{"id":2259932,"date":"2026-01-31T16:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T16:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2259932"},"modified":"2026-01-31T16:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T16:44:08","slug":"actor-played-lead-role-in-beloved-groundbreaking-70s-sitcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/actor-played-lead-role-in-beloved-groundbreaking-70s-sitcom\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor played lead role in beloved, groundbreaking 70s sitcom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2026%2F01%2Fnewspress-collage-4g7aykcq3-1769877166865.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261769859179\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cSanford and Son\u201d star Grady Demond Wilson has died at the age of 79. <\/p>\n<p>The actor, best known for playing Lamont Sanford, the son of Fred Sanford, in the smash-hit 1970s sitcom, died at his Palm Springs home on Friday following complications related to cancer. <\/p>\n<p>Wilson\u2019s son, Demond, confirmed the news to <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/2026\/01\/31\/grady-demond-wilson-dead-sanford-and-son\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">TMZ<\/a>, saying: \u201cI loved him. He was a great man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He is survived by his wife Cicely Johnson and their six children.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Demond Wilson attends the 2016 Chiller Theater Expo at Parsippany Hilton on April 22, 2016. <span class=\"credit\">WireImage<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Demond Wilson, Redd Foxx in \u201cSanford and Son.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-primary-tag\">\n<\/aside>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Demond Wilson and Redd Foxx pose for a \u201cSanford and Son\u201d photo call. <span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Wilson was the last surviving cast member from\u00a0\u201cSanford and Son,\u201d which aired on NBC. <\/p>\n<p>The show, which ran for six seasons from 1972 to 1977, followed Fred G. Sanford\u00a0(Redd Foxx), a junk dealer, and his son,\u00a0Lamont\u00a0(Wilson), who ran \u201cSanford and Son Salvage\u201d in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n<p>Foxx died in 1991 at age 68 after suffering a heart attack on the set of his CBS sitcom \u201cThe Royal Family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSanford and Son\u201d also starred Whitman Mayo, who died in 2001 at age 70, Don Bexley, who passed in 1997 at 87 and LaWanda Page, who died in 2002 at 81.<\/p>\n<p>Most recently, Nathaniel Taylor passed away at age 80 in 2019 and<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/22\/entertainment\/lynn-hamilton-dies-sanford-and-son-the-waltons-actress-dead-at-95\/\"> Lynn Hamilton died at age 95 in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson, who was born in Georgia in 1946, grew up in New York City and studied tap dancing and ballet. He served in the US Army from 1966 until 1968, and was stationed in Vietnam, where he was wounded. <\/p>\n<p>He subsequently returned to New York City and appeared in several Broadway shows before moving out to LA. <\/p>\n<p>His star turn on \u201cSanford and Son\u201d began a short time later. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Demond Wilson in \u201cSanford and Son\u201d in 1974. <span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson in a 1972 episode.  <span class=\"credit\">Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After his run on \u201cSanford and Son,\u201d Wilson went on to star in the sitcom \u201cThe New Odd Couple,\u201d which began airing in 1982. However, the show lasted just one season. <\/p>\n<p>He later took a step back from Hollywood and became an ordained minister.<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, Wilson reminisced on \u201cSanford and Son,\u201d writing in his memoir <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/Second_Banana\/mF_SbwAACAAJ?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cSecond Banana,\u201d:<\/a> \u201cRedd and I were making history back in those days. We were the first Blacks to be on television in that capacity and we opened the door for all those other shows that came after us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSanford and Son\u201d star Grady Demond Wilson has died at the age of 79. The actor, best known for playing Lamont Sanford, the son of Fred Sanford, in the smash-hit 1970s sitcom, died at his Palm Springs home on Friday following complications related to cancer. Wilson\u2019s son, Demond, confirmed the news to TMZ, saying: \u201cI [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2259933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[21751,304719,21741,314121,349564],"class_list":["post-2259932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-celebrities","tag-death","tag-entertainment","tag-sitcoms","tag-the-70s"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Actor-played-lead-role-in-beloved-groundbreaking-70s-sitcom.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2259932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2259934,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259932\/revisions\/2259934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2259933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2259932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2259932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2259932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}