With everything that is due Respect for Coming to America‘s Cleo McDowell – Owner of an off-brand McDonald’s with a gold logo Archesno bows and a big one Mick Burger, not a Big Mac – John Amos’s two most famous roles came more than a decade back, in the ’70s. CBS debuted in 1974 Good timeswhere Amos and Esther played James and Florida Evans, parents struggling to keep their children’s heads above water in a Chicago housing project. After being fired from the series for complaining that James and Florida and their realistic problems were being sidelined in favor of the caricatured antics of their teenage son JJ, he landed the lead role in the groundbreaking miniseries rootswhere he played the older version of the African-born slave Kunta Kinte, who was forced by his white captors to answer to the name Toby.

The eras and settings were vastly different, but the men he played were undeniably John Amos characters: solid, dependable, and alternately intimidating or gentle depending on the situation.

Amos, whose death on August 21 was confirmed by his family this week, made his impressive physical presence honest. Years before he entered show business, he was an aspiring football player who played in college for the Colorado State Rams, had tryouts with the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs of the then-American Football League, and played on several professional teams in minor leagues of football, such as the Canton Bulldogs of the United Football League. Legend has it that Chiefs coach Hank Stram told him, “You’re not a football player; You’re a man trying to play football.”

But what a man he was when he gave up his sporting dreams and turned to acting. In the early 1970s, he had small roles on television shows – primarily a recurring gig The Mary Tyler Moore Show as friendly and unflappable WJM weatherman Gordy Howard – and in commercials. (He probably used the experience from that McDonald’s musical commercial when it came time to play McDowell.) When Esther Rolle’s performance as Florida made her an early breakout character opposite Bea Arthur MaudThe sitcom’s producers, including the legendary Norman Lear, decided to give her a husband – and in the end Maud Season Two to give the duo their own show.

Good times was one of the first television comedies to center on a black nuclear family. It should go in a similar direction as both Maud And Everything in the familywith Florida and James wrestling with poverty, racism and other social ills. Together, they provided a calm anchor to their children’s tumultuous lives — and to viewers grappling with their own struggles in an America not too far removed from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Amos was adept at exchanging punchlines with his fellow stars, especially when James expressed his disapproval of the lazy JJ (played by comedian Jimmie Walker). But for viewers who, as a child, had only seen white actors playing idealized sitcom fathers, James’ mere existence — coupled with the heartfelt strength with which Amos played him — felt historic.

But it was JJ — and his frequently shouted catchphrase, “DYN-O-MITE!” — that seemed to elicit the loudest reaction, and soon the show began to refocus on him, leaving James and Florida as disgruntled straight men in their story proper . Both Rolle and Amos frequently protested this shift. Her complaints tended to be more public, while his were more hostile. (“I wasn’t exactly the most diplomatic guy back then,” he would say years later, and his bosses “were tired of their lives being threatened over jokes.”) Amos was fired after the third season and the fourth season began on The Family Evans is faced with tragedy when James dies off-camera in a car accident while looking for a job in Mississippi. (Rolle quit after that season, and with no parent left to justify things, JJ suddenly seemed a lot less attractive; ratings began to decline.)

Amos’ unexpected unemployment had one positive aspect: he was available for the lead role rootsa miniseries adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel about America’s shameful history of slavery, as seen through the eyes of Kunta Kinte and his descendants. LeVar Burton played the young, defiant Kunta in the first two episodes, before Amos took on the role of the older version, who seems more resigned to his captivity, although he continues to plan an escape and return to Africa. The book was a phenomenon, and the TV version even more so, with more than half of the US population watching at least some of it. Amos had once hoped so Good times would get America talking about past and present issues facing the black community; with rootshe was more than capable of living that dream.

Few actors would be able to play the lead role in a project as big as rootsand, not surprisingly, Amos was unable to do so. Like James Earl Jones, who played Amos’ in-laws in both films Coming to America and its sequel in 2021 Comes 2 AmericaAmos spent much of his career caught in a casting trap: He wasn’t exactly considered a leading man, but his imposing size and personality also made him difficult to cast in supporting roles, and he was often hired to bring prestige to other stories People. (Though he could be great in it, like as Admiral Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff The West Wing.) He’s had memorable jobs here and there – he’s incredibly funny as Cleo McDowell and had a believable exchange with Bruce Willis as one of the villains Die Hard 2 – but among his few opportunities to be at the helm of a project was an unlikely reunion with Norman Lear, nearly 20 years after Lear fired him Good times. 704 houses was a Everything in the family A spin-off of sorts, in which Amos plays a working man living in the old Archie Bunker house in Queens, and with a reversed core dynamic from the original series: Amos was an outspoken liberal and his son was a conservative (with a white wife in the main role). by a young Maura Tierney). However, only six episodes were filmed, one of which was never broadcast.

In a way, Amos started acting at the perfect moment. Television in the 1970s was finally willing, and sometimes genuinely eager, to tell black stories after the medium had tried to ignore them for most of its existence. Good times felt like the right show at the right time, even if it somehow escaped Amos. roots is probably the most important television show of all time and one of the best. He was the heart of both. Amos was ahead of his time in other ways, too, spending most of his career in an industry that still didn’t know what to do with a black actor with a deep voice and the build of a football player.

But how many actors get a role as immortal as James Evans or Kunta Kinte, let alone two, and prove to be perfectly suited to the material?