Redd Foxx plays Fred Sanford, a widowed junkman at 9114 South Central Avenue who greets every setback with fake heart attacks and hollered insults at his dead wife. Demond Wilson is Lamont, the grown son desperate to rise above the scrapyard, yet always pulled back into Fred’s nickel-and-dime cons. The junk-filled living room, the coughing 1951 Ford F1 pickup and Quincy Jones’s slinky bass line “The Streetbeater” frame a show that turned Friday-night death slot into Nielsen gold, peaking at No. 2 twice and knocking The Brady Bunch off the air.
Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin adapted the BBC’s Steptoe and Son, transplanting the racial bite of 1970s Los Angeles; Lear’s reduced involvement left Yorkin to keep the comedy pure slapstick, stripping out the pathos that fuelled All in the Family. Foxx’s salary revolt in 1974—he walked out until his fee jumped from $19,000 to $25,000 an episode plus 25% of net profits—halted production, forcing Whitman Mayo’s Grady to mind the store for six shows.
The series spun off Grady, Sanford Arms and the short-lived 1980 Sanford without Wilson, but none recaptured the chemistry. The real 1951 pickup survives, restored and displayed in an Ohio classic-car showroom, a rusted relic now worth more than the junk it once hauled.
Production Details
NBC / 6 Seasons / 136 Episodes / 1972
Created by: Norman Lear, Ray Galton, Bud Yorkin
Showrunner(s): Bud Yorkin
Writer(s): Gene Farmer, Jerry Ross, Winston Moss
Producer(s): Norman Lear
Main Cast
Redd Foxx as Fred G. Sanford
Demond Wilson as Lamont Sanford
LaWanda Page as Aunt Esther Anderson
Don Bexley as Bubba Bexley
Whitman Mayo as Grady Wilson
Nathaniel Taylor as Rollo Lawson
Lynn Hamilton as Donna Harris
Howard Platt as Officer 'Hoppy' Hopkins
Hal Williams as Officer 'Smitty' Smith
Gregory Sierra as Julio Fuentes
Fritzi Burr as
