#OurBeloved Mother Jefferson 💙♥️✨ Zara Frances Cully was was best known for her role as Olivia 'Mother Jefferson' Jefferson on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, which she portrayed from the series beginning in 1975 until her passing in 1978. During the first 17 episodes of the third season of The Jeffersons, she was absent due to a severe case of pneumonia caused by a collapsed lung. Upon her recovery she returned to the show. Her last credited performance was an appearance in the ninth episode of the fourth season entitled "The Last Leaf", which aired Nov, 1977, three months before her passing. No special episode was created to center on her death, but it was addressed in the second episode of the fifth season entitled "Homecoming (pt 1)", seven months after she passed away. She was one of the oldest performers active in television at the time of her death. In 1940, after an appearance in New York City, she became known as "one of the world's greatest elocutionists". (formal speakers) After moving to Jacksonville, Florida, she began producing, writing, directing, and acting in numerous plays. For 15 years she was a drama teacher at her own studio as well as at Edward Waters College, a historically black college founded in 1866 to educate freed people. She had become known as Florida's "Dean of Drama." Upset by the racism she experienced in the Jim Crow-era South, Cully decided to move to Hollywood, where she became a regular performer at the Ebony Showcase Theatre. By the time she acquired the role of 'Mother' Jefferson, Cully had accumulated a long list of acting credentials spanning a half-century, including such movies as The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970), a starring role in Brother John (1971), and the Blaxploitation films Sugar Hill (1974) and Darktown Strutters (1975). Her TV career went back to what critics call 'the Golden Age of Television’. Aside from The Jeffersons, her television credits included The People Next Door (CBS Playhouse), Run for Your Life (NBC Matinee), Cowboy in Africa, The Name of the Game, Mod Squad, Night Gallery, and All in the Family (in a 1974 appearance in which she originated the "Mother Jefferson" role). https://www.instagram.com/p/CHMcDkdAjKY/?igshid=5d60acdhn8jd
