For Fun: Looking for 1950s TV Shows with Black Actors to Re-cast

[Tropicana]

The only one I can think of is Amos and Andy. I've never seen it but I hear it was an embarrassment. Oh and there was Rochester on Jack Benny, another embarrassment. (1950–1965) Don't know if it is worth re-casting these.

Were there other 1950s TV shows with Black actors? If not I will have to switch to movies for my re-casting project.

I am also going to do Wild Wild West since this classic was re-cast with a Black actor when it hit the movie screens.

Star Trek is also going to get the re-casting treatment since it is a multi-racial cast and pre-quel movies have been released with a new cast....which is pretty good.

[missus_vegas]

wat do u mean by it was an embarrassment? Do u mean poor acting or delivery etc? i am a huge fan of those old shows and i dont really notice a diff btwn say our miss brooks or life or riley where they have white cast.

[Tropicana]

Anything with stereotypical behaviour and accents, skinning teeth, and bugging out of the eyes many Black people including me consider to be an embarrassment. Louis Armstrong is another one who comes to mind.




What about Steppin Fetch it. Were they ever on TV. Apparently it was 2 people one named Steppit and another named Fetch it.

Edited to add...maybe it was just one person. I am confused.

Stepin Fetchit remains one of the most controversial movie actors in American history. While he was undoubtedly one of the most talented physical comedians ever to do his shtick on the Big Screen, achieving the rare status of being a character actor/supporting player who actually achieved superstar status in the 1930s (becoming a millionaire to boot), his characterization as a lazy, slow-witted, jive-talkin' "EDIT" offended African-Americans at the time he was a major attraction in motion pictures (primarily the 1930s) and still offends African-Americans in the 21st century, more than 50 years after he had faded from the screen. Yet some African-Americans claim him as the first black superstar, and thus a trailblazer for others of his "race." The controversy over Stepin Fetchit remains alive to this day, with two biographies published about him in 2005.

Anyway what an embarrassment:

Oh then their were the children from the Our Gang series form the 1930s I think. Some of the shows have been aired on TV over the years. Some were an embarrassment others were not.

[Tropicana]

Rochester is not so bad here but I heard that he was usually an embarrassment...maybe in some of the earlier shows:

Apparently the pair were on radio before this.

Jack Benny made his TV debut in the 1949 season. There is a kinescope of his later November 1949 TV appearance on the intermittent Jack Benny Program special appearances of the time. Benny ran shorter runs in his early seasons on TV into the early 1950's, as he was still firmly dedicated to radio. The regular and continuing Jack Benny Program was telecast on CBS from October 28, 1950, to September 15, 1964, and on NBC from September 25, 1964, to September 10, 1965. 343 episodes were produced.

Also, I read that was Rochester's real voice not put on to look silly. He had suffered some vocal chord damage or something. Here he can't talk or the would know him right away.

[Tropicana]

Anyway I am not going to re-cast any of these. Anything more dignified from 1950s TV?

[missus_vegas]

Anything with stereotypical behaviour and accents, skinning teeth, and bugging out of the eyes many Black people including me consider to be an embarrassment. Louis Armstrong is another one who comes to mind.

ok suh yuh mean. shrug.

[Tropicana]

So I take it you don't consider this type of behaviour to be embarrassing and stereotypical? Let's see what I can find from Rochester that I would consider to fit this category.

[Tropicana]

This one is actually quite funny....it is from the radio in 1945.

[Tropicana]

Okay this gives the story of how Rochester's character evolved. That is why the material from the 1950s is not so bad. I don't think he could be re-cast thought, he was unique:

What a Character: Eddie Anderson

It is a sad fact of life that the Golden Age of Hollywood was not a Golden Age for African Americans. Particularly in the Thirties, African American characters were often outright stereotypes. It was the era of Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best, actors whose speciality was playing characters who were stereotypically lazy, dim witted, and illiterate. Even in an era when offensive stereotypes permeated everything from big budget feature films to Warner Brothers cartoons, however, there were African American actors whose work would change the image of blacks on film for the positive. Among these actors was comedian Eddie Anderson, best known for playing Jack Benny's valet Rochester on the long running Jack Benny Programme.

