John Landis knew exactly what he was doing in casting John Amos opposite James Earl Jones in 1988’s “Coming to America.” The audience related to both as fathers, first and foremost. Jones cut an intimidating figure as King Jaffe Joffer, father to Eddie Murphy’s Prince Akeem.
Amos, as Cleo McDowell, was his opposite: the slightly bumbling if protective dad of Shari Headley’s Lisa, the commoner Akeem wooed to his family’s great dismay. To anyone who grew up in the era of Norman Lear’s primetime comedy dominance, Amos registered as James Evans Sr., the hardworking father and husband to Esther Rolle’s Florida Evans on “Good Times.”
For that reason he was viewed as one of the first great Black TV dads and an instantly recognizable face in TV and cinema.
On Tuesday Amos’ son Kelly Christopher Amos confirmed in a statement that the actor died of natural causes on Aug. 21 in Los Angeles. He was 84.
Amos and Jones, who died on Sept. 9, each appeared in the acclaimed 1977 miniseries “Roots.” However, Jones played Alex Haley in the story’s present while Amos portrayed the older version of Kunta Kinte in the 19th century, for which he received an Emmy nomination.
Amos’ assured expressiveness and brawny presence are instantly recognizable in films and TV series, including a recurring role in “The West Wing” as Admiral Percy Fitzwallace and the supervisor of the homicide division, and the title character’s boss, on the first season of NBC’s “Hunter.”
In addition to appearing in “Coming to America” and “Coming to America 2” in 2021, Amos played the heavy in 1990’s “Die Hard 2.” His big screen debut was in Melvin Van Peebles’ “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” in 1971.
John Alan Amos Jr. was born on Dec. 27, 1939, in Newark, N.J., to John Amos Sr., a mechanic, and Annabelle, who worked as a housekeeper before returning to school to become a nutritionist.
Amos graduated with a degree in sociology from Colorado State University, where he played football. He went on to play for several professional teams, signing on as a free agent for the Denver Broncos briefly in 1964 and the Kansas City Chiefs in 1967, and being cut from each team before pursuing an acting career.
Amos' first major TV role was playing weatherman Gordon “Gordy” Howard on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” between 1970 and 1973. Then came “Good Times,” a spinoff of Norman Lear’s “Maude,” where Amos’ character was initially introduced.
As James Evans Sr., Amos has said he was proud to have portrayed the economic reality for many Americans in the economically depressed mid-1970s. James was a stalwart patriarch of a working-class family on the Chicago's South Side struggling to scrape by, earning what he could by juggling part-time work.
Behind the scenes, Amos clashed with Lear and the show’s writers over what he viewed as their inauthentic portrayals of Black life and the elevation of Jimmie Walker’s cartoonish J.J., Florida and James' oldest son, to be the show’s center of attention.
In a 2017 interview with “Sway in the Morning,” Amos recalled that when the show began there were no Black writers. Amos, who wrote and performed on “The Leslie Uggams Show” in 1969, took issue with some of the portrayals.
“They’d go on about their credits and the rest of that and I’d look at each and every one of them and say, ‘Well, how long have you been Black? That just doesn’t happen in the community,’” Amos said at the time, as reported on Ebony.com. “’We don’t think that way. We don’t act that way. We don’t let our children do that.’”
Eventually Lear fired Amos, revealing James' off-screen death in the 1976 two-part fourth season premiere.
Lear and Amos mended their relationship to the point that Lear gave him top billing in the short-lived CBS sitcom “704 Hauser,” the final “All in the Family” spinoff in which Amos stars as a liberal father who moves into Archie Bunker’s former home in Queens. It lasted for five episodes. He also made a surprise cameo during ABC's live celebrity-studded recreation of a “Good Times” episode in 2019.
But Amos had already reprised his TV dad role on other shows, including “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” where he played Will’s stepfather; “All About the Andersons” where he co-starred with Anthony Anderson as his father; and “Martin,” where he appeared as the no-nonsense father to Thomas Mikal Ford’s character Tommy.
According to Amos’ son, the actor’s final TV appearance will be in the upcoming drama “Suits: LA.”
