Johnny Brown Bookman Dies at 84

[MikeLutton]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...LZaego7NsFDhds

The versatile performer played building super Nathan Bookman on the sitcom, starred with Sammy Davis Jr. on Broadway and was a regular on 'Laugh-In.'


BY MIKE BARNES

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MARCH 4, 2022 8:40PM
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Johnny Brown
Johnny Brown PHOTOFEST
Johnny Brown, the easygoing actor, comedian and singer best known for portraying the housing project superintendent Nathan Bookman on Good Times, has died. He was 84.

Brown died Wednesday, his daughter, actress Sharon Catherine Brown, announced on Instagram. “Our family is devastated. Devastated. Devastated. Beyond heartbroken. Barely able to breathe,” she wrote.


Further details of his death were not immediately available.

Brown also recorded songs and performed in a band with saxophonist Sam “The Man” Taylor, appeared twice on Broadway in the 1960s and was a regular performer for three seasons on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.

Brown, who did a mean impression of Louis Armstrong and others, was a leading contender to play Lamont opposite Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son, but because his contract bound him to Laugh-In, the role went to Demond Wilson.

With former Laugh-In writer Allan Manings serving as a producer on Good Times, Brown joined the Chicago-set CBS comedy in 1975 midway through its second season. His character was often teased about his weight by the gangly J.J. (Jimmie Walker) and other members of the Evans family.

“Sometimes you can do too much of a thing, and it doesn’t come natural,” Brown said in 2019. “With everybody [calling Bookman] ‘buffalo butt’ in a scene, it loses something. … They even had Janet [Jackson], who had just come on the show, answering like Mr. Buffalo Butt.

“And they used it in every show. They used it when I walked in the show, all through the scene. When I left the scene, they used it. I couldn’t say anything because I have a wife and two kids to support. Now at my age, I would have to say something.”

Brown was born on June 11, 1937, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and raised in Harlem. He won an amateur night competition at the Apollo Theater; starred in nightclub acts with his future wife, June, and with tap dancer Gregory Hines Jr. and drummer Gregory Hines Sr.; and recorded songs for Columbia and Atlantic records.

While working in the Catskills, Brown met Sammy Davis Jr., and the legendary entertainer would prove to be an inspiration. “He did all the things I wanted to do,” Brown said in a 1996 interview. “I wanted to be a well-rounded, complete entertainer; I didn’t just want to sing or tell a joke.”

In 1964, when Davis was preparing to star in a musical adaptation of Golden Boy on Broadway, he got Brown a gig as Godfrey Cambridge’s understudy. (Brown said he had never even seen a Broadway show before that.)


But then Cambridge began bickering with director Arthur Penn. “In those days, a big thing for a comedian was an album. Like Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor and those guys, if an album sold, they could make big concert money,” Brown said. Cambridge couldn’t “get out of a contract, so he started arguing every day until two days before opening for previews.”

That’s when Cambridge was fired. Brown took over as Ronnie and took the lead on the show-stopping number “Don’t Forget 127th Street” as Golden Boy lasted more than 500 performances.

Brown made his film debut portraying a blind pianist in the Davis-starring drama A Man Called Adam (1966) — future Good Times co-star Ja’Net DuBois also was in that — and returned to Broadway in 1968 for Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, directed by Sidney Poitier. Despite a cast that featured Cicely Tyson, Diane Ladd, Louis Gossett Jr. and David Steinberg, the comedy lasted but a week.

He came to Los Angeles when Neil Simon asked him to play a waiter on a train in The Out of Towners (1970). While in town, he met influential CBS casting director Ethel Winant, “and by the time I got back to New York, I had a series” — The Leslie Uggams Show.

Brown was on Laugh-In for a year before he learned why he was hired for that. Davis “had dinner with [Dan] Rowan and [Dick] Martin,” he recalled. “They were looking for new faces, and Sammy, without batting an eye, said, ‘Get Johnny Brown.'”

Brown also was a welcome sight on shows including Julia, Maude, The Rookies, Lotsa Luck!, The Jeffersons, Archie Bunker’s Place, Family Matters, Sister, Sister, Moonlighting and Martin and in such films as The Wiz (1978), Poitier’s Hanky Panky (1982), Life (1999) and Town & Country (2001).

He also pitched Write Brothers pens (“Write on brothers, write on!”) in a series of musical commercials for Papermate in the early 1970s and starred in The Gospel Truth, which played on stages around the country in the late ’80s.

