The Jeffersons - "Death Smiles on a Dry Cleaner" - 9:00 pm Thursday, May 14 on WPIX Antenna TV

Sherman Hemsley (Actor) .. George Jefferson

Born: February 01, 1938
Died: July 24, 2012
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Trivia: Hemsley is a short, aggressive black comic actor. He came to acting late; after working for the Post Office he moved to New York in the late '60s, hoping to find theater work. Soon he won the choice role of Gitlow in the Broadway musical Purlie (1970), and his performance made a strong, lasting impression on TV producer Norman Lear. When Lear's TV sitcom All in the Family became a hit, Lear created the character of George Jefferson, Archie Bunker's black neighbor; after deciding that his first choice for the role was all wrong, in 1973 Lear tracked Hemsley down in San Francisco, where the latter was appearing in the play Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. Hemsley was signed for the role, and played it from 1973-85; from 1975-85 he was the costar of the spinoff sitcom The Jeffersons, a top-rated show for many years, for which Hemsley at one point earned $60,000 per episode. He later starred in Amen (1986-91). In 1981 he reprised his Broadway role in the cable-TV production of Purlie. He debuted onscreen in Love at First Bite (1979), appearing with Isabel Sanford, his TV wife. His screen appearances have been few.

Isabel Sanford (Actor) .. Louise Jefferson

Born: August 29, 1917
Died: July 09, 2004
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: Defying her mother's wishes, African-American actress Isabel Sanford secretly worked as a nightclub performer in her teens. Upon winning 3rd prize in an Apollo Theatre amateur contest, Sanford could keep her new career a secret no longer. Married to a house painter who worked only on a seasonal basis, she held down a full-time job as a keypunch operator at the New York City department of Welfare, spending her evenings acting with such groups as Harlem Y and the American Negro Theatre. Seeking out better opportunities, Sanford packed her family into a bus and headed to Hollywood in the early 1960s. Her breakthrough film role was in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; she played Tillie the cook, who heartily disapproved of the upcoming interracial marriage between Katharine Houghton and Sidney Poitier (the hardest part of this assignment was not mouthing the "controversial" dialogue but preparing dinner in a key scene; Sanford had never learned to cook!) On the strength of this film, Isabel Sanford was hired for several guest spots on The Carol Burnett Show, which led to her most famous characterization: Louise Jefferson, the acerbic but loving wife of "movin' on up" Sherman Hemsley, on the immensely popular sitcom The Jeffersons (1975-82).

Marla Gibbs (Actor) .. Florence Johnston

Born: June 14, 1931
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Trivia: Was employed by a major airline when she was cast on The Jeffersons; continued working for the airline during her first few seasons on the show. Is also a singer; released an album, It's Never Too Late, in 2006. Reunited with actress Regina King, who played her daughter on the 1980s sitcom 227, in a 2012 episode of Southland.

Ned Wertimer (Actor) .. Ralph Hart

Born: October 27, 1923
Died: January 02, 2013

Barrie Ingham (Actor) .. Captain

Born: February 10, 1934
Birthplace: Halifax, West Yorkshire

Steve Nevil (Actor) .. Steward

Bernard Fox (Actor) .. Andrew Derek

Born: May 11, 1927
Died: December 14, 2016
Birthplace: Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales

Trivia: Bernard Fox was descended from a long line of British stage actors; perhaps his most famous forebear was his uncle, veteran comic actor Wilfred Lawson. Fox made his screen debut in 1956's Soho Incident, appearing in several other British films before he was brought to Hollywood by actor/producer Danny Thomas in 1963. Generally cast in stuffy, old-school-tie roles, the toothbrush-mustached Fox flourished in American films and TV programs well into the late 1980s. Bernard Fox was most widely recognized for his TV work, notably his recurring appearances as gentleman's gentleman Malcolm Merriweather on The Andy Griffith Show and wacky warlock Dr. Bombay on Bewitched; he also played Dr. Watson opposite Stewart Granger's Sherlock Holmes in the 1972 TV-movie adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. He appeared in blockbusters like Titanic (1997) and The Mummy (1999) towards the end of his career; one of his final roles was reprising his Dr. Bombay character on the supernatural soap opera Passions. Fox died in 2016, at age 89.

Edie McClurg (Actor) .. Audrey Blume

Born: July 23, 1951
Birthplace: Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Trivia: Short, pleasantly plump, and endowed with an endearingly resonant voice, American actress Edie McClurg is still best remembered as the perky school secretary in Ferris Beuler's Day Off. McClurg has been a favorite supporting performer since her 1976 film debut in Carrie, and much of her TV work has been as a comedy sketch performer, notably on Tony Orlando and Dawn (1976), The David Letterman Show (a 1980 daytimer), The Big Show (1980) and No Soap, Radio (1982). Ms. McClurg has also played many a nosy neighbor/in-law/secretary on such TV sitcoms as Harper Valley PTA (1982), Small Wonder (1985) and The Hogan Family (1988). McClurg received larger roles in the TV series The Kallikaks (1977), in which she was the wife of series star David Huddleston. In the years to come, McClurg would continue to keep up a prolific career, most memorably staring on the series Life with Louie and 7th Heaven, as well as in movies like Flubber, Van Wilder, and Fired Up!.

Russell Johnson (Actor) .. Mac Steele

Born: November 10, 1924
Died: January 16, 2014
Birthplace: Ashley, Pennsylvania, United States

Trivia: Having served as a bombardier in World War II, Russell Johnson used the GI Bill to finance his studies at the Actor's Lab. Between performing assignments, Johnson supported himself by driving a cab and working the assembly line at a ballpoint pen factory. His first movie break (indeed, his first movie) was in director Paul Henreid's For Men Only (1952), an exposé of barbaric college-fraternity initiation ceremonies; Johnson was suitably loathsome as the sadistic frat leader who is exposed as a snivelling coward in the climax. The balance of the 1950s found Johnson appearing in several fondly remembered science fiction efforts like It Came From Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956) and The Space Children (1958). He carried over this relationship with the Unreal into his classic performance as an anguished time-traveller desperately attempting to prevent Lincoln's assassination in the 1961 Twilight Zone installment Back There. In 1964, Russell Johnson took his first steps into TV sitcom immortality when he assumed the role of "The Professor" (aka Roy Hinkley) in Gilligan's Island, a role that he'd continued to essay on and off for the next two decades in Gilligan cartoons and TV-movie spin-offs. Johnson worked in television through the 1980s and early '90s before retiring from acting; he died in 2014 at age 89.

David Downing (Actor) .. Edgar Thornton

Born: July 21, 1943

The Jeffersons: Death Smiles on a Dry Cleaner

9:00 pm - 9:30 pm, Thursday, May 14 on WPIX Antenna TV (11.2)

Death Smiles on a Dry Cleaner

Season 9, Episode 9