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| Uncle Bertram Willis, played by Victor Kilian in the Season 1 episode "Uncle Bertram". | ||||
| Personal Information | ||||
| Gender: | Male | |||
| Occupation/ Career: |
Retired firefighter | |||
| Character description: |
Tom's unconventionally liberal minded uncle, who begins dating Mother Jefferson, much to George's dismaying chagrin | |||
| Character information | ||||
| Appeared on: | The Jeffersons | |||
| Episodes appeared in: | "Uncle Bertram" (Season 2) "Jenny's Grandparents" (Season 2) | |||
| Character played by: | Victor Kilian | |||
Bertram Willis, Tom Willis's uncle, appears in the Season 2 episode of The Jeffersons titled "Uncle Bertram", and then in the episode "Jenny's Grandparents", also in Season 2. The part of Bertram is played in the episode by veteran film/TV character actor Victor Kilian.
About Uncle Bertram[]
When an suspected elevator masher, who turns out to be Tom Willis' elderly Uncle Bertram, meets Mother Jefferson in the elevator of the Whittendale Bldg., things don't exactly get off to a good first impression for poor Olivia, as he greets her with "How ya' doin' Toots?". Turns out that Bertram, who's a retired firefighter, is like his nephew Tom and niece-in-law Helen, sort of a "white sheep" (no pun intended) in the Willis family. It is also revealed that Bertram, in his unusually progressively liberal attitudes on race and interracial dating, was one of the few relatives who did not recoil and ostracize Tom and Helen when they wed in the 1950s.
When the progressive elderly couple, being Mother Jefferson and Bertram, begin to hit it off, and begin going out together, it begins to rankle the still not-so-progressive towards interracial dating George, bringing his attitudes towards race to the forefront.