Redd Foxx jumped ship to ABC and Desmond Wilson held out for more money, so the producers of Sanford and Son took the old setting and some of the supporting players, introduced a different central character, and built a new show around them for NBC and called it Sanford Arms.
In the opening episode, it was established that Fred and Lamont Sanford had moved to Arizona. A widowed old army buddy of Fred’s named Phil Wheeler (Teddy Wilson) had put a down payment on the property at 9114 South Central in Los Angeles and was turning it into a hotel-rooming house.
With Phil were his 19-year-old daughter Angie (Tina Andrews) who worked as a cocktail waitress at a seedy bar called The Foxey Fox and his bright wisecracking 12-year-old son, Nat (John Earl).
Also on the scene were Phil’s girlfriend Jeannie (Bebe Drake), Aunt Esther (LaWanda Page) who came around to collect the mortgage payments for Fred, Esther’s husband Woody (Raymond Allen), Grady (Whitman Mayo) – who was now married to Dolly (Norma Miller) – and Bubba (Don Bexley), the bellhop and maintenance man.
Business was so slow that Phil could be heard saying, “Yes, sir, we’ll give you any kind of lease you want – day by day, week by week, month by month, or our low, low special: till death do you part”.
Unsurprisingly, this attempt to salvage the series was a total failure and it lasted less than a month, with only four of the eight recorded episodes making it on the air on Friday nights in September and October 1977.
When Redd Foxx returned a few years later with his new series simply titled Sanford, it was as if The Sanford Arms had never occurred.
Phil Wheeler
Teddy Wilson Angie Wheeler
Tina Andrews Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Wheeler
John Earl Jeannie
Bebe Drake Aunt Esther Anderson
LaWanda Page Grady Wilson
Whitman Mayo Dolly Simpson Wilson
Norma Miller Bubba Bexley
Don Bexley
Episodes
Bye, Fred, Hi, Phil | Phil’s Assertion School | The Grandparents | Phil’s Past || The TV Show*** | Young Love*** | The Wedding Reception*** | The Ernie Williams Memorial Golf Course
