Redd Foxx Quotes from the show's run

[Flash72]

Redd Foxx on the initial success of the show:

"Sanford and Son made it in a few weeks, yet Redd Foxx has been around for thirty-three years, what took them so long?"

Redd on his nightclub days:

"I was doing two shows a night at the clubs-ninety minutes' work for grand-theft money."

Redd on his Sanford and Son success:

"The hardest thing for me to adjust to is sleeping at night. I use to sleep all day when I worked in Vegas; you meet a whole different class of people when you sleep at night. The character I'm playing is a natural, pretty much like me if I were sixty-five. Being the kind of comedian I am, I always try to become the part of the story I'm telling anyway, so doing the show falls into that same area. It's really not a whole new thing for me-but I didn't realize it until I'd done the first few shows."

Redd on avoiding the Amos and Andy sterotype:

"One line in a script referred to a sapphire ring. So in order to eliminate the word "sapphire"-which was a name on Amos and Andy-I called it a red ruby. I just don't want the word "sapphire" on my show. I don't want the show to be Amos and Andy."

Redd's reaction to a New York Times negative review of the show:

"I don't agree that our show is white to the core. The success is what matters, not the color. The fact that we're doing a show that appeals to everybody, not just blacks, or whites or Mexicans, but everybody. It's entertainment. I personally thought it would be meaningful to have a black show that appeals to everyone. It's a fun show, about love and most of all entertainment. There are incidents that happen with us that happen in every family, black or white. I don't think a show has to be all-black. Why, that's setting us back, not moving forward."

Foxx on his walking off the show:

"Money isn't the main consideration. I don't even want it under thse conditions. After thirty-six years as a nightclub act, I can't adjust to working seven days a week, being holed up in a rehearsal room with no windows and no sunlight. We only have two principal actors on the show. All in the Family has four principals. That makes less script for everyone to learn. But for me, fifty-one years old with forty or fifty pages of script to go over, that's hard. I object to all those jokes about coffins, people rolling their eyeballs, girls dressed like damn fools in rummage sale outfits. We don't all have to be raggedy just because it's set in a junkyard. When I watch the show, I miss myself."

Redd Foxx on returning to the role of Fred Sanford in 1980:

"It was money. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse."