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The New York native also portrayed a Jewish vigilante in a thought-provoking episode of “Everything in the Family.”
Gregory Sierra, who has endeared himself to fans of 1970s sitcoms like the awesome Julio Fuentes on Sanford and sons and the avid Sgt. Miguel “Chano” Amenguale on Barney miller, is dead. He was 83 years old.
Sierra died Jan. 4 in Laguna Woods, Calif., After battling cancer, family spokesman Rick Voll said The Hollywood Reporter.
Hailing from the Spanish Harlem of New York, Sierra also made a memorable appearance as a radical Jewish vigilante in “Archie Is Branded,” a 1973 CBS episode. All in the family it was one of the most shocking episodes on the sitcom. And he played Carlos “El Puerco” Valdez, a Malaguayan counterrevolutionary who kidnaps Jessica (Katherine Helmond) on ABC’s Soap.
His career breakthrough came in 1972 when he was cast as Julio, the Puerto Rican neighbor of junkman Fred Sanford, on NBC. Sanford and sons, developped by All in the family creators Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear. Introduced in the second season episode “Puerto Ricans Are Coming”, Julio was an easy target for the crotchless, fanatic of Fred (Redd Foxx).
“Do 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 is moving in next door. “Julio Fuentes? It doesn’t sound like a name – it sounds like something you get by drinking their water.”
After leaving this series, Sierra played one of the original detectives working in the 12th district of Greenwich Village on ABC’s Barney miller, joining Hal Linden, Abe Vigoda, Ron Glass, Max Gail and Jack Soo at the show’s 1975 premiere.
A proud Puerto Rican New Yorker, Sierra’s Chano was a dedicated and fearless cop who was emotionally invested in his job. Nowhere has this been better displayed than in the 1975 episode “The Hero,” in which his character kills two suspects while preventing a robbery. His colleagues think he deserves praise, but a distraught Chano thinks otherwise and he collapses and cries.
“I think Barney Miller is a lot more real than any other crime show,” Sierra said in an interview for the 1976 book. TV Talk 2: Exploring Television Territory. “People on the show have real problems. Kojak never worries. He knows he did. Everything is always under control on this show. You never see the frustrations of the police job or the kind of joke that goes on among real cops. These are the kinds of things we show Barney miller. “
Chano was taken off the show at the end of the second season so Sierra could star in a new sitcom of Barney miller creator Danny Arnold, this one takes place in a frenzied New York City emergency room. AES Hudson Street debuted in 1977 but was canceled after six episodes.
Only two weeks after filming the series, his second wife, Susan, committed suicide. “We were separated at her wish,” Sierra said in 1978. “We had been together for six years, and her death leaves me with a sense of guilt and grief.”
Born January 25, 1937, Sierra was raised by his aunt after his parents abandoned him when he was 6 years old. “When I was a baby we were a typical Puerto Rican family,” he says. “Everyone lived together – grandmother, grandfather, aunt, two uncles, mother, father… little by little, everyone followed their path.
The neighborhood was rough, and Sierra flirted with gang life as a teenager and was once stabbed. He attended Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, a Brooklyn prep school for boys aiming for the priesthood. “I was not going to be a priest!” he said. “It was hard to study to be a priest during the day and to go out and plan a gang war at night!”
Sierra was with a friend who was auditioning for a acting class when the teacher invited her to try improvisation and was impressed. Eventually, he worked with the National Shakespeare Company and in the New York Shakespeare Festival, appeared in off-Broadway productions and, in a brief stunt with Broadway, was a standby in The mistress of the ninety days in 1967.
He moved to Los Angeles, made his screen debut in a voiceless role of Closing Jewelry in a 1969 episode of It takes a thief then appeared on other shows like Medical Center, The Haut Chaparral, Mod Squad and The flying nun. He played an Armenian on Kung Fu, an Italian on Banacek, a native american on Gunsmoke and a Hawaiian on Hawaii Five-O.
During this time he was landing support roles in features such as Under the planet of the apes (1970), Get right (1970), Butterfly (1973), Imposing hell (1974) and the long-running Orson Welles project The other side of the wind, finally released in 2018.
Sierra modeled Julio on Sanford and Sun after an uncle who was “a very happy, very kind man,” he once said. The more Fred tried to get under Julio’s skin, the more Julio got the better of him.
Sierra appeared on 12 episodes over three seasons. By the fifth season, the character had moved away. (The Sanfords bought his property and turned it into a boarding house.)
“The loss of Gregory Sierra as Julio at the start of the fifth season (he was regularly written even during the fourth season) marked the first signs of trouble for the series,” Paul Mavis wrote in a 2008 entry for the DVD site. Speak. His character worked a lot like George Jefferson as Archie Bunker’s next-door neighbor – a constant racial irritant – and without the sweet Julio responding to Fred over and over again (and without being there as a setup for some of the most outrageous slurs. Foxx), the series has lost much of its underlying advantage.
On his episode of All in the family, after a swastika was painted on his front door, Archie (Carroll O’Connor) receives a visit from Paul Benjamin from Sierra. The vigilante wants to go after the group responsible – and Archie has no problem with that – but is killed by a car bomb that explodes just outside the house. It is believed to be the only episode of the famous sitcom to end with absolute silence rather than applause from the studio audience.
Sierra went on to play recurring characters like ADA Alvarez on Hill Street Blues, Commander Paco Pico on Zorro and son, Det. Lt. Lou Rodriguez on Miami vice and Lieutenant Gabriel Caceres on Murder, She Wrote. He also appeared on Quincy, me, Simon and simon, Magnum, PI, Growing pains, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Walker, Texas Ranger.
His big-screen resume also included The problem with spies (1987), Honey I blew the child up (1992), Hot shots! Second part (1993), A dirty shame (1994), Vampires (1998) and Mafia! (1998).
Survivors include his wife, Hélène.
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