George Jefferson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since February 2007.

Actors Isabel Sanford as Louise Jefferson and Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson in a scene from the iconic American television program The Jeffersons.

George Jefferson is a fictional character, played by actor Sherman Hemsley, who appeared on primetime American television from 1973 until 1985, in two CBS sitcoms: All in the Family (from 1973 until 1975) and its spinoff The Jeffersons (1975-1985).

George Jefferson was born in Harlem in 1929, an ambitious African American entrepreneur who started and managed a successful chain of seven dry cleaning stores in New York City called Jefferson Cleaners. On All in the Family, Jefferson lived in a working-class neighborhood in the borough of Queens, next door to the Bunker family, with his wife Louise (Isabel Sanford) and son Lionel (Mike Evans). Jefferson was referred to on All in the Family before he was first seen in 1973 (on the program, the reason given for his initial non-appearance was that he refused to set foot in his bigoted neighbor Archie Bunker's home; the actual reason was that Hemsley was appearing in the Broadway musical Purlie and would not commit to starring in All in the Family until his Broadway run ended). When the spin-off series The Jeffersons began in January 1975, George and his family had moved to a luxury apartment in a high-rise building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Actor Sherman Helmsley, who played George Jefferson

Like his neighbor Archie Bunker, George Jefferson was very opinionated, prone to anger, and often misinformed. He was in fact a sort of "black Archie Bunker," and held negative stereotypes of white people. Unlike Archie Bunker, George was a bit smarter as in a classic All in the Family episode ("Archie's Contract") he tells Archie about how his brother-in-law {like Archie} had fallen for an aluminum siding scam-although in one episode Louise Jefferson has to use George's dislike of Archie Bunker to manipulate George into going to the Bunker house. On occasion in The Jeffersons, George tries to prove he's smarter than everyone else-in one farcical episode George attempts to impress new clients (a mixed-race couple) by claiming he's a great friend of the Willis family-at the end Florence and Ralph the doorman have to pretend to be the Willis family-while the Willis pretend to be Florence and Ralph. George gets the clients but also has to foot the bill to Florence/Ralph/ & Tom and Helen Willis! Also like the Bunker character, George Jefferson softened as the years went on: by the time The Jeffersons left the air in 1985, the show rarely addressed topical issues such as racism or interracial marriage and focused more on the Jeffersons' family life, and on interactions with their maid Florence (played by Marla Gibbs) and with their neighbors.

[edit] Jefferson Cleaners

George's ownership of the dry-cleaning business was established in the third episode of All in the Family. In that episode, titled "Oh, My Aching Back," Lionel explains that the family had been involved in a car accident and used the insurance money ($3,200) to start the business (Archie, who had also been involved in a non-injury car accident, fakes a back injury to get a settlement).[1] Prior to George opening his store, he had worked as a janitor (and Louise as a housemaid); the family lived in a run-down section of Harlem prior to their move to Queens (which was often referred to during The Jeffersons). In the 1980 Jeffersons episode "The First Store" George and Louise reminisce about the first store's opening, which coincided with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. [2]. The 1983 Jeffersons episode "Change of a Dollar" also detailed in flashback the 1968 opening of the first Jefferson Cleaners store. [3] George had also served in the US navy as a cook aboard an aircraft carrier during the Korean War. A 1975 episode established that George's family had been Alabama sharecroppers; George was 45 years old {46 according to his mother}; George and Louise had been married 25 years; George had five cleaning stores-their first store was in Queens, New York. A 1977 episode established that George now had seven cleaning stores and had never completed high school and had been in business ten years.

Although not mentioned on The Jeffersons, it was shown that George was also the uncle of Chicago emergency room nurse Julie Williams on the short-lived comedy, E/R. He in fact, made a visit to Julie, when he was shopping for a scarf that Louise liked.

George's chief rival in the dry cleaning business was Gil Cunningham, with whom George had a considerably hostile relationship. However it was revealed later in the series after Mr. Cunningham had died that he had never wanted to be enemies with George and that his ruthless wife, played by actress Susan Ruttan had been the one who had wanted to ruin him all those years. In his will he had left a bowling trophy he had won in a tournament against Jefferson Cleaners to George with a letter inside that said "she put the 'cunning' in Cunningham" and warned him not to trust her.

George, along with Louise and their maid Florence made an appearance on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, purchasing the Banks' mansion with Louise in the series finale.