Actress and Chicago Heights native Lynn Hamilton worked steadily in TV for many years, with recurring roles in the hit shows “Sanford and Son,” “The Waltons” and “227.”

“She was a very good actress — it was (due to) the work that she put in,” said actress and Chicago native Marla Gibbs, 94, who starred in “227,” a sitcom that ran from 1985 to 1990. “She (also) was a very nice person.”

Hamilton, 95, died of natural causes on June 19, said her publicist, Calvin Carson. She had lived in Chicago since 2015 after moving to the city from Los Angeles.

Born Alzenia Lynn Hamilton in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Hamilton moved with her family to Chicago Heights at age 4. She graduated in 1947 from Bloom High School, where she was a member of the drama club.

“From that point on, I was able to, as I grew up, I was fairly attractive, and I was able to get into the modeling profession, and at which point I discovered the Goodman Theatre, which is in Chicago, and I went to the Goodman Theatre for four years and got my B.A. degree,” Hamilton said in a video interview in 2009. “I learned all I could about acting, because I felt that were I to become an actress, it was necessary that I know my craft, that I’m able to do everything. I felt that I needed to be versatile.”

After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the Goodman School of Drama at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hamilton took roles in local productions. A December 1953 Tribune article listed Hamilton as one of the Skyloft Players — a Black acting company that had gained renown in the 1940s — performing alongside future radio star Herb Kent in a play.

Skyloft performed in a former orphanage at 5120 S. Park Way — now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — in the South Side Washington Park neighborhood. The former orphanage was the home of the Park Way Community House, a social and cultural center for the South Side’s Black community, and the Skyloft Players staged work from Black writers like Richard Wright and Langston Hughes.

In the 2009 interview, Hamilton noted she was the only Black person in her class at the Goodman.

“And so there weren’t any roles for me, and so I was able to supplement my experience by working in a Black theater company on Chicago’s South Side, and that was the beginning,” she said.

In the late 1950s, Hamilton moved to New York City, working for three years at the New York Shakespeare Festival and performing in four Broadway shows, including the short-lived 1959 play “Only in America,” which starred Alan Alda. After about a dozen years in New York, Hamilton relocated to Seattle for a year to do repertory theater. She moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and pursued television and movie roles.

In her first year in Los Angeles, Hamilton scored guest spots on well-known programs, including “Mannix” and “Gunsmoke.” Other roles followed, including on “Hawaii Five-O” and “Barnaby Jones.”

Hamilton was hired for her most notable role in 1972, as a nurse who becomes engaged to wisecracking junk dealer Fred Sanford — played by Redd Foxx — on the sitcom “Sanford and Son.” Hamilton appeared in 22 episodes of “Sanford and Son,” and had a recurring role in 18 episodes of the historical drama series “The Waltons.”

Hamilton was initially cast as a landlady in “Sanford and Son,” and she used her theatrical training to impress the show’s producers. In her lone scene as a landlady, her character was asked to evict Lamont, Fred Sanford’s son.

“They said you can be as big as you want to be and I thought, oh my God, I can use my stage stuff,” Hamilton said in the 2009 interview. “And so that one scene, they were so impressed with that one scene that … a month or so later, they decided to give Fred Sanford a girlfriend, and I among, oh, I don’t know 100 other actresses in Hollywood auditioned, and we had screen tests.”

Redd Foxx “was impressed with my experience and he always said, ‘You’re so dignified, and I need somebody dignified opposite me.’ He was aware of his earthiness, shall we say,” she said.

Hamilton continued acting in small TV roles during the 1980s, including on shows like “Highway to Heaven,” “Riptide” and “The New Leave It to Beaver.” She picked up a recurring role on “227” in 1996, appearing with Gibbs in five episodes.

In the early 1990s, Hamilton acted in more than 50 episodes of a syndicated nighttime soap opera about female prisoners, “Dangerous Women.”

In a 2002 episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” she played the mother of comedian Wanda Sykes’ character.

After Hamilton’s husband of 50 years, poet and playwright Frank Jenkins, died in 2014, she returned to live in the Chicago area. She was also preceded in death by a daughter.

Hamilton is survived by four grandchildren.

A service in Los Angeles is being planned.

In the 2009 interview, Hamilton expressed optimism for the opportunities available for African Americans who are interested in pursuing a career in acting.

“If this is your desire, get the proper training, first and foremost, and go for it,” she said. “Because I think that African Americans can go straight to the top now. The opportunities are there. We have African American producers and African American writers and heads of studios. The opportunities are there.”

Bob Goldsborough is a freelancer.