Global Theater : World’s a Stage for Mayo as Actor, Travel Service Owner

The man working at the computer in the Inglewood travel agency has the gray eyes and beard of a street sage.

He looks up. Your immediate reaction is: Grady! From “Sanford and Son”!

But he is also Whitman Mayo; actor, entrepreneur and public speaker.

Best known for his portrayal of Grady Wilson, Redd Foxx’s elderly sidekick in the hit 1970s television series “Sanford and Son,” Mayo, 56, has played character roles in television, theater and film. He will be a regular on a new “Dick Van Dyke Show” planned for production this year.

Lecture Tours

His Mayo Travel Service has been an Inglewood institution for 13 years, with branches in Dallas and Washington. The clientele includes local politicians such as Assemblyman Curtis Tucker (D-Inglewood), Mayor Edward Vincent and Councilman Daniel Tabor.

And Mayo also tours the country lecturing on self-worth and motivation to black students, senior citizens’ groups and civic organizations.

“It’s an opportunity to exchange ideas and views,” Mayo said of the speaking engagements during a recent interview. He sipped coffee, looking serene beneath a brimmed gray cap. “In general it’s motivational, though I might come at it in a funny kind of way.”

Mayo Travel Services occupies spacious storefront offices on Manchester Boulevard near 8th Avenue. One room houses an exhibition of pottery and sculpture by an artist friend. The walls of other rooms are covered with travel posters, autographed photos of black entertainers, and awards, many of which are dedicated to “Whitman ‘Grady’ Mayo.”

Mayo’s voice and deliberate demeanor evoke the image of the slow-moving Grady, one in a series of elderly characters that have been Mayo’s specialty for more than 25 years.

“I’ve always played older parts. I always said that’s wonderful, I can do it for a long time. When I was 19, I played 60. I got pleasure out of studying old people. As a kid in New York I would go down to the Bowery, talked to the homeless, winos, people in parks. There was wisdom there, though a man might have a bottle of wine in his pocket. I took joy in their idiosyncrasies. Older folk are like children. They can do and say what they want and get away with it.”

People invariably associate Mayo with the Grady character and that does not bother him in the least.

“That’s not a thought of mine,” he said. “I’m not here to convince you who I am or who I’m not. Once we start one-on-one you’ll find out soon enough.”

There is a lot behind the familiar image. In an engaging, easy flow, Mayo talks art, politics, life.

Years of Restlessness

Born and raised in Harlem and Queens, Mayo moved with his family to California when he was 17.

“Since I was 13, I knew I wanted to be an artist,” he said. “Life took some funny turns on the way.”

After serving in the Army from 1951 to 1953, Mayo entered a period of restless wandering, intermittent theater work and study at Chaffey College and Los Angeles City College that lasted through the rest of the 1950s and ‘60s. He divided his time between California, New York and jaunts to Mexico, a country that he recalls nostalgically.

“Sleeping on beaches,” he said. “Hanging out with mariachis. Dolphins playing in the moonlight. That was exciting at that time to this head.”

Largely due to the influence of his first wife, Mayo says, his “psuedo-revolutionary” youth was steeped in the ideas of Mao Zedong, Leon Trotsky and Third World social philosopher Frantz Fanon.

“She was involved in the civil rights movement,” he said. “She had socialistic ideas, she was hanging out with the Stokely Carmichaels. I didn’t know what they were talking about. . . . I was losing every argument with them, so I decided to check it out for myself. I wasn’t angry, I was searching for truth. I didn’t have much faith in what I’d been reading in the newspapers, American history.”

As the ‘60s waned, Mayo moved back to New York City and a hotbed of artistic ferment: The New Lafayette Theater in Harlem. The theater received enough grant money to provide full-time work. Mayo was surrounded by black artists who were headed for stardom: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, actor Robert Guillaume of “Benson,” Isabel Sanford of “The Jeffersons,” and screenwriter Richard Wesley, author of “Uptown Saturday Night” and “Let’s Do it Again.”

Mayo describes the period: “There was a lot of energy. Purging, cleansing. Finding out who you are, raison d’etre. One day you cut off all your hair, next day you wear it in braids, next day you wear a dashiki. Walking the streets of New York in long robes like a monk from Tibet. Reading ‘The Art of Archery’ and Muhammad Speaks.”

Mayo describes an ambivalent attitude toward Hollywood among the group. On the one hand, “Sidney Poitier was the idol. He was working. He was making money.”

On the other hand, mainstream screen entertainment was resented, if not scorned.

“We’d go to downtown New York to see (Japanese actor) Toshiro Mifune. That was art . . . traitors went to Hollywood.”

In 1975, however, Mayo went west for what was intended to be a one-episode role on a new series starring Redd Foxx. The chemistry between Mayo and Foxx was immediate; one episode turned into five years on a top-10 show.

Mayo said: “It was a good show. The humor was well put together. It had a big crossover audience. It was a show whose time had come. You can’t plan a hit show. It happens.”

Mayo settled in Inglewood, where he lives with his wife, Gail. He has three children, two of them in college. He is active in his adopted city, which he says “has a lot of nice things going on.”

While “Sanford and Son” paved the way for further acting work, Mayo said the travel agency resulted from his need for financial stability--”something a little bit more tangible. Acting can at best be periodic. If Shakespeare was right and ‘all the world’s a stage,’ I thought it would be great to direct people on this massive stage. Move them from Point A to Point B. Live vicariously through them.”

Hopes to Found School

It seems fitting that the former “psuedo-revolutionary” wanderer intertwines travel and art with social consciousness. His schedule juggles acting, his business and the lecture tours, in which he describes his life and urges audiences to motivate themselves and not to be “afraid to look in the mirror in the morning.”

Mayo hopes to expand his work against the urban perils of violence, drugs and despair by founding a school of performing arts and communication skills.

“I’ve got this information in my head, I’d like to challenge some young people with it via a school. Teach them how to get information and what to do with it. If you can get somebody to buy a pound of cocaine, you’ve got a skill. You can sell anything. You could do very well in life if you learned to sell something else.”