Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (22 page)

Life was good for everyone, except Jerry’s wife, Lillian. I would drive to their house, and Helen would be there working. I didn’t know where Lillian was. When I left, sometimes after midnight, Helen would stay behind. I wanted to say, “Need a ride somewhere?” but it was not my place to interfere in their lives.

At 8 o’clock the next morning I would go to our office at 9000 Sunset Boulevard, and Jerry and Helen would already be there. Their relationship was something I knew was happening but did not want to know was happening. I felt for Lillian and their kids. But Jerry soon shacked up with Helen and divorced Lillian. Helen Gorman became Helen Kushnick, the name by which she would become infamous during the coming Late-Night War.

There was another name change too. I noticed that my company title had become vice president and then secretary. When I asked Helen about that, she said, “You know, we can’t walk around as Ebony Genius. You’re a comic. People don’t look at you as a manager, a business guy. Let me and Jerry take it over.”

“But we’re doing well,” I said, not at all happy about this palace coup.

“Jimmie, it’s hard for us to sign new clients when they see us as Ebony Genius.”

“Come on, people don’t care what the name is or who’s behind it as long as they’re working.”

Helen was the kind of person in Hollywood who you might not like but you wanted on your side. And if she was not on your side, you hoped she was not against you. She was a shrewd negotiator and would do anything—lie, cheat, or step on anyone—to get what she wanted. She kept pounding me about leaving the company and would not let up.

All I ever wanted from the management company was to make it possible for Letterman, Leno, and all my guys to work. I knew how miserable Helen would make my life until I gave in. I wanted peace, not constant war. Finally, I agreed to leave. I sold my share of the company for $10,000. That’s right, people: I signed away the management fees, usually 15 percent, on everything Letterman, Leno, and all of the others did for only $10,000. That was not a smart move—not then and definitely not later—though no one at the time knew what Letterman or Leno would do in the future.

That future arrived sooner than I expected. Maybe Helen already knew, as I was conveniently exiting Ebony Genius, that NBC was thinking about giving Letterman a morning talk show. But though Letterman liked Jerry, he was not a fan of Helen. He knew that with me out of the company, he would have to deal directly with her—and he dreaded that. So when esteemed managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe—whose clients included the likes of Woody Allen, Billy Crystal, Robert Klein, and Joan Rivers—approached Dave, he listened. They were among the best managers anyone could have, and they could take Letterman to the top, which is what they told him.

“I’m really thinking about moving to Rollins and Joffe,” Letterman said to me.

“Look, Dave, I said when you signed with us that if you wanted to go someplace else, you could go someplace else. We will never do anything to stand in your way.”

“I’m glad I have your blessing.”

But when Helen found out about his decision, she threatened Rollins and Joffe. Unless they paid up, she was not going to let Letterman free of his contract.

I got in her face. “I promised Dave we were not going to stand in the way!”

“You are no longer part of the company,” she shot back. She was right. Gone was Ebony Genius; they were now General Management. “We’ll do what we want,” she said. “Fuck you!”

Rollins and Joffe paid them for Dave’s contract, perhaps $25,000. Whatever the figure, that was a good deal for Rollins and Joffe. But the money was not the point. I keep my word, and Helen had broken it for me. She was unscrupulous, a quality that Leno would better understand at a later time.

Jerry remained my lawyer, which turned out to be fortunate for my mother.

After almost twenty years of marriage Mr. Boyce passed away from cancer. Almost immediately my mother tried to contact my father again. When she told me, I was furious: “I’m telling you right now, if you ever talk to
him
again, I’ll never talk to
you
.”

She tracked him down anyway. He was living in a nice apartment in Brooklyn, off the river. He had not changed at all: He was over sixty years old and had two girlfriends. And now my mother became his third girlfriend. She would go all the way to Brooklyn from the Bronx to clean his apartment so other women could join him there at night.

This was beyond my comprehension. I had been giving her money for this or that and I wanted to buy her a house, but I told Jerry to stop all that. I did not want my father to get his hands on any of the money I made and gave to her. He said he would do that.

