Back in the ’70s, What’s Happening and Good Times were both on our televisions at the same time. However, we never saw Raj and Thelma together because he lived in Los Angeles and she lived in Chicago, and the sitcoms aired on different networks. Oh, and more importantly, they didn’t know each other.
While they didn’t, the actors are friends. They recently got together, and Ernest Lee Thomas shared this photo of him with Bern Nadette Stanis. The two met up and talked about her book, Good Times: Memoir of an American Sweetheart. He even got a signed copy from her. I wonder what she wrote. Maybe it said, “Raj, If only…”
If only we could’ve had a world where they dated, and J.J. and Rerun got to boogie down together. That would have been so groovy.
Fifty years ago today, we got to meet the Evans family for the first time. We watched them have Good Times and bad ones. And through it all, they remained a family.
That did not only pertain to the characters. It also relates to the actors.
Because of that, Ralph Carter (Michael), BernNadette Stanis (Thelma), and Jimmie “JJ” Walker got to celebrate their golden anniversary!
Damn! Damn! Damn! They all look dyn-o-mite!
I love it when casts remain friends like this! That is why I think their series still airs in syndication. We believed that they were a family because they really were one!
It has been 16 years since we said goodbye to Reba. However, the cast didn’t say goodbye to each other when the cameras stopped rolling, and they are still good friends.
On Saturday night, Reba McEntire played the Hollywood Bowl, and her daughter with her husband, and her husband’s new wife came to see her perform. Not her real family, but the one she had on her show.
Seeing the Country singer reunited with JoAnna Garcia, Steve Howey, and Melissa Peterman makes me wish the rumors of a sequel series would come true already. I miss their sitcom!
We think of John Laroquette as a comedic actor. However, long before he did Night Court, he was the voice of an iconic Horror movie.
After the lights went down in the theater and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre started to roll, we heard the narrator tell us what we could expect from the next 83 minutes. And that was him.
However, we didn’t know it was Laroquette because he didn’t get credit for reading those few lines. Not only didn’t he get credit, but he also didn’t get paid in money to read them.
There has been a rumor that he was paid in green, as in pot. Recently when Parade sat down with him to talk about the sequel to Night Court they asked him if that rumor is true. “Totally true,” the actor told the online magazine. “He [Tobe Hooper] gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the [recording] studio and patted him on the back side and said, ‘Good luck to you!’”
Why did he do it for so cheap? The two men were in Colorado in 1969. Laroquette was a bartender while Hooper was there working on a film. Hooper walked into the actor’s bar, and the two became friends.
Years later, they both wound up in Los Angeles. And the director heard his friend was in town, so he asked his friend to help out with the little movie he made for no money.
And the rest is cinematic history.
Oh, in case you are wondering if Laroquette has ever seen the legendary film. He has not. He is not a fan of the genre.
That was then. Over the weekend, the five of them got together to celebrate Theler’s wedding to Lisa Marie Summerscales. Proving that they are still a family. So much so, Theler asked his TV mom to perform the ceremony.