In addition to his daughter and his wife of 61 years, survivors include his son, John Jr.

[Zoneboy]

He was great as Nathan Bookman and very funny on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

That's 3:

Johnny Brown
Tim Considine
Mitchell Ryan

[GoldenTV]

Originally Posted by MikeLutton

Brown, who did a mean impression of Louis Armstrong and others, was a leading contender to play Lamont opposite Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son, but because his contract bound him to Laugh-In, the role went to Demond Wilson.

If Brown was cast as Lamont character on Sanford and Son-since Fred kept calling Lamont character "dummy" with Demond Wilson-I wonder if Fred would have called Brown some type of fat nickname also.

[TVLegend]

NOOOO. RIP. “Booger” or “Buffalo Butt”.

[TVLegend]

Originally Posted by Zoneboy

That's 3:

Johnny Brown
Tim Considine
Mitchell Ryan

I already HATE 2022 with a burning passion.

[TVLegend]

Originally Posted by GoldenTV

If Brown was cast as Lamont character on Sanford and Son-since Fred kept calling Lamont character "dummy" with Demond Wilson-I wonder if Fred would have called Brown some type of fat nickname also.

He probably would have called him something like fatso or a whale or a “big, fat dummy” or something like that.

[Zoneboy]

[TMC]

Good Times alums Janet Jackson and BernNadette Stanis pay tribute to Johnny Brown

The actor, singer and comedian, best known for playing Good Times building superintendent Nathan Bookman, died last Wednesday at age 84. "Such loving memories of our time together," tweeted Jackson. "You were full of laughter and forever smiling. Always so sweet and so kind to me. I love you and will miss you." On Instagram, Stanis wrote: "I am devastated to hear about my dear friend Johnny Brown who played Bookmen on our show Good Times. I will miss all the stories about Sammy Davis Jr. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and even John Wayne. His talent was beyond measure…. He was such a pleasure to work with. I certainly will miss his happy spirit and big smile. Praying for his family in every way."

[PracTz]

Originally Posted by TMC

Good Times alums Janet Jackson and BernNadette Stanis pay tribute to Johnny Brown

The actor, singer and comedian, best known for playing Good Times building superintendent Nathan Bookman, died last Wednesday at age 84. "Such loving memories of our time together," tweeted Jackson. "You were full of laughter and forever smiling. Always so sweet and so kind to me. I love you and will miss you." On Instagram, Stanis wrote: "I am devastated to hear about my dear friend Johnny Brown who played Bookmen on our show Good Times. I will miss all the stories about Sammy Davis Jr. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and even John Wayne. His talent was beyond measure…. He was such a pleasure to work with. I certainly will miss his happy spirit and big smile. Praying for his family in every way."

It's nice to know that, in spite of Thelma and Penny making jokes at Bookman's expense, their performers truly valued Mr. Brown's contributions!

[AB]

Very sad, may he rest in peace.

[Sonny Carson]

He was great as ‘Bookman’, but he was more than Bookman. He was a true talent, R.I.P.!

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TVLegend

NOOOO. RIP. “Booger” or “Buffalo Butt”.

Was the verbal abuse that was hurled out against Bookman downright cruel and mean-spirted? I mean, why was Bookman painted as some sort of villain or a person who was asking to be insulted? He was basically, an easy-going and likable fellow so what did he do to ask for all of the name calling besides being a heavy-set person?

[PracTz]

Originally Posted by TMC

Was the verbal abuse that was hurled out against Bookman downright cruel and mean-spirted? I mean, why was Bookman painted as some sort of villain or a person who was asking to be insulted? He was basically, an easy-going and likable fellow so what did he do to ask for all of the name calling besides being a heavy-set person?

Essentially, early on he'd threatened to throw out the Evanses but only relented with James's passing but he never did more than raise the most token protests to being called names after that! Yeah, Bookman WAS an easy-going and likable fellow but the Evanses, Willona and Penny more or less used him as the literal butt of their jokes instead of truly considering him an actual friend (for the most part). Even when he went to bat for Willona so she could legally adopt Penny (because HE had been adopted by a good family as a child), his good intentions were barely acknowledged but they sure called out his near unintentional bungling.

[DEH55]

Even when he would be at The Evan's not doing any harm they would make fat jokes. Today that's fat shaming. Then it was lazy writing for cheap laughs. Imagine you were a overweight person in those days. It might not be so funny.

[D-Dey]

I was hoping to post a clip from his scene in "The Out-of-Towners" but I couldn't find it.