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The first black woman to win a Best Actress comedy Emmy, Isabel Sanford started performing as a teen at the Apollo Theatre’s amateur night. After gigs as a cleaning woman (like her TV counterpart Louise Jefferson) and a keypunch operator for the NYC welfare department, she joined the American Negro Theatre and broke through in 1946 with her performance in Strivers Row.
With many theatrical credits, she segued into guest roles on Bewitched, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Love, American Style, and The Mod Squad, as well as a semi-regular spot on The Carol Burnett Show.
She made such a memorable impression on Broadway in Amen Corner that director Stanley Kramer took notice and cast her as the razor-sharp maid Tillie Binks in the 1967 Tracy-Hepburn-Poitier classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Norman Lear also took notice and cast her as Louise Jefferson, Edith Bunker’s friend and neighbor, on All in the Family in 1971.
In addition to her Emmy for playing Louise Jefferson, Miss Sanford has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Like her TV husband Sherman Hemsley, she appeared in her signature role in other shows, including Roseanne and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the movie Jane Austen’s Mafia!, and onstage in The Real Live Jeffersons. She and Hemsley also were in a series of commercials for Old Navy and Denny’s.
Born Eloise Gwendolyn Sanford, she passed away in 2004.
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