The moment that brassy, strutting theme kicked in on Friday nights, you knew Fred G. Sanford was about to clutch his chest, look toward heaven, and tell his late wife Elizabeth that this was “the big one.” Quincy Jones wrote that tune, “The Streetbeater,” for a sitcom Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin adapted from the BBC’s Steptoe and Son, a British comedy about a junk dealer and his grown son. NBC moved the story to a Watts junkyard, and the Sanford and Son cast turned it into one of the most watched shows in America, landing in the Nielsen top ten five times and peaking at No. 2.
The series ran from January 1972 to March 1977, six seasons and 136 episodes, and it was built around a crowded house of neighbors, in-laws, old pals and two very patient police officers. Nearly half a century after the last episode, almost all of those faces are gone. Here is what happened to each of them, in the order we lost them, and the one man who is still here to remember it all.
Is Redd Foxx still alive?
Redd Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis on December 9, 1922, and he gave his own family name to Fred, the cranky junk man who would rather fake a heart attack than lose an argument. Foxx was already a famous nightclub comic with a pile of party records behind him, and he was willing to fight for what he was worth. In 1974 he walked away over money, and the show had to write Fred out for six episodes until NBC gave him a raise and a share of the profits.
His TV son understood the friction better than anyone. “The relationship that Redd and I had was no different than a marriage,” Demond Wilson told BlackAmericaWeb in 2015. “Sometimes the bitter outweighs the sweet.”
Foxx left for good in 1977 to host a variety show on ABC, and he came back as Fred in the short-lived Sanford in 1980. His later years were shadowed by tax trouble, and the IRS seized his Las Vegas home in 1989. He was rehearsing the CBS sitcom The Royal Family with Della Reese on October 11, 1991, when he collapsed on the Paramount lot.
Castmates first thought it was one of Fred’s old bits. Reese later recalled that he asked for his wife, and he died of a heart attack that night at Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. He was 68. Some of the men who rushed to his side over the years had known him since long before Hollywood.
Are Slappy White & Don Bexley still alive?
Foxx filled the junkyard with friends from the old chitlin’ circuit days, and Wilson remembered the effect. “Redd said it was the National Black Company,” he told BlackAmericaWeb. Melvin “Slappy” White had met Foxx in Harlem in 1947, and the two worked as a comedy team and toured for more than four years with Billy Eckstine’s orchestra.
White, who was once married to Pearl Bailey, played Fred’s friend Melvin in 1972 and later became a fixture at Las Vegas showrooms and celebrity roasts. He died of a heart attack at his home in Brigantine, New Jersey, on November 7, 1995. He was 74.
Don Bexley got his call in 1971, when Foxx sent for him and talked the producers into hiring a 62-year-old comic who had never been on television. As Bubba, Fred’s big-hearted buddy, he became a fan favorite and later turned up on Cheers and Hunter. The two men stayed close for nearly 50 years, and Bexley served as an honorary pallbearer at Foxx’s funeral. He died of heart and kidney failure in Hampton, Virginia, on April 15, 1997, at 87. Another friend of Fred’s once had to hold the whole show together.
Is Whitman Mayo still alive?
When Foxx walked out in 1974, the writers sent Fred to St. Louis and handed the junkyard to Grady Wilson, his slow-talking, good-natured pal. Whitman Mayo carried the show for six episodes, and NBC liked him enough to give Grady his own spin-off, Grady, in 1975.
It didn’t last a full season, but Mayo kept working in films such as The Main Event with Barbra Streisand and Boyz n the Hood, where he played the Old Man. He also taught drama at Clark Atlanta University. Mayo died of a heart attack in Atlanta on May 22, 2001, at 70. Fred’s other great foil came from much closer to home.
Is LaWanda Page still alive?
LaWanda Page and Redd Foxx were schoolkids together in St. Louis, and in 1972 she was ready to quit show business to care for her ailing mother when Foxx phoned and asked her to read for Aunt Esther. The producers worried she couldn’t handle sitcom timing and one wanted her fired before taping, so Foxx threatened to leave the show if she went.
She stayed, and her Bible-swinging battles with Fred (“Watch it, sucker!”) became some of the most quoted scenes in the series. Her comedy album Watch It, Sucker! went gold, and younger audiences heard her voice on RuPaul’s 1993 hit “Supermodel (You Better Work)” and saw her in Friday. She died in Los Angeles on September 14, 2002, of complications from diabetes, at 81. The next loss came from a friend of Lamont’s.
Is Pat Morita still alive?
Before he ever said “wax on, wax off,” Pat Morita dropped by the junkyard as Ah Chew, Lamont’s easygoing friend, in seven episodes between 1974 and 1976. He was also running the counter at Arnold’s on Happy Days around the same time.
Then The Karate Kid came along in 1984, and his Mr. Miyagi earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Morita died of kidney failure at his home in Las Vegas on November 24, 2005, at 73. For a long stretch after that, the rest of the gang held on.
