Amos 'n' Andy (1 Viewer)

Neil Brock · Feb 2, 2015

We are now in Year 50 of the CBS sentence to Amos 'N' Andy to being locked away for eternity. Watched a few last week and the show is so funny and so well written. I know that we'll never see a legitimate, high quality release as CBS is too afraid to put it out and equally too afraid to license it out. Really such a shame but thankfully all but 6 episodes are accessible to the public at least. I don't understand why they can't just put it out with some disclaimers and put together extras discussing the show and its place in history. This can't be seen but material that's a thousand times more offensive can? Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

John Hermes · Feb 2, 2015

I agree with you. The show is hilarious and I have nothing but respect for the actors involved. Too bad CBS treats us as children unable to keep things in context, while putting out the trash they do today.

BobO'Link · Feb 2, 2015

I, too, agree. I was all set to do a whole diatribe about the show and how idiotic that it was cancelled but found this which pretty much says it all:

You have the men out front, not as smart as they think they are, hatching various schemes to make their dreams come true or cover up their missteps while smarter females lecture them for their foolishness when the smoke clears. Things like the lodge they belong to are obvious parallels. If the Honeymooners could be a classic, why couldn't Amos and Andy? The characters are not servants or shoe-shine boys. It's [a] whole black community... If the show taught me anything about blacks is that they are just like everyone else.

There are *many* parallels to Amos 'n Andy in The Honeymooners as well as other popular "white" sitcoms of its day. Somehow I think it was cancelled *not* because it was stereotypical but because it was a *popular* series about non-whites which was created by a couple of white men and that made the network uncomfortable as they just didn't know how to handle this. The NAACP just happened to come along at a convenient time and provided the fuel to make it happen. I think they were looking at the history of the program and calling it racist because white men created it.

I've seen more series in the years since Amos 'n Andy was made that *were* offensive black stereotypes than Amos 'n Andy every thought about being. The sad part is the worst of the shows I've seen are produced by members of the very group who decries Amos 'n Andy as being offensive! Where has the NAACP been when *these* aired?

howard1908 · Feb 2, 2015

BobO'Link said:
I, too, agree. I was all set to do a whole diatribe about the show and how idiotic that it was cancelled but found this which pretty much says it all:

There are *many* parallels to Amos 'n Andy in The Honeymooners as well as other popular "white" sitcoms of its day. Somehow I think it was cancelled *not* because it was stereotypical but because it was a *popular* series about non-whites which was created by a couple of white men and that made the network uncomfortable as they just didn't know how to handle this. The NAACP just happened to come along at a convenient time and provided the fuel to make it happen. I think they were looking at the history of the program and calling it racist because white men created it.

I've seen more series in the years since Amos 'n Andy was made that *were* offensive black stereotypes than Amos 'n Andy every thought about being. The sad part is the worst of the shows I've seen are produced by members of the very group who decries Amos 'n Andy as being offensive! Where has the NAACP been when *these* aired?

Being black myself I have not always had a love for Amos n Andy, in fact I thought it was racist and vile, and when I was teenager I never understood why my parents loved the show. My opinion about it began to change in the late 1980s when I saw a TV advertisement for a VHS set of the series, and I bought, not to watch but to show my youngest daughter the esteem with which the white established held in us. And I watched it, and discovered that not only was this show not racist but that it was forward thinking, in fact it was the only show where we weren't someone's maid, butler, janitor or any other of the subservient stereotypes present in fillm and television at that time, and in addition to that I also came to the opinion that this is the forgotten masterpiece of the era on par with how's like I love Lucy the honeymooners and the Phil silvers show.

The Obsolete Man · Feb 2, 2015

howard1908 said:
Being black myself I have not always had a love for Amos n Andy, in fact I thought it was racist and vile, and when I was teenager I never understood why my parents loved the show. My opinion about it began to change in the late 1980s when I saw a TV advertisement for a VHS set of the series, and I bought, not to watch but to show my youngest daughter the esteem with which the white established held in us. And I watched it, and discovered that not only was this show not racist but that it was forward thinking, in fact it was the only show where we weren't someone's maid, butler, janitor or any other of the subservient stereotypes present in fillm and television at that time, and in addition to that I also came to the opinion that this is the forgotten masterpiece of the era on par with how's like I love Lucy the honeymooners and the Phil silvers show.

The radio show is the one that would probably be offensive these days.

