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George Jefferson

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Added by: patrickthekid

Read more about George Jefferson at: Wikipedia

Official Site: CBS

George Jefferson is a fictional character played by Sherman Hemsley on the American television sitcom All in the Family (from 1973 until 1975) and its spin-off The Jeffersons (1975–1985). The character appears in all 253 episodes of The Jeffersons.

George Jefferson was born in Harlem in 1929, an ambitious African-American entrepreneur who started and managed a successful chain of seven dry cleaning stores in New York City. The only background on the Jefferson family is that they were Alabama sharecroppers. In a very early episode, George's wife Louise makes mention of a conversation she had with George's father after she and George were married about the Jeffersons family roots. However, the show's writers later applied a retroactive change in the continuity of George's father, such that he had died when George was 10 years old. This left George to take care of his mother; therefore, George was unable to complete high school. He was a cook in the US Navy during the Korean War. He began dating Louise when they were teenagers and married her upon his discharge from the navy.

Before the Jeffersons' store opening, the family lived in a derelict section of Harlem. George had worked as a janitor, and Louise as a housekeeper. In one episode Louise says that the building's white janitor was properly referred to as a "custodian". George says: "Well, whenever a man of our race has that job, he is a janitor!"

George's brother Henry appeared in All in the Family during the lead-up to the spin-off of The Jeffersons. That character was created only because Sherman Hemsley was starring in the Broadway musical Purlie and not yet available to take on the part of George. Once Hemsley became available and joined the cast, the character of his brother became extraneous, and a result, Henry Jefferson never appeared on The Jeffersons. Henry's absence was attributed to his family's move to Chicago, but was mentioned one time when he had a son named Raymond (played by Gary Coleman), who came to visit his aunt Louise and uncle George in one episode of The Jeffersons.

George Jefferson has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.