John Amos, who starred as the stoic father on Good Times and played the older Kunta Kinte on Alex Haley’s seminal mini-series Roots, has died at the age of 84.
His son, Kelly Christopher Amos, announced that Amos died on 21 August of natural causes in Los Angeles.
“It is with heartfelt sadness that I share with you that my father has transitioned,” he said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold … and he was loved the world over. Many fans consider him their TV father. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding works in television and film as an actor.”
Amos initially pursued a career in football after playing at Colorado State University, trying out for the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League. His entertainment career kicked into gear once he was cast as WJN-TV weatherman Gordy Howard on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
After four seasons as a genial presence on the early 1970s comedy, Amos was asked to audition for the part of James Evans Sr, husband of Esther Rolle’s Florida Evans and the father of three kids, for the CBS series Good Times. The show, which ran from 1974 until 1979, was developed by Eric Monte and Mike Evans along with All in the Family creator Norman Lear. A spinoff of Maude, itself a descendant of the groundbreaking All in the Family, Good Times was the first sitcom to center on a Black American family.
Amos starred for three seasons on the series, set in the inner city of Chicago. But he became irritated with stereotypical storylines for the Evanses’ eldest son JJ, played by the comedian Jimmie Walker. Amos was written off the show once he went public with his criticisms.
“We had a number of differences,” Amos said of Lear in a 2014 interview for the TV Academy Foundation. “I felt too much emphasis was being put on JJ in his chicken hat, saying ‘Dy-no-mite!’ every third page. I felt just as much emphasis and mileage could have been gotten out of my other two children, one of whom aspired to become a supreme court justice, played by Ralph Carter, and the other, Bern Nadette Stanis, who aspired to become a surgeon.
“But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy in those days, and [the show’s producers] got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes. So they said, ‘Tell you what, why don’t we kill him off? We can get on with our lives!’ That taught me a lesson – I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.”
Amos’s character was killed off in a car accident in a two-part episode that kicked off the show’s fourth season, in September 1976.
In the same 2014 interview, Amos got emotional when he remembered how “young men, in their 30s and 40, of every ethnicity imaginable, come up to me and say, ‘You’re the dad I never had.’”
After his stint on Good Times, Lear’s company hired him to play a congressman on the pilot for a show called Onward and Upward, which he also eventually quit. Shortly thereafter, he was approached to act in Roots, the acclaimed 1977 ABC mini-series.
“It was just what I needed,” he said. “It took the bad taste of Good Times out of my mouth – not that Good Times had been all bad, but the circumstances under which I left and the acrimony between Norman Lear and myself … I realize that a lot of it I brought on myself. I was not the easiest guy in the world to get along with, or to direct. I challenged any and everybody.”
Roots was “a vindication, a tremendous feeling of satisfaction”.
Amos’s additional TV credits include recurring parts on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, playing Will Smith’s stepfather, as well as Hunter, The District, Men in Trees, All About the Andersons, and the Netflix drama The Ranch. He appeared in films including The World’s Greatest Athlete, Die Hard 2 and Coming to America 2.
