Education
Cooley Vocational High School.
Cooley Vocational High School.
And Cooley High.
Born Kenneth Williams in Chicago and raised in the Cabrini–Green housing project, Monte dropped out of Cooley Vocational High School and hitchhiked to Hollywood. His first big break came five years later, with a script written for and accepted by All in the Family which eventually contributed to the spawning of The Jeffersons. From there, he went on to produce work that inspired two 1970s sitcoms: Good Times (which he co-created with The Jeffersons star Mike Evans) and What"s Happening!! (which was based on his screenplay for the motion picture Cooley High (1975)).
(Cooley High also inspired the Columbia Broadcasting System television show The White Shadow (November 27, 1978 to March 16, 1981), starring Ken Howard.)
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1977 he filed a lawsuit accusing American Broadcasting Company, Columbia Broadcasting System, producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, and others of stealing his ideas for Good Times, The Jeffersons (an All in the Family spinoff), and What"s Happening!! Eventually, he says, he received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from Good Times, but the industry retaliated against him, labeling him difficult to work with and denying him the opportunity to pitch new scripts.
Since Good Times ended, the only scripts he"s written that have been produced by Hollywood are single episodes of The Wayans Brothers and of Moesha, the latter which Monte has called "the absolute worst script I"ve ever written". He took part of the settlement money to finance the production of a play he had written, titled If They Come Back.
The play proved to be a commercial failure, and significantly contributed to Monte"s financial ruin. After falling on hard times, by 2003, his drinking had worsened and he had developed an addiction to crack cocaine.
He later declared bankruptcy and, by 2006, found himself living in a Salvation Army homeless shelter in Bell, California.
He appeared to be maintaining sobriety there, as the shelter required regular drug tests, and he was actively pursuing further attempts to sell television and film scripts, as well as a self-published book called Blueprint for Peace. Late in 2006, Monte moved back to Chicago.