Is Nathaniel Taylor still alive?
Fred never trusted Rollo Lawson, Lamont’s smooth best friend, and Nathaniel Taylor played that suspicion for laughs in 32 episodes. Born in St. Louis on March 31, 1938, he came back as Rollo on Sanford and later played Jim-Jam opposite Foxx on The Redd Foxx Show in 1986. Once he stopped acting, he opened a performing arts studio for young actors.
Taylor suffered a heart attack and died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on February 27, 2019, at 80. “It was a time and an era, just to be on TV as a black man, it was an honor,” his son Kaedi told the Associated Press. Esther’s long-suffering husband was next.
Is Raymond Allen still alive?
Raymond Allen played Uncle Woody, the man who married Aunt Esther and spent most of his nine episodes trying to keep the peace with a drink in his hand. Viewers also knew him as Ned the Wino on Good Times and as Merl the Earl, the mechanic on Starsky and Hutch.
He retired from acting in 1985 but kept meeting fans at appearances for years. His daughter Ta Ronce announced that he died on August 10, 2020, at 91, and his family said the cause was a sudden respiratory illness unrelated to COVID. A few months later, the show lost its friendliest neighbor.
Is Gregory Sierra still alive?
Gregory Sierra was Julio Fuentes, the Puerto Rican neighbor whose arrival next door drove Fred up the wall from 1972 to 1975. The role launched a busy career. Sierra joined the original squad room on Barney Miller as Detective Chano Amenguale, played a revolutionary on Soap and appeared in films including Papillon and The Towering Inferno. He was also the first boss on Miami Vice and asked to be written out after four episodes because he didn’t want to live in Miami.
His widow, Helene Tabor, told CNN that he died of cancer on January 4, 2021, in Laguna Woods, California. He was 83. Fred’s sweetheart outlived nearly everyone.
Is Lynn Hamilton still alive?
Lynn Hamilton brought real warmth to Donna Harris, the nurse who looked after Fred and spent years as his on-again, off-again fiancée. Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on April 25, 1930, she was also Verdie Grant Foster on The Waltons from 1973 to 1981, and she later appeared on Roots: The Next Generations, 227 and The Practice, where she played a judge.
Hamilton died of natural causes at her home in Chicago on June 19, 2025, at 95, her former manager Rev. Calvin Carson said. Months later, Fred’s son was gone too.
Is Demond Wilson still alive?
Demond Wilson played Lamont, the son who called his father “Pop” and kept threatening to move out. Born in Valdosta, Georgia, on October 13, 1946, he went on to Baby, I’m Back and to The New Odd Couple, where he played Oscar Madison opposite Ron Glass. In 1984 he was ordained in the Church of God in Christ and spent much of his life as an evangelist, and in 2009 he published Second Banana, his memoir of the Sanford years.
Wilson died at his home in Palm Springs on January 30, 2026, at 79, from complications of cancer. “The family of Demond Wilson is deeply saddened by his passing,” his publicist Mark Goldman told ABC News. That left only the two cops.
Is Hal Williams still alive?
Hal Williams worked as a corrections officer and a postal worker in Columbus, Ohio, before he became Officer “Smitty” Smith, the street-smart cop who had to explain his by-the-book partner to Fred. From there, he became Sergeant Ross in Private Benjamin and the loving dad Lester Jenkins on 227, and he was still acting on the Matlock reboot in 2024 and 2025. In July 2026 he went back to Ohio for a Sanford and Son celebration and sat beside his old partner on Cleveland’s Fox 8 morning show. “A lot of the stuff we created ourselves off camera,” he said there, according to the Los Angeles Times.
He died at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, on July 15, 2026, at 91, as NPR reported. You can read more about the life and career of Hal Williams here. “He helped show America what that looked like,” his 227 co-star Jackée Harry wrote of his loving TV fatherhood. And the partner who sat beside him that weekend in Ohio is still here.
Is Howard Platt still alive?
Yes. Howard Platt, who played Officer “Hoppy” Hopkins, is alive today. He was born in Chicago on June 5, 1938, which makes him 88. Hoppy was the stiff, polite patrolman who spoke like a police manual while Smitty translated, and Platt played him in 20 episodes from 1972 to 1976 before returning in Sanford. His career kept rolling after that. He played Dr. Phil Newman on The Bob Newhart Show and a pilot on Flying High, and he turned up as five different characters on Barney Miller along with roles in Nixon, The Rock and Vegas Vacation.
The weekend of July 10 and 11, 2026, Platt and Williams greeted fans together at Baumann Auto Stable in North Royalton, Ohio, at an event billed as a reunion with “the two remaining cast members,” with the original Sanford and Son truck parked nearby. Days later, Williams was gone. Platt is now the last person standing from that Watts junkyard, and the last man who can still tell you what it felt like to stand next to Redd Foxx while a studio audience roared.
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