Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir by Jimmie Walker & Sal Manna

Author:Jimmie Walker & Sal Manna [Walker, Jimmie & Manna, Sal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306821103
Amazon: B0080K3SW4
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2012-06-26T07:00:00+00:00

Bern Nadette tried to get into how comedians are with each other and came to a couple of writers’ meetings. Finally, though, after I headed to the Store as usual to try the jokes out on stage, she said, “Stop! No more jokes!”

The attack piece in Ebony may have personally offended Lear more than me, because the article also slammed the show for not having enough black writers. No one outside of Norman Lear had done more to further the cause of blacks in the television industry, including behind the camera. Now, suddenly, according to some critics, Lear was running a plantation. After working so hard to make Good Times and other black shows happen, the backstabbing broke his heart. Beginning the day he came to the set with that article in hand, he never felt the same toward Good Times.

Beginning with that article I have rarely read anything about myself in print. Reading reviews is like an out-of-body experience, as if they are writing about another person. It is said that people believe 90 percent of what they read in a newspaper, but disagree with 90 percent of the 10 percent they think they know something about.

If someone writes something good in a review, they never get it exactly right, so it is not very useful. If it’s a bad review, you get upset, which does you no good either. Besides, there is really no reason to read a bad review—because you can count on someone coming up to you and telling you all about it anyway!

“Did you see that review about you? Called you an Uncle Tom! Said you were, and I think the quote was, ‘one of the worst things to ever happen to black people in the last thirty years.’ I don’t agree with that at all. Did you see that?”

“No, but I guess I don’t have to now.”

I suppose that is why I have never actually seen an episode of Good Times. I was there. I know what we did and what the show looked like. People told me all about every one of them—and still do. I know people enjoyed them—and still do—but I never had a reason to watch an episode.

Heading into our third season Amos and Rolle threatened to quit, so they were offered more money to stay. Esther quickly took it, but John hesitated. As he did, the writers came up with storylines about his character’s possible departure. That’s why John does not appear in two episodes of the third season. In one of them, Lou Gossett Jr. arrived as Florida’s brother Wilbert. If John bolted, Uncle Wilbert was in the wings to take over as the man in the Evans household. John agreed to return at the last minute.

For season three I was bumped up in the billing hierarchy with a new credit: “and Jimmie Walker as J. J.” on a single card. High school graduate J. J. now had a steady job (at first delivering chicken for the Chicken Shack and then for a rib joint) while attending art school at night.

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