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Lynn Hamilton, the versatile stage and screen actor best remembered as nurse Donna Harris on NBC’s “Sanford and Son,” died Thursday, 19 June 2025, at her home in Chicago. She was 95, her former manager and publicist, the Rev. Calvin Carson, confirmed, saying the cause was natural causes. Carson added in a Facebook statement that memorial details will be released once arrangements are finalized and invited fans to share tributes as the family mourns.

During six seasons on “Sanford and Son” (1972-77), Hamilton’s calm, competent Donna provided a counterweight to Redd Foxx’s irascible Fred Sanford and helped the sitcom become a breakthrough hit for Black-led television when it premiered 50 years ago. Her performance also resonated in prime-time drama as Verdie Foster, the dignified schoolteacher who sought literacy late in life on CBS’s “The Waltons,” a character fans still praise for humanizing racial issues in Depression-era Appalachia.

Born Alzenia Lynn Hamilton...

The 1995 buddy comedy Friday's cast features some of the most prominent Black actors of the time, though sadly, there are several notable members of the Friday cast who have since passed away. Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, follows the day in the life of Craig Jones (Ice Cube) and his listless friend Smokey (Tucker) after Craig is fired from his job. Unlike some other iconic Black movies of the era, Friday is a light comedy without the dramatic stakes and violence found in films like New Jack City or Boyz n the Hood.

Friday shows that just because life in the neighborhoods where writers Ice Cube and DJ Pooh grew up can be dangerous doesn't mean they can't be fun as well. Smokey, Craig, and the rest of the Friday characters have to deal with a certain amount of bullying and illegal activities, but for the most part,...

Love it or hate it, "Sanford and Son" is one of the most groundbreaking American sitcoms of all time. The NBC series about a widowed get-rich-quick schemer (Redd Foxx) living in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood with his adult son (Demond Wilson) was an undeniable hit during its run. It ushered in a Golden Age of Black family sitcoms thanks to dynamic performances, frank dialogue written from a working-class Black perspective, and its often uproarious scripts. It was such a ratings juggernaut that it's often credited for killing off its much more sanitized competition, "The Brady Bunch."

"It was a groundbreaking series," Eric Deggans wrote in a series retrospective for the official Emmys website, noting that "Before 'Good Times' and 'The Jeffersons' would make TV history with powerful stories focused on Black families, 'Sanford and Son' would explore the prickly relationship between a middle-aged Black man and his son.

The cast of Sanford and Son may have passed away, but their legacy lives on with fantastic performances. Redd Foxx's portrayal of Fred Sanford is iconic, showcasing a wise yet brusque older gentleman with a big heart. The ensemble cast, including Lawanda Page and Don Bexley, brought depth and authenticity to the beloved show.

"Who passed away on Sanford and Son?" is what some nostalgic viewers may be wondering about the NBC sitcom from the '70s. Sanford and Son premiered in 1972 and ran for six seasons, ending in 1979, making the TV show 50 years old in 2022. It's based on the British series from a few years earlier, Steptoe and Son, but follows a Black father and son duo. The cantankerous and suspicious father, Fred Sanford, and his eponymous son, Lamont, run an antique/junk store from their home in Los Angeles while frequently dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes.

While not...

The Emmy landscape has changed drastically in the past two decades. Going in to the 54th Emmy Awards, which took place on Sept. 22, 2002, it was a broadcast network — NBC — that led the nominations with 47. Emmy powerhouse HBO came in second with 38. FX and VH1 earned their first nominations while the first major streaming series, Netflix’s “House of Cards,” was still 11 years away. Several of this year’s contenders for Emmy gold were either nominated or won 20 years ago.

Laura Linney, who has been nominated nine times and won four statuettes, is nominated this year for her lead role in the final season of Netflix’s “Ozark” and as co-executive producer of this drama series contender. Two decades ago, she won her first Emmy for her lead role in the Showtime telefilm “Wild Iris.”

HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm, which has been nominated 51 times and has won two Emmys, is...

Sanford and Son, the first mainstream, primetime sitcom in television history with an almost-all Black cast, debuted on NBC on Jan. 14, 1972. Created by Norman Lear, and starring legendary “blue” comedian Redd Foxx as an African American bigot, it was seen as a direct answer to CBS’ All in the Family. But the Bunker family series was a social satire which took its laughs seriously. The Sanfords presented pure comedy, any lessons it taught were intentionally coincidental. The most controversial part of the show, when it first aired, was its lead actor.

