There are no amazing billiards shots. There are no dark, musty barrooms. There are no cameos from billiards professionals. There is no mention of Brunswick or Olhausen or Viking, just a nameless fold-up pool table and four cues protruding from a milk crate. But, “A House is not a Poolroom,” the November 1973 episode of Season 3 of the sitcom Sanford and Son is great billiards TV all the same.
The premise of the episode is that after Lamont (Demond Wilson) gets his father Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) a pool table for his birthday, he neither can get his father away from the table to attend to his family responsibilities, nor can he get any peace and privacy in house, since his father’s gaggle of friends have now ‘moved in’ to use the table.
Of course, what makes this individual episode hilarious (available below in its entirety) is the same ingredient that worked so well for Sanford and Son during most of its 6-year run: the brilliant comedian Redd Foxx, who helped turn racial prejudices on their head through Fred Sanford’s in-your-face antics, quick-witted tongue, conniving personality, and over-the-top selfishness.
http://youtu.be/eHs_KJnOAF8
Billiards, a sport requiring incredible mental stamina, has always provided a great stage for taunts, boasts, jests, and, in general, any kind of oral one-upmanship. (For a refresher, check out how Jonathan Winters rattles Jack Klugman in the seminal billiards TV Twilight Zone episode “A Game of Pool.”)
In “A House is not a Poolroom,” Redd Foxx unleashes his acerbic wit on his friend Grady with one-liners such as, “I’ll whip you like I was your daddy”; “I can roll you big fat guys up into one big round ball, and use you for a cue stick and beat both of you”; and “Grady, I could beat you blind-folded, one arm tied behind me, and the other one in a cast wearing armored shoes in the hospital having an emergency appendectomy.”
The other wonderfully humorous thing about the episode is how it captures the lure of pool. Once the table is in the house, Fred ignores all his other responsibilities, as well as his romantic interest Donna, to keep playing. The table becomes Mecca for his friends. In fact, the cruel irony is that Fred must ultimately get rid of the table, lest he have to keep putting out money to feed his friends.
Finally, it’s worth noting that “A House is not a Poolroom” was likely the first in a history of black sitcom episodes to prominently feature billiards. Three years later, there was another Sanford and Son TV episode indirectly about billiards called “Carol.” And then in the ‘90s, billiards was prominently featured both on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (“Bank Shots” (1991)) and twice on The Steve Harvey Show (“Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996) and “What You Won’t Cue For Love” (1998)). Were there others? Let me know.
