ESTHER ROLLE (Actor): (As Florida Evans): Get out your wallet, James. JIMMIE WALKER (Actor): (As JJ Evans): Hi, gorgeous family. They became one of the first African-American families to make regular appearances in homes nationwide. Florida and James Evans and their three children lived in a project not unlike Cabrini-Green. Eventually, Monte sold Lear on another one of his ideas, a program about a black family in Chicago. Producer Norman Lear accepted one of his scripts for the television hit All in the Family. It took him about five years to get his big break. A week later, I left with $5 and a suitcase, went out to Route 66, hitchhiked my way to Hollywood, and I had never written a word.ĭUNN: When he got to L.A., Monte enrolled in theater classes in a community college. ![]() If they ever get one he's going to be some high-yellow black with a Harvard degree, not some high school dropout from Cabrini. MONTE: And my mother said they have never ever had a black writer in Hollywood. So I made a vow that when I grew up I was going to make some black heroes.ĭUNN: At the age of 22, he told his mother he was going to Hollywood. So he said you can't be the Lone Ranger, the Lone Ranger is white. And he said who are you supposed to be? And I rode back on my little broomstick horse and I said I'm the Lone Ranger. Now that I look back at it, he might not have been that big or that old, but he was definitely white. And this big old white guy came up to me. And I was running, riding around like it was a horse. MONTE: I was five years old and I loved cowboys - Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger - and I had this little broomstick horse. Monte's story begins in Cabrini-Green, the notoriously rough housing project in Chicago where he grew up. He's battled drug addiction, bankruptcy, and to his mind an even greater foe, big Hollywood producers. But considering the other obstacles Eric Monte has encountered in his life, homelessness seems almost mild. Believe me.ĭUNN: It seems unlikely that a groundbreaking television writer would end up here in a homeless shelter. He said it's not an ideal environment for writing, but. There are 300 other men and women living in this shelter in Bell, California, just south of downtown Los Angeles. I have my printer here.ĭUNN: Monte's room is a 10 by 15-foot cubicle that he shares with a roommate. ERIC MONTE (Screenwriter): This is my bed, my wall locker. Today he lives in a Salvation Army homeless shelter. He had a beautiful home in the Santa Monica Mountains. ![]() When he was at the top of his game as a screenwriter, Eric Monte drove a Mercedes Benz. NPR's Katia Dunn has filed this report for us. At the age of 62, Eric Monte is now trying to re-establish himself in Hollywood, and he has a long way to go. He conceived of and wrote the television program Good Times and the motion picture Cooley High. Eric Monte was one of the most successful screenwriters of the day. They began to try to create black characters who seemed more true to life they had humor and depth. In the 1970s, a handful of African-American writers and directors began to break new ground in television and film.
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