I found out later that he lied and kept my money flowing to her. He even arranged to buy her a house with my money. He meant well. He said, “She’s your mother! Come on, she’s your mom!” But I did not want her to be with my father. Yet I could not stop her. All I could do was refuse to talk to her, which I did for three years.

In its fourth season
Good Times
had held its own in the ratings, still Top Thirty, still nearly fifteen million households, even with yet another day change, to Wednesdays. In the second to last show of the season J. J. said “Dyn-o-mite!” for the final time. In another of the last episodes that season Esther said “dyn-o-mite!” for the first time.

Perhaps that was too much for her to swallow.

She had lobbied from the very inception of the show that this black family would not be a single-parent household, that there would be two strong family figures, male and female. And J. J. was not the male role model she had in mind. The introduction of Dixon, the owner of a small appliance repair shop, did not fill the void either. Under the pretense of illness Esther left the show the summer after season four.

When season five began, viewers were told that Florida and Carl were married and living in Arizona. They were not to be seen. Ja’Net was now top billed and Johnny Brown, who played building superintendent Nathan Bookman in earlier episodes, came on board as a regular cast member. I was excited to have Johnny around because he too was a stand-up comic, so he naturally became my best friend on the show.

Another new member of the cast was Janet Jackson, who played Penny Gordon, a victim of child abuse who followed J. J. home one day because she had a crush on him. No episodes of the series were more serious than these involving child abuse. Penny was from a single-parent home, and her mentally stressed mother, played by Chip Fields (who had not landed the part of Thelma years before), burned her with an iron and broke her arm. Neighbor Willona, now the surrogate mother for the Evans Family, adopted her.

Janet was only about nine years old, but she was a great little actress. She was a stage veteran even at that age, having been in The Jacksons and also on the
Sonny & Cher Show
, where she played a tiny Mae West character, a bit she repeated on
Good Times
.

Coincidentally, around the same time I was linked in a weird way to her brother Michael. Director Sidney Lumet saw me at the Store and wanted me to play the Scarecrow in
The Wiz
, the film adaptation of the Broadway musical that was an all-black version of
The Wizard of Oz
. I guess he figured I sure looked like a scarecrow. There was no audition, but the filmmakers did ask if I could dance. I said no, I could not dance at all, which is the truth, despite J. J.’s antics. That didn’t seem to bother them. They said they would work around my disability and they put an offer on the table. Diana Ross was set to star as Dorothy and my old friend Richard Pryor was the Wizard. I also knew Nipsey Russell was cast as the Tin Man because he called to encourage me to sign the contract.

But
Good Times
could not free me for the several weeks I needed to be away to shoot what became the most expensive movie musical produced to that time. Replacing me as the Scarecrow was a guy who really could dance, Michael Jackson. That’s right, people: Michael Jackson was the second choice! I wasn’t terribly disappointed about losing the role, though, especially after the film became one of the biggest bombs in movie history.

Many years later I was playing the Palace Station in Vegas and was into my Michael Jackson chunk, which was killing. I have always done jokes about the Jacksons. An old one:

Things are so tight, the Jackson 5 had to lay off two brothers.

Now Michael was the focus:

Is it my imagination or is Michael Jackson getting whiter by the minute? Really, I remember the old days when he was black.

I looked into the front of the audience to my left and saw an older man getting up and rumbling around.

Now he has this little Debby Boone nose. He can’t even breathe through that thing anymore. It’s embarrassing what’s going on, it’s embarrassing for all black people.

Though the audience was laughing, I heard the foulest language coming from the old man in front.

“You motherfucker! How dare you! You’re a piece of shit!”

Sometimes people don’t like the act, but this was way out of line. I looked a little closer at him—and I recognized Joe Jackson, father of Michael, Janet, Jermaine, Tito, Jackie, Marlon, and Randy.

He waved his cane menacingly at me and limped onto the stage, screaming, “How dare you attack my son! He has more talent in his right pinkie than you have in your whole body!” The audience, however, could not hear what he was saying.

I was so surprised that I did something a stand-up is not supposed to do with an audience member—I touched him. I went to him, grabbed his hand and turned him around to face the audience.

