Was Demond Wilson on drugs by the last season of Sanford and Son?

[cloggedmind]

Originally Posted by staytuned

Who was the worst spender of all time: Redd Foxx or MC Hammer?

Between the two, I'd say The Hammer had a worse case of The Spends. Seems he was spending something like $10-20 mil annually at the top of his fame but only worth about $1 mil by income. A scorching case of affluenza sent him rocketing to the poor house.

Redd was known to throw cash around for well over a decade and made some really bad investments such as the "flocked" car company: Have your brand new, $15,000 Cadillac covered in glued-on cloth that you don't have to wash, just brush occasionally. Well, what happens in the rain or when the sun damages it? What about the value of the car after it has been defaced?

But Foxx's financial downfall ultimately came from bad management, bad money management, and attempts to game the system when it came to claiming income. He simply couldn't hide the fact that his shows pulled in lots of dough. He had, what-- 2 highly lucrative HBO specials in the late 70's, did a couple of home video concert releases and had records released under big labels like Atlantic for real paychecks as opposed to the fly-by-nite deals for his early records (which changed hands so many times the paper trail was simply lost by 1976 leaving unscrupulous types to claim public domain, if lore is to be believed).

Hiding wealth in plain sight wasn't something Foxx could pull off. Even retreating to his very austere and unassuming-looking-on-the-outside Nevada dwelling was barely a disguise for his lavish way of living.

Handing money over to hard luck cases among his friends and entourage put Redd in a bad place. . . He became the go-to guy for handouts and he simply couldn't turn down a friend in need. It would seem that avenue only went one way, though, with most everyone except LaWanda Page who, when Redd was in desperate need of some cash to pacify the IRS collectors before The Big Siege, gave him something along the lines of 4-grand to pacify the creditors.

I wish I could find the interview that Page and Whitman Mayo gave to BET after Redd's passing. Some of this topic was touched on and both actors had plenty of anecdotes to illustrate the difficult time Redd had in his last years.

[staytuned]

Back on topic, with drugs being behind-the-scenes of the show, it's surprising that nobody including Wilson had OD'd at the time.