Was John Amos Really Fired From ‘Good Times’?

Of all the Norman Lear sitcoms on CBS during the ’70s, Good Times was perhaps the most interesting. But was the series’ father, played by John Amos fired from the show? Here we explore what really happened with Amos and the friction that happened behind the scenes, but we’ll start at the beginning.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the show was a spinoff from another sitcom starring Bea Arthur called Maude, which itself was a spinoff from All in the Family. Lear, who passed away not all that long ago in December 2023, really knew how to get the most out of a TV show back in the day.

Good Times was really something of an anomaly back in the ’70s. Imagine this: it was a show about a Black family, loving mother and father, trying to support each other the very best that they could. Initially, the show’s writers, along with Lear, had wanted Florida Evans (Esther Rolle) to be a mother raising her three kids on her own, but Rolle had put her foot down. She demanded that John Amos, who had appeared as her husband on Maude, be an integral part of the show.

And you know what? It worked. Amos and Rolle had great chemistry together; in fact, the entire cast did.

That said, tensions started to rise fairly early on when the oldest Evans son, J.J. (Jimmie Walker), became the breakout character on the show with his trademark “Dy-no-mite!” catchphrase. J.J. really clicked with younger viewers, and as time went on, his character became more of what Amos thought was a cartoonish stereotype.

Everett Collection

With Good Times turning into “The Jimmie Walker Show,” Amos became increasingly frustrated with the scripts that he was being presented with. So was Rolle. However, Amos was much more vocal than Rolle about his discomfort with the show’s decision to play up the J.J. character and move away from many of the positive family dynamics established in the earliest episodes.

So, while the show was on hiatus after Season 3, Lear made the decision to fire Amos. The phone call was relatively brief. As described by Amos, Lear called him and told him, “Hey John, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that the show has been picked up for Season 4, but the bad news is that you won’t be with us.”

Yikes. Talk about harsh.

With that, the show became what Lear and the creative team had wanted all along — a show about a mother raising a family on her own. The decision was made to have Amos’ character, James, die offscreen during the first episode of the season, thereby eliminating any possibility of a future return. And you know what? The show was never the same.

There’s a really good video hosted on YouTube where Amos talks about getting kicked off the show. In that clip, he is very articulate about all of the factors that led to his dismissal, and it’s very interesting that he’s quite willing to accept much of the blame.

MGM/ Courtesy: Everett Collection.

Although Amos had been forced to move on from Good Times, it was impossible to lose track of him. How could anyone? He had been part of the phenomenon that was the TV miniseries Roots, and then in 1982, he showed up in the Don Coscarelli cult classic The Beastmaster, which, by the way, played on Home Box Office so often back in the day that many people joked that HBO actually stood for “Hey, Beastmaster’s On.”

Almost two decades later, Amos continued to make TV viewers stand up and take notice as Admiral Fitzwallace on the TV show The West Wing. Truth be told, throughout his lengthy career, which spanned multiple decades and over a hundred different roles, he was always very much an actor in demand. This indisputable fact was further evidenced by his triumphant return to the franchise that he was unceremoniously fired from all those years ago, when he made a surprise appearance on the live version of Good Times that aired on ABC in December 2019.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Amos confided that he and Lear patched things up years ago and actually built a great relationship, one of mutual respect. Even though the entertainment world sadly said goodbye to John Amos in August 2024, it is comforting to know that these two television legends reconciled long before they passed.

This Tragic Esther Rolle Moment in ‘Good Times’ Cannot Be Forgotten

It was fueled by real-life emotions.

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1970s Fall TV

September 2023

Take a trip back to the ’70s by looking at the TV Guide Magazine Fall Preview primetime lineups.

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