“I was just talking about the King of Pop,” I announced. “The man who produced the King of Pop, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Joe Jackson!”

The crowd, of course, applauded like crazy. A big smile swept across Jackson’s face, and he happily waved to the audience. As he walked off the stage he said, “Don’t you ever fuckin’ say anything about my son again!”

Back on
Good Times
, J. J. grew up in season five. Working full time as an artist at an ad agency, he truly took on the father role. From vetting Thelma’s new boyfriend and disciplining Michael, who the police caught with Penny joyriding in a stolen car, to having an affair with a married woman that caused him to develop an ulcer—J. J. matured. Gone too was the blue hat.

That season also had the strangest episode in the entire run of the series, when J. J. dreamed about being white and thus getting a promotion. The blue hat returned for only that episode to help identify J. J.’s alter ego, played by a white actor. The episode was so noteworthy that the
Wayans Bros
. show parodied it nearly twenty years later, with Bern Nadette, Johnny, and Ja’Net making guest appearances. Shawn Wayans played J. J. and Marlon Wayans played Michael.

In their sketch they turned the idea upside down, with Shawn upset over the Affirmative Action aspect of a computer firm hiring him only because he was black. He then dozed off as he watched a
Good Times
marathon and dreamed he was in the sitcom as J. J., who was in a similar situation and seeking advice from Willona, Thelma, Michael, and Bookman. When he woke up, Shawn said, “That’s it, that’s what I’m going to do!” A sitcom had given him the solution to his dilemma. Doesn’t it always?

Our ratings for the season plummeted as we barely cracked the Top Forty. With John and now Esther gone too, there was no family on
Good Times
—and the audience changed the channel.

Lear phoned Esther on the set of
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, a TV movie in which she was starring, and asked her to come back. He sent her two dozen roses, promised her a raise, and assured her that the character of J. J. would be modified and that Carl Dixon would be wiped from existence. She never approved of the Dixon character, believing Florida would not have moved on so quickly after James’s death and that the devoutly Christian woman would never fall for atheist Carl.

Esther returned for the 1978–79 season back on top of the credits—and her crusade against J. J. continued. She explained to a reporter for a black newspaper, “I go to schools in underprivileged areas and the first thing the children say to me is, ‘Where’s J. J.?’ I tell them, ‘I hope he’s in the library learning to read. Don’t emulate J. J., copy Jimmie Walker.’ Jimmie Walker is a hardworking young man.” She added, “Jimmie and I don’t have a great relationship, because we are two different people. I can work well with him, but I can work well with the Devil.”

Thanks. I guess.

Again she lambasted the show for not having more black writers: “You can’t tell me what it’s like to be black unless you are black. . . . We’ve usually had a fringe black writer on the show but one without too much to say.”

Again, a few facts: During our first three seasons creator Eric Monte wrote the pilot (he also wrote the popular film
Cooley High
, which became the basis for the TV series
What’s Happening!!
) and Bob Peete, who wrote several scripts, became a story editor and production consultant. He would later write and produce for
What’s Happening Now!
and
Amen
. Thad Mumford (
The Cosby Show
) wrote for us and so too did Paul Mooney and Levi Taylor.

Another fact: Black viewers did not notice the color of the writer. Of all TV series—dramas and comedies, black or white—blacks rated
Good Times
among their top three favorites throughout its run. Obviously, the writers did not have to be black for the black audience to love
Good Times
.

Nevertheless, Lear scoured the country, turning over every rock at every black college, in an effort to find good comedy writers who were black. Nothing would have made him happier than to have a staff of black comedy writers. Me too, not only because it would help
Good Times
but also because I could bring them to Ebony Genius, which was still going at the time. An issue of
Black Stars
magazine from April 1976 quoted me saying, “I’ve been looking every place, man, but I just haven’t been able to find any good craftsmen in the field. If I can find some they got a job, it’s that simple.” I gave my office address and begged for anyone interested to get in touch with me. Lear too had an open-door policy, one not available to white writers. But sitcom writing is specialized and difficult, and neither Lear nor I would accept mediocrity just because someone was black.