Lamont Goes Karate

Martial Artist and hobbyist actor Hugh Van Putten studied Hapkido in the first Hapkido school* in the country under 6th Dan Sea Oh Choi along with renowned martial artist Cliff Stewart. It is unconfirmed that Hugh Van Putten went on to create his own style of martial arts called White Eyebrow Explosive Fist that is a combination of Kenpo, Hapkido, Escrima, and practical experience that Van Putten had as a bodyguard. As of 2006 he was the martial arts coach of the Denver Nuggets.

Why the sudden interest in ageless Mr. Van Putten? Well, my Sage.Tv is set to record anything that has to do with martial arts. Sometimes it gets a few gems, and most of the time it gets a lot of gravel. In Mr. Van Putten's case, it picked up a bit of gravel in the form of a road that led me to write a bit about Mr. Van Putten and the influence he had on Martial Arts in the United States in the mid 1970's from just a brief five minute appearance on a very popular television show... "Sanford & Son". In this particular episode, "Lamont Goes Karate", Lamont is beaten up after dating the ex-girlfriend of barroom bully Jo-Jo Jackson. Determined to defend himself when he meets up with Jo-Jo again, Lamont begins taking karate lessons from Gus Thomas played by none other than Hugh himself. Now as entertaining as this may sound, it isn't. It is stereotypical mid 70's sitcom shtick. It goes nowhere, characters don't develop, lessons aren't really learned, and important messages aren't communicated to the audience. Now, this is just my impression from the first 25 minutes of the show as TVLand for some reason has their shows offset by about five minutes so the climatic confrontation scene between the newly trained karatika Lamont and Jo-Jo is cut off. But I can guess some wackiness ensued during that final battle between Jo-Jo and Lamont. I mean, Lamont had a full week of training under the 3rd or 5th degree black belt Gus. There is no way that a barroom brawler with just a few dozen fights under his fists could stand up to a weeks worth of karate training... right? Ok, the plot is silly and probably to be expected. However, my main focus, and the reason I wanted to watch this episode in the first place, was to actually witness Hugh in action during the Lamont/Grady training scene. I was disappointed when the scene did not convey the heart and wisdom of the martial arts, I was disappointed that Hugh was forced (I hope he didn't choreograph the scene by his own volition) to demonstrate stretching and meditative practices outside of their normal use, and I was disappointed in the sloppiness of the fast and flashy techniques that were demonstrated by him in mid air and on Grady during the pre training session. I don't even want to go into the stances that he and Lamont went into at the beginning of their training session or the Gi with the poorly tied Obi that Lamont had on.

What impact could such a presentation have on the Martial Arts during this time period? Remember that Sanford & Son was one of the most watched shows on in the 1970's, in 1974 most people only received a few over the air channels and there were not that many choices of what to watch. The Martial Arts was even less understood then than it is today. I don't think that this show enlightened anyone at that time on what it meant to study the art. In fact, it probably had just the opposite effect an d may have caused a decline in potential practitioners. After all, the day after “Billy Jack” (1971) hit the theaters, thousands of new students flocked to martial arts schools all over the country eager to learn the moves made popular by the film’s star Tom Laughlin. Was there anything that Hugh could have done to salvage this episode of Sanford & Son? Probably not. It was almost certainly the directors myopic vision that caused this chalk board screeching episode. To paraphrase a bit of wisdom that Grady imparted to Gus in this episode, "The Martial Arts is a grand art built upon tradition and many generations old, but running is older and has many more practitioners" The best thing that Hugh could have done after meeting with the director and determining what he wanted was to have walked away.

* Hapki-Jujitsu of Self Defense was founded sometime around 1964 by Sea Oh Choi, it was located at 821 Temple Street, Los Angeles, California. Later relocated to 721 South Western Avenue.