(Photo by Toby Canham/Getty Images)
Actress Marla Gibbs, best known for her roles on shows like The Jeffersons and 227 is now 93 years of age and still going strong. She has a career that has included television, movies and live performances. Fans know her as the feisty, quick-witted Florence Johnston on The Jeffersons and as Mary Jenkins on 227. The wise performer speaks about her life’s journey and shares some great stories about the historic shows she’s been part of.
With the passing of her friend and costar Sherman Hemsley – known to millions as George Jefferson – Marla is one of the last surviving members of the cast of The Jeffersons. To the end of his life, Sherman and Marla discussed possible projects they could work on together. The Jeffersons served as family for Ms. Gibbs. That sense of family continued into 227, which she produced. As Ms. Gibbs talks about those shows and her television run spanning 15 years, as Florence and Mary, you’d think you were living it with her.
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(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Her famous exchanges – filled with her wisecracks and insults on The Jeffersons, make for some great examples of television comedy. Marla explains how she and Sherman worked so well together, on those memorable exchanges:
“As I said to Sherman, ‘When your lips stop moving, I’ll start talking.’ Sometimes he would think he forgot the lines and I would remind him that his mind took a picture of them the first time he saw them and we’ve done rehearsal. I said, ‘ So they’re in there so stop saying you forgot them. Then they’ll come out.’ I said, ‘Just say something that makes sense and I’ll respond to you.’ Sherman was so great at setting me up that we could make something out of nothing. … You know you can’t hit a person unless they set you up and he was so good at setting me up. Sherman was so wonderful at setting me up and, of course, I set him up too ‘cause he’d come through with some classic retorts to me.”
“Everything must change and you do what you can with the changes that are made,” warns Gibbs. “You can’t stop it. You can’t fight it. Everybody tries to go back to yesterday, but you can’t go back to yesterday. The only time there is, is now.”
When discussing the passing of Sherman Hemsley, Marla says she spoke with Mr. Hemsley a few months prior to his death. They were always talking about working on new projects.
She cannot believe that most of the cast of The Jeffersons has passed on:
“It was about four months before he [Sherman Hemsley] made his transition. We kept up with each other by phone. I called him every few months so and we’d talk and we talked about trying to do another TV show, come up with an idea for one. We never really did. … I sure miss Sherman every time, but of course one thing about TV, you live on forever ‘cause I can look and see Roxie and Franklin and Sherman and Isabel. I can look at the TV and see all of them just as though they were still here. … Because I know that we never die, our spirits just transcends our body; I talk to them sometimes. I’ll think of Roxie and I’ll just talk to her when I’m driving.”
Focusing on Isabel Sanford, who played the historic role of Louise “Weezy” Jefferson, Marla says…
… Isabel was the queen of The Jeffersons. She recalls a prank that the entire cast played on Ms. Sanford who passed away in 2004. She says the cast was always trying to play tricks on one another:
“We were always doing things to each other and the director would be in on it sometimes. Isabel would fall asleep while we were doing notes or something in rehearsal and the director would say, put his fingers to his lips and say, ‘Shoot. Quiet.’ And then we would all tip out of the rehearsal hall and then call the rehearsal hall. The phone would ring and we would wake her up and everybody would be gone. So we’d do all kinds of things like that.”
(Photo credit: NBC.com/Universal)
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At the end of The Jeffersons series, it would only be a short time until Ms. Gibbs would be producing and starring in the lead role of Mary Jenkins on the television show 227. Once again, she brought her wit and timing to a role that garnered tons of laughs. But unlike Florence Johnston, who never had a male love interest, Ms. Gibbs says she fought to have a man for Mary Jenkins on 227. That man was played by actor Hal Williams:
“She was a transition from Florence to Mary. People would always say to me, ‘Why don’t they let you have a man? Why can’t Florence have a man?’ So I knew when I did 227 I needed to have a man. So I did and I fought for that and I got it. And because Hal Williams had done the play with me for six months I said, ‘We already have a relationship. We already have a chemistry. So all we have to worry about is making alive, bring the lines to life.’ So they came to me and said, ‘We glad you fought for this because we like it. We like it too.’ So I said, ‘Good.’”
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