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John Amos Was a ‘Disruptive Element’
“I knew that millions of Black people were watching. I carried that responsibility seriously. Maybe too much so.”
But even his smaller roles endured — Cleo McDowell in the two Coming to America movies, Admiral Fitzwallace on The West Wing, or the one that first brought him fame: Gordy the weatherman on CBS’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show. While family drama related to his children and their squabbling resulted in a slew of unfortunate headlines last year, that messiness took nothing away from Amos’s status as an icon of 1970s television and one of the most beloved small-screen dads in the history of the medium. He talked to us about his bumpy ride on Good Times, working with co-stars Esther Rolle and Jimmie Walker, and how he ultimately patched things up with producer Norman Lear after a very public falling out.
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