IIRC, that's the one that had white guys as Amos and Andy with really bad, stereotypical accents.

As for CBS not believing we're grown up enugh for it... hey, it isn't only CBS. WB is particularly bad at dealing with the past, having Whoopi Goldberg apologize for the racism in Looney Tunes cartoons, notices in the front of DC Comics Archives explaining that the comics originally came out in the 40s and there were different social standards then, and just not reprinting an old Shazam serial because of a stereotype character in the story.

Ejanss · Feb 2, 2015

The Obsolete Man said:
The radio show is the one that would probably be offensive these days.

IIRC, that's the one that had white guys as Amos and Andy with really bad, stereotypical accents.

Actually, no--While Gosden & Correll were white, and some of the accents were stereotypical for the 30's-40's (Lightning, for ex., is the Stepin Fetchit archetype), there were also black actors on the show (Johnny Lee's panicky-overblown Calhoun, James Baskett's motormouthed Gabby, and even Hattie McDaniel showing up to do her trademark bit), and you can tell that G&C sound absolutely nothing like black people.

Which helps take it out of context, and with the radio scripts that were funnier than the TV, the Southern accents and occasional malapropisms, I used to just picture I was listening to a radio version of the Pogo comic strip (Correll's Andy sounds exactly like Albert).

G&C obviously had the same idea, when they turned the radio Andy & Kingfish into the 60's animal-cartoon "Calvin & the Colonel".

It's Tim Moore's TV "Holy mack-erel, dere" that became the offensive-stereotype scapegoat, and that because the TV cast was trying to imitate the radio voices

And like Bob says, it's not offensive, it's the Honeymooners:

https://ia902605.us.archive.org/29/items/AmosAndy286Epspg2Of2/Aa1946-10-01109TheLotOnRockyHillsakaAndyBuysLotOnTopOfMountain.mp3

Neil Brock · Feb 3, 2015

Alongside I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, Burns and Allen and The Phil Silvers Show, Amos 'n' Andy takes its place as one of the 5 classic great sitcoms of the 1950s. If CBS wasn't the Chicken Broadcasting System, they would let the show out of jail.

Professor Echo · Feb 3, 2015

The radio series was so popular that during a period when it was at its height, motion picture theater owners would advertise that on the night the show aired they would interrupt the movie to play the 15 minute broadcast in the theater. Otherwise they knew no one would show up at the theater that night. THAT'S how popular the series was!

chas speed · Feb 3, 2015

It weird to live in a era where Snoop Dogg can go to an award show with women on dog leashes or give interviews where he brags about beating his "ho's" and get no flack, but the TV series Amos and Andy is considered racist. We really haven't come a long way. The people who wrote the Amos and Andy TV series also wrote "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Munsters" and they were some of the best TV writers in the business. I wonder if watchable prints of Amos and Andy exist. The public domain videos are really unwatchable.

Neil Brock · Feb 3, 2015

chas speed said:
I wonder if watchable prints of Amos and Andy exist. The public domain videos are really unwatchable.

The original 35mm negatives are safely tucked away in CBS vaults so yes, good quality elements exist. As for the DVDs that are available to the public, they aren't public domain but CBS doesn't go after the people who distribute them as long as they do it quietly. They were made from the best available 16mm prints that are in collectors' hands and personally I don't think they look all that bad considering.

chas speed · Feb 3, 2015

Neil Brock said:
The original 35mm negatives are safely tucked away in CBS vaults so yes, good quality elements exist. As for the DVDs that are available to the public, they aren't public domain but CBS doesn't go after the people who distribute them as long as they do it quietly. They were made from the best available 16mm prints that are in collectors' hands and personally I don't think they look all that bad considering.

Maybe, but it certainly hurts the show and it deserves much better treatment then these poor dubs.

Vic Pardo · Feb 3, 2015

Preeminent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote a New York Times op-ed piece celebrating the "Amos 'n' Andy" TV show some years ago. His emphasis was on the Christmas episode that used to run annually and he and his family would always watch it. Sadly, his attempt to get his daughters to watch and appreciate that episode met with failure. Defenders of the show should look for his piece.

MatthewA · Feb 3, 2015

Vic Pardo said:
Preeminent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote a New York Times op-ed piece celebrating the "Amos 'n' Andy" TV show some years ago. His emphasis was on the Christmas episode that used to run annually and he and his family would always watch it. Sadly, his attempt to get his daughters to watch and appreciate that episode met with failure. Defenders of the show should look for his piece.

