Gregory Sierra, Actor on 'Barney Miller' and 'Sanford and Son,' Dies at 83

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The New York native also portrayed a Jewish vigilante on a sobering episode of 'All in the Family.'
Gregory Sierra, who endeared himself to 1970s sitcom fans as the genial Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and the impassioned Sgt. Miguel "Chano" Amenguale on Barney Miller, has died. He was 83.

Sierra died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, California, after a battle with cancer, family spokesman Rick Voll told The Hollywood Reporter.

A native of New York's Spanish Harlem, Sierra also made a memorable appearance as a radical Jewish vigilante in "Archie Is Branded," a 1973 episode of CBS' All in the Family that was one of the sitcom's most jarring episodes. And he played Carlos "El Puerco" Valdez, a Malaguayan counter-revolutionist who kidnaps Jessica (Katherine Helmond) on ABC's Soap.

His career breakthrough came in 1972 when he was cast as the easygoing Julio, junkman Fred Sanford's Puerto Rican neighbor, on NBC's Sanford and Son, developed by All in the Family creators Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear. Introduced in the second-season episode "The Puerto Ricans Are Coming," Julio was an easy target for the crotchety, bigoted Fred (Redd Foxx).

"You know what the Puerto Rican national anthem is? 'We'll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too …' " Fred complains to his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), when he learns who's moving in next door. "Julio Fuentes? That don't sound like no name — that sounds like somethin' you get from drinkin' their water.”


After he left that series, Sierra played one of the original detectives working out of the diverse 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village on ABC's Barney Miller, joining Hal Linden, Abe Vigoda, Ron Glass, Max Gail and Jack Soo when the show premiered in 1975.

A proud Puerto Rican New Yorker, Sierra's Chano was dedicated and dauntless, a cop who emotionally invested himself in his work. Nowhere was this better displayed than in the 1975 episode "The Hero," in which his character kills two suspects while preventing a robbery. His colleagues believe he deserves a commendation, but a distraught Chano feels otherwise, and he breaks down and cries.

"I think Barney Miller is much more real than any other cop show," Sierra said in an interview for the 1976 book TV Talk 2: Exploring TV Territory. "The people in the show have real problems. Kojak never worries. He knows he's got it made. Everything is always under control on that show. You never see the frustrations of police work or the kind of joking that goes on among real policemen. Those are the kinds of things we show on Barney Miller.”

Chano was written out of the series at the end of the second season so that Sierra could star in a new sitcom from Barney Miller creator Danny Arnold, this one set in a frenetic New York emergency room. A.E.S. Hudson Street debuted in 1977 but was canceled after six episodes.
 

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The New York native also portrayed a Jewish vigilante on a sobering episode of 'All in the Family.'
Sierra also made a memorable appearance as a radical Jewish vigilante in "Archie Is Branded," a 1973 episode of CBS' All in the Family that was one of the sitcom's most jarring episodes.
I remember that episode..that ending,both me and Archie were like :eek2:

"They BLEW HIM UP in his car!"
 

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Sanford & Son is one of my favorite shows so I remember Julio from there

also he was on All In The Family in a memorable episode
 
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