Isabel Sanford (born Eloise Gwendolyn Sanford, August 29, 1917-July 9, 2004) was an African-American Actress. She was best known to TV audiences as Louise "Weezy" Mills-Jefferson on the CBS sitcom All in The Family (1971-1975) and it's spinoff The Jeffersons (1975-1985). She once appeared as a panelist on Match Game in the mid-1970s.
Born Eloise Gwendolyn Sanford in Harlem, New York, to parents James Edward and Josephine Sanford, the youngest of seven children and the only child to survive beyond infancy. Her mother Josephine was devoutly religious and insisted that her daughter attend church every Sunday and even made her attend on weeknights. As a teenager, Sanford aspired to be an actress but her mother discouraged her dream as she felt that show business was "the road to degradation", Sanford disobeyed her mother and began performing at local clubs. She also performed at amateur night at the Apollo Theater. After she graduated from high school, Isabel joined Harlem's American Negro Theater and the Star Players. In 1946, she made her professional stage debut in On Strivers Row and appeared in several off-Broadway productions while also working as a keypunch operator at IBM.
In 1960, Sanford, with her three children from her marriage, relocated to California and shortly after her arrival, she was asked to join the national production of Here Today by actress Tallulah Bankhead. In 1965, she made her Broadway debut in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. The role lead to her being cast in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In the film, she portrayed the character of maid Tillie Binks earning her good reviews. Isabel eventually caught the attention of major Hollywood players, including Norman Lear, who cast Sanford in the role of Louise Jefferson in the CBS sitcom All in the Family. Sanford and her TV husband, Sherman Hemsley (who joined the series in 1973) were so popular with TV audiences that Norman Lear decided to spin the characters off into their own weekly series titled The Jeffersons. Sanford was initially reluctant to commit to working on a weekly series as she was already working steadily, but decided to accept the offer as their last appearances on All in The Family aired on January 11, 1975 in the episode titled "The Jeffersons Move Up".
The new series, The Jeffersons debuted on January 18, 1975 as TV viewers saw Louise and George Jefferson, and their son, Lionel, adjust to their newfound life, rich and wealthy, in a luxury high-rise apartment complex. The new series quickly became an immediate hit with audiences and ultimately ran for eleven seasons on CBS. For her role on the series, Sanford earned five Golden Globe Award nominations, and seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations. In 1981, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, making her the first African American actress to win in that category.
The Jeffersons was abruptly cancelled by CBS in 1985, Sanford learned of the show being cancelled by her cousin who read about in the tabloids while Sherman Hemsley found out about the show's cancellation in the newspaper. Sanford has publicly stated that she found the cancellation with no proper finale to be disrespectful on the network's part. Isabel moved on with her career with guest starring roles in television and film. In January 1987, she starred in her own sitcom titled Isabel's Honeymoon Hotel, which aired five days a week in syndication. The series was created to showcase Sanford's comedic skills, but it failed to attract an audience and was quickly cancelled.
Throughout the 1990s, Isabel mainly appeared in television guest appearances and cameo appearances in movies. She appeared in guest starring roles on shows such as Dream On, Living Single, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, In the House, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and The Steve Harvey Show. In 1996, she had a supporting role in the action movie Original Gangstas, starring blaxploitation film stars Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, and Richard Roundtree.
She also reprised her role as Louise Jefferson in a touring company of The Real Live Jeffersons stage show in the mid-1990s alongside Sherman Hemsley and their Jeffersons co-stars Roxie Roker, Franklin Cover, and Marla Gibbs. She and Hemsley also made cameo appearances in films such as Sprung, Mafia! and two episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The two also appeared in a series of advertisements for Denny's and Old Navy. They reunited with their former co-stars Gibbs, Cover, and Ned Wertimer (who played Ralph, the doorman) in 1997 on the syndicated talk show Rolanda for a Jeffersons reunion (Roxie Roker passed away from breast cancer two years earlier). Isabel and Sherman also appeared together on Hollywood Squares during a special week of show titled "Dymanic Duo Week" in December 2002.
In January 2004, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to the television industry. She made her final television appearance the following month as an animated version of herself on The Simpsons in an episode titled "Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore".
Sanford was previously married to house painter William Edward "Sonny" Richmond. They married in 1945 and had three children, two sons and a daughter, before separating. After their separation, Sanford and the children moved to California in 1960 while Richmond remained in New York. Shortly after their arrival, Richmond died after being involved in an altercation.
In September 2003, she underwent preventive surgery on her carotid artery and in the ensuing months, her health steadily declined. She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on July 4, 2004 and died five days later. Her publicist did not announce a cause of death, instead attributing it to unspecified natural causes. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles.