* * *
That week, I was alone with dad. With Mom gone, all the good vibes were sucked out of the apartment. It was gloomy and gray. All Dad could do was get on me about every little thing. Without my mother, my mind was a mess.
When she came back, there was still no word on the fate of The Jeffersons. First, the pilot had to be aired. On the night of the premiere, Mom, Dad, and I, along with Grandpa Albert and Grandma Bessie, sat on our living room couch and watched the show on our television set. It was great seeing my mom in the role. She was a natural. The part was made for her. I was proud. Half of me was rooting for the show to be picked up, while the other half was rooting for things to stay the same. I was dying to be a sixth-grade big shot.
It wasn’t long before the word came down. The pilot was a hit. The audience response had been overwhelming. The network committed for a full season.
What did all that mean?
Mom said it meant that she and I would be leaving soon for L.A. Dad would join us later. I’d be going to school in California.
No time for reflections. No time for objections. Things were moving so fast my head was spinning. Excited, angry, anxious, curious—I experienced every emotion under the sun. Our life was being turned upside down. We didn’t know what was coming.
SUNSHINE AND SMOKE
MOVIN’ ON UP
Where is everyone?
That was my first thought when I woke up in Santa Monica, walked out on the balcony of the apartment, and didn’t see a soul. I could smell the ocean. I could see palm trees in every direction. But no one in sight.
It was 1975, I was eleven, and Mom and I were living at 2901 Fourth Street in the apartment of Aunt Joan; her husband, Bobby; their daughter, Heather; and Joan’s mom, whom we called Sarge (short for sergeant). Everyone was afraid of Sarge, a bossy woman who could get Max, the family schnauzer, to piss and shit on command. Sarge was scary, but also lovable. At this point, Aunt Joan had gone rock ’n’ roll. She sported a blond pixie cut and metallic thigh-high boots. She was space-age funky and looked like she belonged in LaBelle. Aunt Joan had come to love L.A.
I didn’t. Santa Monica seemed desolate. I was used to the sounds of honking cabs and roaring subways. The quiet was eerie. The Pacific was only a few blocks away, but I couldn’t hear the waves or see the sand. I felt lost.
We were staying at Aunt Joan’s because my mother wasn’t sure that The Jeffersons would last more than a season. Always practical, Mom wanted to economize. That meant she and I slept on a pullout bed in the living room. I didn’t mind. I was used to sleeping with Grandma Bessie. Besides, before we fell asleep, I liked helping Mom learn her lines. I played the other characters. When I read their parts too blandly, she’d say, “Put more feeling into it!”
It took me time to adjust to California. No friends, new culture, new everything. But Mom, the ultimate professional, hit the ground running. Though she was appearing weekly on a national TV show and had good reason to ego-trip, she never did. Hollywood never seduced her. She was a New Yorker through and through. She proudly wore a subway token on a golden chain around her neck. Mom was a worker among workers. She didn’t know how to drive, and at this point, she had no interest in learning. Nothing wrong with mass transportation. She’d stand at the corner and wait for a bus to carry her the ten miles across Santa Monica into the mid-Wilshire District, where she’d stand on another corner and wait for another bus that took her up Fairfax Avenue to Beverly Boulevard, location of CBS Television City. The trip took ninety minutes, but I never heard Mom complain. In contrast, all I had to do was walk across the street to Washington Elementary School.
Before the move, I’d been bitching about leaving P.S. 6. And even though I was unhappy about saying good-bye to the two neighborhoods I called home, Bed-Stuy and the Upper East Side, I knew I’d have been even more miserable if Mom had left me in New York with Dad. In her mind, that was out of the question. She took full responsibility for raising me. Though she never said so, she understood that her husband, as much as she loved him, wasn’t capable of giving me the attention or the affection I needed. I never felt, not for a second, that she considered bringing me along to Hollywood as a burden. Mom and I were an inseparable team. And if she had to act as a single parent along with fulfilling the heavy demands of performing on a weekly TV show, she’d do it and she’d do it lovingly.
Following Mom’s lead, I learned the bus routes, and whenever I could, I’d go to CBS to watch her tape her show. This whole new world of behind-the-scenes television was fascinating and fun. It’s one of the reasons, though I missed everything about New York, that I started liking L.A.
The show was taped twice on a single day—at 5 and 8 p.m., and the final edit would be a combination of the two performances. Each taping was an event. The excited audience would be ushered in, eager for the show to start. Then each cast member, introduced individually, would come out to a burst of applause.
Here’s Ned Wertimer, as Ralph the Doorman!
Paul Benedict, as Harry Bentley!
Zara Cully, as Mother Jefferson!
Berlinda Tolbert, as Jenny Willis!
Mike Evans, as Lionel Jefferson!
Marla Gibbs, as Florence Johnston!
Franklin Cover, as Tom Willis!
Roxie Roker, as Helen Willis!
Sherman Hemsley, as George Jefferson!
And Isabel Sanford, as Louise Jefferson!
Isabel, the queen of the show, came out at the very end to receive her royal welcome, as the entire cast bowed before her.
The show itself was always fun. The audience was ready to laugh, and their laughs were loud. Inside that soundstage, the real world disappeared.
Mom embraced her role. Her character was pivotal. Helen Willis was a proud liberal eager to confront George Jefferson’s bigotry. The comedic timing between Roxie Roker and Sherman Hemsley was pitch-perfect. No wonder The Jeffersons became a classic.
* * *
The first season was about the radical change in the Jeffersons’ lifestyle. The theme song, written and sung by Ja’net DuBois from Good Times, said it all: “Movin’ on Up.” The Jeffersons were moving to the East Side, the fancy New York neighborhood Mom and I had just left. It was super strange for me to see the backdrop of painted skyscrapers that provided the view from the Jeffersons’ make-believe apartment on a Hollywood soundstage. I’d been pulled from real New York to a fake New York where my mother was in the middle of a comedy about people bettering their lifestyle the same way Mom was bettering our lifestyle. The Kravitzes were movin’ on up right alongside the Jeffersons.
* * *
Our real move up didn’t happen until the show’s second season. That first year was all about adjustment. Seeing my mother shine in this new setting helped ease the sting of being the new kid on the block. But for a while I floundered. My classmates laughed at my New York accent. I didn’t even know I had one. They got a kick out of how I pronounced “hot daawg.”
Then there was the fashion and the ethnic disconnect. In New York, I wore a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and Converse sneakers. Blacks, Latinos, and whites were all mixed together. Now I was surrounded by a tribe of blond-haired blue-eyed boys with hair down to their asses and a string of puka shells around their necks. In L.A. it was all about Hang Ten and OP shorts and Vans tennis shoes, which was really confusing, because in New York we called them sneakers. In California, there were other new words being thrown around, words like radical, gnarly, and dude.