Lynn Hamilton dead: ‘Sanford and Son,’ ‘Waltons’ actor was 95

Lynn Hamilton, an actor who made her mark on “Sanford and Son” and “The Waltons” and appeared in 132 episodes of “Generations,” the first Black daytime drama, has died.

Hamilton died Thursday surrounded by her grandchildren, loved ones and caregivers, her former manager and publicist the Rev. Calvin Carlson said in an announcement Sunday on social media.

“Her passing marks the end of an era,” Carlson wrote, “but her legacy will continue to inspire and uplift future generations.”

Born Alzenia Lynn Hamilton on April 25, 1930, in Yazoo City, Miss., and raised from age 12 in Chicago, she studied acting at the Goodman Theatre and later earned a bachelor of arts degree. She didn’t see much success until she hit New York City, where she was in shows on Broadway and off and did Shakespeare in the Park. Hamilton was the first cast member onstage in the 1959 production of “Only in America,” which featured a young Alan Alda at what is now the James Earl Jones Theatre.

By the time the 1960s rolled around, she had joined the Seattle Repertory Theatre, where she met her husband, poet-playwright Frank Jenkins. They moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and by 1972 she had landed the recurring role of Donna Harris, actor Redd Foxx’s nurse girlfriend and later his fiancée on “Sanford and Son.” Makeup made her look older than she was, as Foxx — who died in 1991 — was eight years her senior.

“I like the show,” Hamilton said in an October 1972 interview. “I think what the world needs is to laugh more and to love more and ‘Sanford and Son’ helps. On Friday night, when the show is on, I can hear the laughter coming at the same time from all the homes around me.”

Hamilton told actor-singer-author Demetris Dennis Taylor, a.k.a. Big Meach (no relation to the Black Mafia Family founder), on his online talk show “Dishing Tea” that she was chosen for the role from about “100 other actresses in Hollywood” who auditioned. She said raunchy comedian Foxx was “impressed with my experience and he always said, ‘You’re so dignified’ and ‘I need somebody dignified opposite me.’

“He was aware of his, what, his earthiness, shall we say.”

Lynn Hamilton and her husband, poet Frank Jenkins, in 2001.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

On “The Waltons” she played Verdie Grant Foster, a character whose grandparents had been enslaved. Hamilton told Big Meach that Verdie was a role she was proud of because “she proved that you can improve yourself at any time in your life. When we first see her … she’s a successful, accomplished wife and mother and had a good job and was well respected, but she couldn’t read. And of course John-Boy [played by Richard Thomas] taught her how to read. “ Learning, Hamilton said, “opened up a whole new world” for the character.

The Verdie role recurred over the nine seasons the show ran.

Hamilton won an NAACP Image Award for her 1984 performance in the original production of Christine Houston’s play “227” at Marla Gibbs’ Crossroads Theater in Los Angeles. She and Gibbs alternated in the play’s female lead role. In 1985, she was proclaimed half of the “most amusing twosome” in Celeste Walker’s “Reunion in Bartersville,” a play about members of a Black, small-town Texas high school’s Class of 1933 who reunite 50 years down the line. Hamilton played nightclub owner Pollina, who brings along a 28-year-old spouse — the character’s fifth husband. “As a light vehicle for older black actors, [the play] runs like a well-tuned sports car,” The Times said in its review.

Hamilton helped raise money in 1987 for skid row’s Midnight Mission, joining in a benefit performance of Studs Terkel’s “Hard Times” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Her castmates were Tyne Daly, John Lithgow, Martin Sheen, Ned Beatty, Barry Bostwick, Nan Martin, Doris Roberts and — wait for it — Little Richard.

Husband and wife collaborated frequently, and as the new century began, Hamilton directed “Driving While Black in Beverly Hills,” written by Jenkins. Set in 1970, it addressed racial profiling: The success and social status of the play’s protagonist mean nothing to the police who target him and his companions because of their skin color.

Hamilton had urged her husband to keep reworking a play he had started writing in 1968 about a wronged Black motorist. Fifteen drafts and 30 years later, that play became “Driving While Black.” They found a producer in 2000 after a staged reading of the show, and that producer suggested Hamilton direct after learning that she had suggested elements of the reading that he liked.

“Under Lynn Hamilton’s focused staging, the fine cast makes the play’s earnest, often eloquent articulation of its issues affecting and persuasive,” The Times said in its March 2001 review of the show at the intimate Matrix Theatre on Melrose — though the critic also noted that the play’s numerous lengthy speeches undermined its dramatic reality.

“Their partnership was a shining example of creativity, love, and dedication,” manager Carlson wrote Sunday. They also collaborated on the plays “Nobody” and “The Bert Williams Story.”

Hamilton was still doing episodic TV into the 2000s, notching credits on “NYPD Blue,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Cold Case” and more after the turn of the century.

Her many other acting gigs included roles in “Dangerous Women,” “Roots: The Next Generation,” “A Dream for Christmas,” “The Jesse Owens Story,” “The Practice” and “Lady Sings the Blues.”

In an undated interview taped by her manager, she advised young performers to “first and foremost, get proper training” in voice and diction.

“I’m amazed at the youngsters today. I can’t understand what they’re saying,” she said. “Acting is a form of communication. You are trying to communicate to your audience what it is the playwright has given you to portray. And if I can’t understand what you are saying, then everything is lost.”