Sanford and Son

He Wasn’t Marching. He Was Mocking. And That Was Just As Powerful. In the pantheon of American TV characters, Fred Sanford doesn’t wear a cape, […]

A Junk Dealer, a Big Mouth, and the Show That Took Over the 70s When Sanford and Son first aired on NBC in January 1972, […]

Live tapings of Sanford and Son were always filled with laughter—until one unforgettable night when the studio audience suddenly went dead silent. It was a […]

Redd Foxx made America laugh every week as Fred Sanford—but behind the scenes, his real-life health scare nearly ended the show before it reached its […]

Junkyard as Metaphor Sanford and Son was billed as a sitcom, but beneath the laughs, it was steeped in the realities of working-class Black life […]

The Ultimate “Straight Man” Every great comic needs a foil, and on Sanford and Son, that foil was Lamont Sanford, played with impressive restraint by […]

A Comeback Written in Junk When NBC greenlit Sanford and Son in 1972, the network took a gamble—on an unfiltered, fast-talking comedian who hadn’t been […]

Sanford and Son made its name by walking a fine line between outrageous comedy and uncomfortable truths. But one episode crossed that line—so much so […]

Most fans remember Sanford and Son ending on a relatively light note—Fred Sanford still scheming, Lamont still grounded in reality, and their bond intact. But […]

What viewers never saw — and how it shaped the show’s rise and fall While Fred and Lamont Sanford traded barbs and insults to the […]