Foxx was already an underground comedy legend when Cleavon Little, best known for his role as Sheriff Bart in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, suggested him for the lead in the mid-season replacement. Little wasn’t available, but worked with Foxx on Ossie Davis’s 1970 neo-noir film Cotton Comes to Harlem. Before Foxx played the junk dealer stuck with the bale of genuine Mississippi cotton,...

Some films don’t announce themselves to you right away; occasionally one simply doesn’t register for many possible reasons – bad mood, wrong time, etc. So every now and then I’ll re-watch a film in the hope that I missed something the first time around. This brings us to this week’s Dust Off: Mausoleum (1983), a possession film so filled with goofy charm and goopy effects that I must have been comatose when I first witnessed it. Better late than never, right?

Mausoleum was released in the States in May; the 1998 Blockbuster Entertainment Guide gave it one star out of five and said it was “schlocky and silly.” Why, yes, yes it is; but for those on the lookout for some unassuming demonic dreck, are these not part of our criteria? I say to you all, yay and verily, that Mausoleum has more than enough entertainment value, and some...

Raymond Allen, an actor who had memorable recurring roles on classic ’70s sitcoms Sanford and Son and Good Times, died Monday of a non-covid respiratory illness at a long-term care facility in California. He was 91.

Allen’s death was announced by his daughter, Ta Ronce Allen, in a Facebook post.

The actor was best known for his Sanford and Son character of Uncle Woodrow “Woody” Anderson, brother-in-law of Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanford and long-suffering husband of Lawanda Page’s Aunt Esther. On another Norman Lear-created series, Good Times, Allen played Ned the Wino, a neighborhood street character and friend of the series’ central Evans family. Both Woody and Ned showcased Allen’s comic depiction of cheerful intoxication.

Nathaniel Taylor Dies: ‘Sanford And Son’ Sidekick Rollo Was 80

Born on March 5, 1929, in Kansas City, Mo, the youngest of 12 children, Allen also appeared in ’70s series What’s Happening!!, Starsky and Hutch,...

Raymond Allen, who portrayed Uncle Woody on Sanford and Son, died Monday, his daughter announced. He was 91.

"Just wanted to let The Allen Family and friends know that Dad received his wing two hours ago," Ta Ronce Allen wrote on Facebook. "His warmth, kind heart and clever sayings will be missed. His laughter will ring in heaven."

He had been living in a California health care facility since 2016, TMZ reported.

Allen appeared as Woodrow "Woody" Anderson — married to Lawanda Page's Aunt Esther — on 11 episodes of NBC's Sanford and Son from 1974-77....

Birthday shoutouts go to Jeremy Renner (above), who is 42, Nicolas Cage is 49, out David Yost s 44, and Kenny Loggins is 65.Bette Midler is returning to the Broadway stage for the first time in 30 years. She'll star as the late Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers in I'll Eat You Last. Prospect Park has officially announced plans to resume All My Children and One Life to Live So what would prevent them from resurrecting Kish? At least Debbi Morgan is coming back to AMC.The Supreme Court announced they will hear arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry on March 26 and United States v. Windsor on March 27.In ratings news, the return of Revenge was down, Once Upon A Time was flat, and as for Happy Endiings? Let's just move on to happier ratings news. The premiere episode of Downton Abbey Season Three quadruples the average PBS primetime rating.Below you can see the newest...

“I didn’t know how to act,” Bobbie Bresee says of her first big-screen performance on the audio commentary for the film in question, Mausoleum. The assertion is hard to contest, but it’s also inarguable that her recollections of this 1983 schlocker are by far the best part of Bci Eclipse's double-feature disc.

The starring turn by former Playboy Bunny Bresee is far from the only problem with Mausoleum; this is the kind of movie in which the story centers on a clan named Nomed and acts like the audience can’t figure that one out right away, and in which another character knows of their history from a book helpfully titled The Nomed Family. Susan Farrell (Bresee), who once had a frightening encounter in the Nomed crypt when she was a young girl (as played by Julie Christy Murray, daughter of the film’s lighting designer, who looks nothing...