Whitman Mayo; Sidekick on TV’s ‘Sanford’

“Good goobily goop!”

Whitman Mayo, the actor who made that phrase part of the 1970s American lexicon as Grady Wilson, the gray-bearded sidekick of Redd Foxx on television’s popular “Sanford and Son,” has died. He was 70.

Mayo, who had continued to take occasional roles and was teaching drama at Clark Atlanta University, died Tuesday in suburban Atlanta.

He most recently appeared as a minister in the HBO television movie “Boycott.” He also hosted a weekly television show for Atlanta’s Turner South called “Liars & Legends.”

Although his acting career spanned four decades, the many-faceted Mayo never minded--too much--his universal recognition as junk dealer Fred Sanford’s friend Grady.

“You live with it. It has its ups and downs,” Mayo told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution two years ago. “It is hard to go to [the store] when you can’t get up and down the aisles.”

Mayo’s career-marking role was scheduled to be a single appearance. A writer with whom he had worked at New York’s New Lafayette Theater, and was on the staff of Norman Lear’s year-old hit sitcom, asked Mayo to appear in a “Sanford” episode he had scripted.

The show ran in October 1973, with Mayo as Grady accusing Sanford of stealing a TV set.

The Grady character proved so popular that Mayo stayed on until the show ended five years later. He even starred in two short-lived spin-off series, his own “Grady” in 1975 and “The Sanford Arms” in 1976.

Fans of Grady often commented when encountering Mayo years after the show had ended that he hadn’t aged a bit. Not unusual, considering the actor was in his early 40s when he played the sixtysomething Grady.

“I’ve always played older parts. . . . When I was 19, I played 60,” he said in 1988. “When I was a kid . . . I got pleasure out of studying old people. . . . I took joy in their idiosyncrasies. Older folk are like children. They can do and say what they want and get away with it.”

Born and reared in New York’s Harlem and Queens, Mayo moved to Southern California with his family at age 17. He served in the Army from 1951 to 1953, studied at Chaffey College, Los Angeles City College and UCLA, did a little acting, wandered a bit and played serious volleyball in Mexico for a year. He counseled young people as a probation officer, waited tables, picked grapes and had a few other odd jobs, such as working on the railroad and in a dairy.

In the late 1960s, Mayo returned to New York to join the repertory company at the New Lafayette Theater.

In television, Mayo was a regular on Dick and Jerry van Dyke’s 1988 “The Van Dyke Show” as Doc Sterling, stage manager of their regional theater. He had guest roles in “Baretta,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Lou Grant,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “Full House,” “Family Matters” and “ER.”

Among his films were “The Main Event,” starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, “D.C. Cab,” with Adam Baldwin, and “Boyz N the Hood,” starring Lawrence Fishburne, Ice Cube and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Despite his relatively steady success, Mayo never trusted acting to pay the rent. In 1975, in the middle of his long “Sanford” run, he started a travel agency in Inglewood.

In 1994, Mayo moved to Fayetteville, Ga., near Atlanta.

“I was burned out in L.A.,” he said. “I needed to be . . . where I could experience getting lost.”

He may have done that too well. In early 1996, a writer for the NBC TV show “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” suggested Mayo for a sketch on the program. When calls to Mayo’s agent went unanswered, the show launched a comical three-week nationwide search, titled “Where’s Grady?”

A special “Grady Hot Line” drew 50,000 phone calls, and “Late Night” parodied numerous false “Grady sightings” before the amused Mayo responded and did appear on the show.

Mayo is survived by his wife, Gail; his mother, Mary; and two sons and a daughter.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the National Kidney Foundation of Georgia, 2951 Flowers Road, Suite 211, Atlanta, GA 30342.