Actress Lynn Hamilton, who performed on “Sanford and Son” and “The Waltons,” has died.
She was 95.
Hamilton “transitioned peacefully” on Thursday at her Chicago home, “surrounded by her grandchildren, loved ones and caregivers,” her former manager and publicist, Rev. Dr. Calvin Carson, said in posts on Facebook and Instagram.
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Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Hamilton and her family moved to Chicago when she was 4 years old. As the only Black actor in her class at the Goodman School of Drama Theater, Hamilton found roles hard to come by. After working briefly with a theater company on Chicago’s South Side, she moved to New York in 1956, where she appeared in four Broadway plays and worked for three years with the New York Shakespeare Festival. She also toured with “The Miracle Worker” and “The Skin of Our Teeth” as part of President John K. Kennedy’s cultural exchange program before joining the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1966.
Hamilton had some small television roles, starting as an extra in John Cassavetes’ “Shadows,” before being cast as the leading characters’ cantankerous landlady in the seventh episode of “Sanford and Son” in 1972. The sitcom’s producers decided a couple of months later “to give Fred Sanford a girlfriend,” Hamilton told an interviewer in 2009, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Hamilton spent the rest of the show’s run in the recurring role of Donna Harris, a nurse who found herself frequently caring for Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), when they weren’t passionately arguing — but not before a serious grilling by his late wife’s sisters. The characters got engaged but never married before the series ended in 1977.
Hal Williams and Lynn Hamilton attend a 40th anniversary reunion of “The Waltons” in 2011. (Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images) Bennett Raglin/Getty Images
Starting in 1973, Hamilton also played Verdie Grant Foster on “The Waltons,” appearing in 16 episodes through 1981 and then in Waltons television movies “A Walton Thanksgiving Reunion” and “A Walton Easter” in 1993 and 1997, respectively. More recent roles included “The Practice,” and “Golden Girls” among other shows.
“Her illustrious career, spanning over five decades, has left an indelible mark on the world of entertainment, motivating audiences across the globe through her work as a model, stage, film, and television actress,” Carson said in his statement. “Her passing marks the end of an era, but her legacy will continue to inspire and uplift future generations.”
