on
Happy Days
: Ronnie Howard as Richie Cunningham was the star, but it was Henry Winkler as Fonzie who unexpectedly grabbed hold of American pop culture.

Because I wasn’t given any guidance on how to play the character, I went with my own instincts. I based J. J. on my favorite character from one of my favorite sitcoms, Art Carney’s Ed Norton in
The Honeymooners
. He too was tall and skinny and goofy—and wore a similar hat! When J. J., at six-foot-two and 130 pounds, flailed around with his thin arms and legs? That was a bastardization of Ed Norton.

Newsweek
said of J. J.: “His beanpole body suggests a vitamin deficiency, his Silly Putty face flaps around a set of buck teeth that could have come from a joke store.”
TV Guide
wrote, “He has the neck movement of an automatic sprinkler, and the bulb-eyed glare of an aggravated emu, all supported by a physique that resembles an inverted 6-foot tuning fork.” Much of that could also have been written about Ed Norton. I even added the rhythm of how Norton spoke. At one point Manings and Lear said, “You have to blacken it up a little!” So I once again put on my ghettoese accent.

I was the person out there, and I certainly blended in my own unique flavor, but Carney’s character was the foundation in the back of my mind. That is one reason I found it peculiar when my portrayal of J. J. was later demonized for “cooning it up” and being a racist, demeaning throwback to black comic actor Stepin Fetchit. Before me, Redd Foxx and Flip Wilson had been accused of the same for what they did on TV, and later Sherman Helmsley with
The Jeffersons
would too. Worse than being not funny enough or not black enough, we were assailed for being too funny and too black! But the fact is that J. J. was based on a white comic character, not a black one.

Good Times
ended up as the seventeenth highest-rated series of the year and was renewed for a full complement of twenty-four episodes to begin that fall. “Dyn-o-mite!” swept the country. Everyone from Sammy Davis Jr. to opera star Beverly Sills repeated it on TV shows, and everywhere I walked the word echoed behind me.

I became the first young black sitcom star. Flip Wilson? He had a variety show. Bill Cosby? His first comedy series in the late ’60s–early’70s s lasted only two seasons, he was in his thirties at the time, and he played a high school teacher. Redd Foxx? He was much too old.

The show was a critical hit too:

“The only Black television show innovative enough to depart from the old Amos and Andy format (sorry about that Sanford and Son).”
(Denise Mitchell,
The Black American
[New York], April 1974)

“A noteworthy step forward in TV’s treatment of black people . . . ‘Good Times’ is the first show to take black family life in the modern big city as its premise.”
(Lee Winfrey, Knight Newspapers, May 15, 1974)

Much of what has been written negatively about
Good Times
has been revisionist history. The truth is that blacks and whites, the public and the press welcomed the series with open arms, lauding it with high acclaim. So too was J. J. Esther and I even won Image Awards from the NAACP as Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively, in a TV series.