The Jeffersons

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For the South Park episode of the same name, see The Jeffersons (South Park).

The Jeffersons was an American sitcom broadcast on the CBS network from January 18, 1975 until July 23, 1985, lasting 11 seasons. It was a spin-off from All in the Family, a program on which the character Louise Jefferson first appeared in 1971 and on which George Jefferson first appeared in 1973. Like All in the Family, The Jeffersons was created and produced by Norman Lear. The show focused on a nouveau riche African American husband and wife. The Jeffersons was in the top ten in the Nielsen Ratings during its first season on the air and, later in its run, for three seasons in a row: 1979–80, 1980–81, and 1981–82. During the 1981–82 season, it was the #3 show on network television, behind only Dallas and 60 Minutes in popularity.

1 Synopsis
2 Broadcast History
3 The Jeffersons on DVD
4 Trivia
5 Sources
6 Embassy Television
7 Studio Tapings
8 External links

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The main characters were George Jefferson, played by Sherman Hemsley, and Louise "Weezie" Jefferson, played by Isabel Sanford. George Jefferson was the owner of a chain of seven dry cleaning stores; he and his wife lived in a luxury high-rise apartment building on Manhattan's Upper East Side, to which they had moved from a working-class section of Queens (where they had been Archie Bunker's next-door neighbors on All in the Family). Their son, Lionel, a college student studying to be an electrical engineer, was first played by Mike Evans who left the show by the second season to work on the TV show Good Times with co-creator Eric Monte. Lionel was then played by Damon Evans from 1975-78, then Mike Evans returned in 1979 and stayed until the end of the series.

Another of the stars of The Jeffersons was Roxie Roker (Lenny Kravitz's mother), who played Helen Willis, opposite Franklin Cover as Tom Willis and their daughter Jenny Willis, (played by Berlinda Tolbert) who dated and in 1976 married Lionel, and later became pregnant, giving birth to their daughter, Jessica (played by Ebonie Smith). The fact that Helen Willis was an African-American woman married to Tom, a white man, was a source of great irritation to George Jefferson. The characters Tom, Hellen and Jenny Willis (like the characters George, Louise, and Lionel Jefferson) were also originally introduced on All in the Family. The Willis' first appeared in a 1974 episode (season 4, episode 20) of All in the Family, titled "Lionel's Engagement". However, in the All in the Family episode, Tom Willis was portrayed by Charles Aidman, Hellen Willis was portrayed by Kim Hamilton (21 years Mr. Aidman's junior!), and Jenny Willis was portrayed by Lynne Moody (Only 4 years Ms. Hamilton's junior!). By the time "The Jeffersons" pilot aired in January, 1975, all three characters had been recast with the actors best associated with the roles of Tom (Franklin Cover), Hellen (Roxie Roker), and Jenny Willis (Berlinda Tolbert) joining the cast.

Image:The Jeffersons.jpg The show also featured Zara Cully as George's mother Olivia Jefferson (referred to as simply "Mother Jefferson"); Marla Gibbs as the Jeffersons' wise-cracking maid, Florence Johnston (who would later have her own spin-off show Checking In); Paul Benedict as the bumbling English neighbor, Harry Bentley (who worked as a Russian-language interpreter at the United Nations and who would occasionally suffer back spasms that could only be cured by George walking on his back); and Ned Wertimer as Ralph, the smarmy building doorman.

The keys to the popularity of the show were its having African-American actors in lead roles, its portrayal of a successful African-American family, and its confrontational humor, although at the time, some complaints were made about the stereotypes that the show allegedly purveyed. Roker and Cover portrayed network television's first regularly-appearing interracial couple in which one partner was African-American.

The show underwent numerous subtle changes as the 1970s moved into the 1980s. George Jefferson's afro vanished, and he toned down his explosive temper and his bigoted diatribes. In fact, George developed a closer friendship with Tom as well as Florence in the later years of the show.

Unlike many other series which run for such a long time, The Jeffersons did not have a special series finale episode, as CBS did not announce the show's cancellation until after production for the 1984-85 season had been concluded.

The buoyant theme song from The Jeffersons, "Movin' on Up" (composed by Jeff Barry and Ja'net DuBois of Good Times fame and sung by DuBois), found new life in the 1990s and 2000s in a number of television commercials and other references: for example, in Will Smith's song "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" ("Now they give it to me nice and easy/Since I moved up like George and Weezie"). The high-rise apartment building shown in the opening credits of The Jeffersons is located at East 85th Street and Third Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Both Hemsley and Sanford reprised their Jefferson roles on episodes of Will Smith's TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.