Wallace Amos Jr., known to the world as the founder of the Famous Amos cookie brand, didn’t really enjoy being famous.
“Being famous is highly – very, very, very highly – overrated,” he told Honolulu Magazine in 2014. “It doesn’t mean you’re a nice person. It just means your image has been shown enough times. Hitler was famous. Big deal.”
But “Famous Amos” actually was a nice person. Generations of American children are undoubtedly familiar with Amos’ cookies, which may be small in size but stand tall in our collective memory. He also advocated literacy education for children, promoting reading in the same way he promoted his cookies. Much of his work came by hosting “learn to read” shows on public television, chairing literacy commissions and using his fame to remind people of the importance of reading.
On top of his serial entrepreneurship and tireless advocacy, Amos also served in the U.S. Air Force for four years, spending much of his time in the service at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, a place he would one day return. He died in Honolulu of complications from dementia on August 13, 2024, at age 88.
Amos was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida, to working-class parents. When he was 12 years old, they divorced and he was sent to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood to live with his aunt, Della Bryant. Aunt Della, it turned out, was a skilled baker and would bake chocolate chip cookies for young Wally and his sister to show them some love. Inspired by his aunt, he decided to pursue a career in the culinary arts.
Amos studied at the Food Trades Vocational High School in Manhattan while working an apprenticeship at the famed Essex House hotel on the edge of Central Park. This time in his life was discouraging, as he continually watched white students get promoted over him, so he decided to drop out of the school in 1953 and join the Air Force, becoming a radio and radar technician.
In a 2007 interview with the 1st Combat Camera Squadron, he talked about the effect joining the Air Force had on the rest of his life:
After leaving the Air Force in 1957, Amos moved back to New York, where he learned secretarial skills and joined the mailroom of the William Morris talent agency. He worked his way up to become an agent, and began arranging tours for Motown acts. Finding himself passed over for promotions once more in favor of white colleagues, he went to Los Angeles to open his own agency and try to expand his client list. When he didn’t find the success he had hoped for on the West Coast, he began baking cookies at night to relieve the stress of his work.
Eventually, Amos took a $25,000 loan from artists Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy to open his first cookie store in 1975 in a small shop on Sunset Boulevard. He began marketing the bite-sized snacks under the moniker “Famous Amos,” like he would any music artist. By 1981, the company was raking in $12 million a year in revenue, yet he kept the cookies as close to homemade as possible.
Amos’ fame blew up as much as the cookies he baked, and he soon was making cameo appearances on hit television shows such as “Taxi” and “The Jeffersons.” Much later, in 2012, he had a guest appearance on “The Office.” He also shared his message about learning to read on public television programming. As a high school dropout who later became a GED (General Education Development) graduate, he held the cause close to his heart.
Amos was eventually forced to sell the Famous Amos cookie brand after his business outgrew his business acumen. He sold it little by little, until he finally lost control of the company in 1988. After a year of remaining the paid spokesperson for Famous Amos, he left to focus on speaking tours, talking to entrepreneurs and advocating for childhood literacy programs. He would eventually try to reenter the cookie business, this time in Hawaii as the “Cookie Kahuna,” but never again achieved the success of the Famous Amos brand.
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