Demond Wilson, the actor best known for playing Lamont Sanford, the son in the popular 1970s NBC primetime comedy series Sanford and Son, has died.

The actor died from complications related to cancer Friday at his home in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. He was 79. Wilson’s publicist, Mark Goldman, confirmed the death in an email to NPR.

“I had the privilege of working with Demond for 15 years, and his loss is profoundly felt,” said Goldman. “He was an unbelievable man, and his impact will never be forgotten.”

Wilson was in his 20s when he landed the role of Lamont Sanford, the put-upon offspring of the cantankerous Fred Sanford, played by Redd Foxx. The dad got all the best lines, but junior held his own in their frequent disputes. Wilson reminisced about his time on the series in his 2009 memoir Second Banana: The Bitter Sweet Memoirs of the Sanford and Son Years.

Producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin based Sanford and Son on the well-known 1960s-early 70s British TV comedy series about a blue collar father-son relationship, Steptoe and Son. Sanford and Son was groundbreaking in offering a glimpse into Black family life rarely seen on network television at the time. “The character between the son and the father was very interesting to me and to Norman in the sense that, despite the fact that they lived together and complained and so forth, they couldn’t live without each other,” said Yorkin in a 2008 interview with NPR.

Wilson went on to star as a struggling gambler in the sitcom Baby…I’m Back! in the late 1970s, and as the more laid-back of the divorcees in The New Odd Couple, a TV show based on Neil Simon’s hit play The Odd Couple. His film credits include Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), The Organization (1971), Full Moon High (1981) and Hammerlock (2000).

Wilson was born in Valdosta, Ga., in 1946 to a working class Catholic family and grew up in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. He studied dance as a child and performed on Broadway. He went on to serve in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Upon his return, he appeared in various shows on- and off-Broadway, and eventually moved to Los Angeles. In 1971, Lear cast him in an episode of the popular sitcom All in the Family. The following year, Sanford and Sons set him on a path to stardom.

Wilson carried a strong Christian faith since childhood. After suffering a life-threatening rupture to his appendix at age 12, he sought to find a way to devote his life to God. In the 1980s, he was ordained as a Pentecostal minister, and went on to lead parallel careers in acting and preaching. His 1998 book, The New Age Millennium: An Expose of Symbols, Slogans and Hidden Agenda, is a critique from a Christian perspective of the New Age movement and Freemasonry, among other quasi-spiritual approaches.

If you’ve seen the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 — prominently featuring shots of stiletto heels walking down corridors — you’ve got the general drift of what director Brett Ratner is up to in Melania. Melania is a high heels-forward documentary.

It covers the 20 days prior to her husband’s second inauguration, when much planning is required of a First Lady: Ball and banquet invitations, place-settings for a candle-lit dinner in Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum. Her staff previews for her the golden egg that will be that meal’s first course, and wonders whether the rectangular tablecloths should have broad gold stripes, and the round ones narrow stripes, or vice versa. So many decisions, and she’s on top of all of them.

The once-and-future President makes an occasional appearance, including in what appears to be a staged flashback to an election-night phone call. At another point, she drops by with her camera crew as he’s rehearsing his inaugural speech, and she suggests that he identify himself as a peacemaker “and a unifier.“ He incorporates it on the big day — in the film to a big burst of applause, which inspires a quick nod to his wife in gratitude. That’s not quite how it played out in real life; the applause and the nod are editing tricks. But never mind, the film Melania is her story, and — as not just its leading lady, but also an executive producer — she’s entitled to tell it any way she wants, peppered with needle drops from her favorite songs, including Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

It’s a story that’s not without hiccups — the blouse collar that’s loose in the back, and not high enough; Former President Carter’s inconvenient death just before the inauguration, with his funeral falling on the first anniversary of her mother’s death. The First Lady talks in scripted voiceover through this section about missing her mom, and in decidedly unspontaneous voiceovers elsewhere about the Capitol building’s history, and her respect for the military, and at one point about the “elegance and sophistication of our donors,” as the camera drifts past Jeff Bezos, whose company Amazon did indeed donate $1 million for the inaugural.

It also paid $40 million to buy this film. That price makes Melania arguably the most expensive infomercial in history. It also makes it inconceivable that the film will return a profit — it’s only expected to take in a paltry $5 million dollars worldwide this weekend. That’s prompted speculation in Hollywood circles about what else Amazon thinks it bought when it purchased the film.

But that will be fodder someday for a far better documentary than the curated, airbrushed, glamorously dressed portrait that is Melania.

Editor’s note: Amazon is among NPR’s recent financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.