4.00 Adam-12 S01E13 Log 122 The Thief Who Stole Christmas
4.25 CHiPs S02E09 The Sheik
5.15 Barney Miller S02E18 Block Party
5.40 Night Court S02E18 Billie’s Valentine
6.05 Sanford and Son S02E17 Lamont Goes African
6.25 The White Shadow S02E14 Artist
7.15 Star Trek: Voyager S02E18 Death Wish
8.00 The Outer Limits S02E04 I Hear You Calling
8.45 Tales from the Darkside S01E21 Bigalow’s Last Smoke
I’m in the middle of reading the definitive Redd Foxx biography – ‘Black and Blue: The Redd Foxx Story’. After seeing the title of today’s episode I had to share a passage that I read last night.
Some pretext: It’s 1976, Redd’s co-starring in a film titled ‘Norman… Is That You?’ with Pearl Bailey, the ex-wife of Slappy White who was Redd’s double-act partner from the 50s and 60s. This was shortly before Redd left Sanford and Son to do a variety show on rival network ABC and some years before he got into trouble with the IRS.
The following quotes are from the film’s director, George Schlatter:
The trouble started when Redd arrived for the first day of shooting in his red convertible, with his vanity license plate that read “NIGGER.” “Pearl said, ‘That’s a terrible word!’ and Redd said, ‘What’s the matter, big mama? I’m a nigger, you’re a nigger, we’re all niggers,’” Schlatter recalled. “And she said, ‘Redd, I go over to Africa and I go into the villages and I go into the straw huts and they sit on the mud floor and we talk about life and love and getting along and being together. Africa is important.’ And he says, ‘Pearl, listen big mama, there ain’t no nigger living in a grass hut on a mud floor that means shit to me, so Africa can kiss my dick.’ Well, now, she goes into her trailer and he goes into his trailer and I’m now running out of time.”
Redd’s off-screen habits also made the shoot challenging for Schlatter. “Any time we had to stop to re-light, Redd would say, ‘Okay, George, while you’re doing that, I’m gonna go into my trailer and work on my lines,” Schlatter said. “I said. Redd, don’t go in there,’ because anytime he went into his trailer, when he came out, he had either snorted some coke, had a joint, sniffed some brandy or got a blow job. Any one of those noticeably changed his speech pattern, so the shots wouldn’t match.” Schlatter also noticed that Redd had trouble remembering his lines, which made it necessary to place cue cards all over the set. “He would look up on the ceiling and there was a cue card there. And then I would put one behind the sofa. He would turn around the room, look in different directions and read the words,” Schlatter said. “It was all eventually done on cue cards because he couldn’t remember anything.”