He particularly objected to the increasing fame of his son JJ’s character, played by Walker, who had the catchphrase “dyn-o-mite”.

“I felt like there was too much emphasis on JJ with his chicken hat saying ‘dy-no-mite!’ every third page,” Amos recalled.

“I felt like just as much emphasis and mileage could have been gotten out of my other two children, one of whom aspired to be a Supreme Court justice, played by Ralph Carter, and the other (played by) BernNadette Stanis, who aspired to become a judge. become a surgeon.

“But I wasn’t the most diplomatic guy at the time, and the producers were tired of their lives being threatened over jokes.

“So they said, ‘You know what, why don’t we kill him? We can get on with our lives!’

“That taught me a lesson: I wasn’t as important as I thought I was to the show or to Norman Lear’s plans.”

Good Times was adapted into a film in Britain in 1976 as The Fosters, the first British sitcom with an all-black cast.

Norman Beaton played the father, with Lenny Henry in one of his early roles as one of his sons.

And earlier this year, Good Times was rebooted as an animated series by Netflix, which described it as a “spiritual sequel” to the original sitcom.