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Demond Wilson on The Dean Martin Roasts, Las Vegas, and Walking Out on Sanford & Son

by Billy Ingram

In a 2010 interview in conjunction with his book Second Banana, I asked Demond Wilson who, along with Redd Foxx, were the stars of of the number one rated sitcom on NBC in the 1970s about being a popular guest star on shows like Hollywood Squares and the Dean Martin Roasts.

Filming Sanford & Son at NBC in Burbank, "I used to see Dean [Martin] coming down the hall everyday," Wilson said. "And I'd say, 'How you doing, Dean?' He'd say, 'Hey, Pallie.'" Martin called everyone 'Pallie.' "I'd say 'What'd you do today, Dean?' He said, 'I did the same thing I did yesterday and the same thing I'm going to do tomorrow. I played golf.'"

Filmed in both Burbank and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Demond Wilson characterized those primetime roasts hosted by Dean Martin as, "A bunch of old, drunk comedians walking through what was left of their careers. When they roasted you that meant you had reached a certain level of success and notoriety and that in a nutshell is all it meant to Redd [Foxx]. You didn't get roasted unless you'd made it."

It was a whole other world for the young actor who had come out of the legitimate theater, "These guys were like hard core comics," Wilson said. "These guys were cage fighter comics, they would rip the heart out of the audience but backstage it was ugly... When you get a bunch of comics together there's always a fight for the top banana, who's going to be the top dog. It was like everybody trying to top everybody's else's line and giving little behind the scenes anecdotes of things that happened in Vegas, about who schtumped and who didn't schtump who."

Wilson found himself in largely unfamiliar territory. "I mean, it was like old, old, old school," he said. "You had Foster Brooks, you had Phyllis Diller, who I think died twice and came back. Muhammed Ali was on there, you had Howard Cosell, you had Bob Hope, you had John Wayne. It was like the last of a dying breed, it was like the paleolithic age... These were hard core show business people. This was their life. And they were polite to me because Redd Foxx and I were the kings of NBC so what were they going to say to me? They were talented beyond belief, they were famous and they were iconic but it wasn't my element.

When the sitcom was riding high in the ratings, "I walked out on Sanford and Son for more money," Wilson told me. "And they said 'You can't do television, you can't do radio, you can't do movies. If your house in Truesdale Estates catches on fire and a camera crew shows up and we see you interviewed on television you are in contravention of your contract.' So I said, 'Okay, I'm going to Vegas.' The money was grand, it was great, it was huge, but the lifestyle, my God. It was like sleep all day, up all night."

Vegas in those days was a crepuscular lifestyle, still is. "I don't understand how they could do that night after night," Wilson said. Contractually unable to do a stand-up act, he performed an hour set of dance routines instead. "It was murder. I never worked so hard in my life. You can't do two shows a night for four weeks and have any weight on you, I was down to Skeletor frame and still it almost killed me. It's not a life, it's like a vampire. I don't know how Sammy Davis Jr. did it—yes I do, he drank, smoked and used cocaine."

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