Was this it?

Joe Lugoff · Feb 4, 2015

A slight correction to something from above:

For its first fifteen years on the radio, including its peak years of popularity in the early 1930s, "Amos 'n' Andy" was a nightly (Mon-Fri) fifteen-minute serial. Usually, a story was told in the course of the five weekly installments.

So, one of the reasons (unless the whole thing is just an urban legend) that theaters would stop the show and play the radio through the loudspeakers wasn't just the great popularity of the show -- it's that people wanted to be able to keep up with the story and on Fridays hear how it turned out.

After fifteen years, it became a standard once-a-week, 30-minute sitcom, where it lasted on the radio for another twelve seasons. Then there were five seasons of Amos, Andy and Kingfish as disc jockeys, for a total of 32 years on the radio! And now we're all supposed to pretend that none of it happened ...

David Rain · Feb 5, 2015

The show had a complicated history which may be why a lot of people don't realize that perhaps the most offensive incarnation was a movie called 'Check & Double Check':

In 1930, RKO Radio Pictures brought Gosden and Correll to Hollywood to do an Amos 'n' Andy feature film, Check and Double Check (a catchphrase from the radio show). The cast included a mix of white and black performers (the latter including Duke Ellington and his orchestra) with Gosden and Correll playing Amos 'n' Andy in blackface.[39] The film pleased neither critics nor Gosden and Correll themselves, but briefly became RKO's biggest box-office hit prior to King Kong before falling off rapidly. Audiences were curious to see what their radio favorites looked like and were expecting to see African-Americans instead of white men in blackface. RKO ruled out any plans for a sequel.[40] Gosden and Correll did lend their voices to a pair of Amos 'n' Andy cartoon shorts in 1934: The Rasslin' Match and The Lion Tamer. These were also not successful.[41] Years later, Gosden was quoted as calling Check and Double Check "just about the worst movie ever." Gosden and Correll also posed for publicity pictures in blackface. They were also part of The Big Broadcast of 1936 as Amos 'n' Andy.

Professor Echo · Feb 5, 2015

Joe Lugoff said:
A slight correction to something from above:

For its first fifteen years on the radio, including its peak years of popularity in the early 1930s, "Amos 'n' Andy" was a nightly (Mon-Fri) fifteen-minute serial. Usually, a story was told in the course of the five weekly installments.

So, one of the reasons (unless the whole thing is just an urban legend) that theaters would stop the show and play the radio through the loudspeakers wasn't just the great popularity of the show -- it's that people wanted to be able to keep up with the story and on Fridays hear how it turned out.

After fifteen years, it became a standard once-a-week, 30-minute sitcom, where it lasted on the radio for another twelve seasons. Then there were five seasons of Amos, Andy and Kingfish as disc jockeys, for a total of 32 years on the radio! And now we're all supposed to pretend that none of it happened ...

I wasn't aware that it was serialized since radio shows in the late 20's-30's did run in weekly installments of 15 minutes as opposed to the traditional 30 that later became the norm. Stopping the film in theaters every night makes the anecdote lean more toward urban legend after all, but it's possible it did happen and regardless still speaks to the popularity of the series.

It was a wonderful show, both on radio and TV and certainly deserves more recognition than its largely undeserved and often unfairly notorious reputation.

Rob_Ray · Feb 5, 2015

How ironic that the only legitimately available incarnation of Amos 'n Andy is that notorious RKO feature, CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK!

Vic Pardo · Feb 5, 2015

MatthewA said:
Was this it?

I'm guessing that the letter in that link was submitted in response to the op-ed piece I mentioned.

chas speed · Feb 5, 2015

I think a lot of the TV shows bad reputation comes from the fact that few people have seen it. I also believe that many people think that "Birth of a Nation" is a great film because they haven't seen it. In my opinion "Birth of a Nation" is probably the worst movie ever made. It's only interesting as an example of how racist people were back then to embrace such a film.

Professor Echo · Feb 5, 2015

chas speed said:
I think a lot of the TV shows bad reputation comes from the fact that few people have seen it. I also believe that many people think that "Birth of a Nation" is a great film because they haven't seen it. In my opinion "Birth of a Nation" is probably the worst movie ever made. It's only interesting as an example of how racist people were back then to embrace such a film.

The TV forum is not the proper forum for discussing THE BIRTH OF A NATION, no matter what the context.

Back away carefully and trust me on this.

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