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| Mr. Drew, played by Roger Bowen | ||||
| Personal Information | ||||
| Gender: | Male | |||
| Occupation/ Career: |
Loan officer, Mercantile National Bank, Manhattan, NY | |||
| Character description: |
insists that George opens up his first cleaning store in a more desirable neighborhood, meaning a white one, so that he would approve the loan he was seeking; gets thrown out by an offended George, who finds out about his bigoted views on race in rejecting the loan offer | |||
| Character information | ||||
| Appeared on: | The Jeffersons | |||
| Episodes appeared in: | "The First Store" (Season 6) | |||
| Character played by: | Roger Bowen | |||
Mr. William Drew is a character who appears in the Season 6 episode of The Jeffersons titled "The First Store". The part of Mr. Drew is played by veteran character actor Roger Bowen.
About Mr. Drew and George's first store[]
In the "The First Store" episode, after George purchased an abandoned store front which he was able to buy with some money which he had saved in the weeks leading up to April 3-5 of 1968, the time of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I've Been To The Mountaintop" speech to sanitation workers in Memphis, and his assasination, the Jeffersons were attempting to get a loan approved to make direly needed renovations on the empty Harlem storefront, which was in disrepair.
Mr. Drew, a loan officer at The Mercantile National Bank of Manhattan, who manages to offend George by voicing his opinions on the people who lived in the Harlem neighborhood which they lived, in lumping them, and those who were demonstrating with Lionel after meeting him moments after he arrived at the Jefferson home together with those in the community who were resorting to rioting and looting after hearing about Dr. King's assassination just the evening before, as "savages"; he even echoed the sentiments the rumors and false speculation of some whites who were saying that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was "a Communist"!
When George, increasingly offended by Drew's seemingly bigoted views on race, and his insistence that in order to go through with approving the loan, that he open the store in a "more desirable" neighborhood, namely, a "white" one, in insisting that the bank "couldn't lend money to someone who opens up a business in an area where the people behaved like animals", he then, after mulling over the proposition for a moment, balks on accepting the loan and throws Mr. Drew out of their apartment, which forces him to somehow to come up with a plan to make use of the storefront. When Mr. Drew, who bewildered at George's anger and his rejection of the loan offer, asks him, "Are you sure this is really what you want to do?", George then angrily answers, "No, what I really want to do is against the law!!"