Possessing an immediately recognisable, gravelly voice that was something like a foghorn, there can be no denying that Eddie "Rochester" Anderson was one of the most popular radio and television stars of the 20th Century regardless of race. In the course of his career he became the highest paid African American actor for a time and one of the highest paid stars in radio. And while Eddie Anderson is best known as Rochester, he also had a highly successful career as a character actor in motion pictures. Indeed, Paramount considered Eddie Anderson such a box office draw that they once wanted him for one of their Bob Hope movies. Jack Benny, who had Mr. Anderson under contract, turned Paramount down with the words, ""It's bad enough having him steal my pictures." Jack Benny may have had little success in motion pictures, but his comedy partner Eddie Anderson was a bona fide movie star, one who could have easily stolen a Bob Hope movie out from under Mr. Hope's nose.

While Eddie Anderson's career in films was on the rise in the mid to late Thirties, it would not be films that would make him a star, but radio instead. It was in 1937 that an episode of The Jack Benny Programme featured a Coleman porter who would have an encounter with penny pinching Jack Benny. Eddie Anderson proved to be a hit in the role, so that a month later he was brought back to play the part of a waiter named Pierre. Once again Eddie Anderson proved popular with the audience. Many weeks later, Eddie Anderson was brought back on the show again, this time playing a character in a dispute with Jack Benny over a watch. Notably, Mr. Anderson's character came out on top in the exchange, something that probably would not have happened between a black character and a white character on another radio show or in a motion picture. Eddie Anderson once more proved to be a hit on the show. It was then not long before Eddie Anderson was made a regular member of the cast of The Jack Benny Programme, playing Jack Benny's valet and chauffeur Rochester (who would eventually be given the surname "Van Jones").

In the early days the character of Rochester owed a good deal to commonly held racial stereotypes. He loved to drink, particularly gin. Rochester loved gambling and chasing women. His tastes in food ran to fried chicken and watermelon. Even in the early days while Rochester may have resembled many of the common black stereotypes, at the same time he differed a good deal from them as well. Rochester was decidedly not dim witted the way that Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best's characters were, and while he was a servant he was not exactly servile either. Like the white characters on The Jack Benny Programme Rochester mocked and belittled Jack. And like every other character on the show Rochester always got the better of Jack as well. Ultimately Rochester would confront and even ridicule Jack in ways that no other black character in any other radio show or any motion picture would have been permitted to do to a white man at the time.

It would be during World War II, when the horrors of the Holocaust became public knowledge, that Jack Benny and his writers made the decision to remove all traces of ethnic stereotyping from Rochester's character. Gone were the jokes about Rochester drinking gin, gambling, chasing women, eating fried chicken, and eating watermelon. Already intelligent and somewhat mocking towards Jack Benny, Rochester became the American equivalent of Jeeves, a sly, assertive manservant who more or less has his employer's life under his control. It is Rochester to whom Jack Benny goes when he needs to know how to spell words like "superfluous" and "discrepancies." And it is often Rochester who gets Jack out of trouble. While Rochester was still Jack Benny's valet and chauffeur, he was very much treated as Jack's equal.

In the end Jack Benny and Eddie Anderson became a comedy team, much in the same way that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby or George Burns and Gracie Allen were. What made them a success as a team was not simply that they were two very talented men, but that they were also very close friends who were quite comfortable with each other. When Eddie Anderson had a heart attack in 1958, Jack Benny was visibly worried about him. When Jack Benny died in 1974, Eddie Anderson not only teared up during interviews about his former employer and comedy partner, but he openly wept at Jack Benny's funeral.

Of course, here it must be pointed out that not only did Jack Benny change the character of Rochester from a near stereotype to a much more positive and affirmative character, but in his own way he also stood up against segregation on behalf of Eddie Anderson. Once Eddie Anderson was denied a room in a hotel in St. Joseph, Missouri at which Jack Benny's cast and crew had planned to stay, Jack Benny told them, "If he doesn't stay, neither then do I." The hotel relented and gave Eddie Anderson a room. The South was not the only place where racism against Eddie Anderson took place. Once in New York, a couple at a hotel at which the cast and crew were staying complained about being in the same hotel as Eddie Anderson. The hotel manager tried to convince Eddie Anderson to move to another hotel. The show's producer and Mary Livngstone's brother, Hilliard Marks, told the manager that Eddie Anderson would be happy to move to another hotel. The following day the entire cast and crew, 44 people in all, checked out of the hotel.

http://mercurie.blogspot.ca/2012/09/what-character-eddie-anderson.html

An old radio show - 1945:

Starts around 14:00

[Tropicana]

Start at 2:40 about Amos and Andy - originally played on the radio by 2 white guys.

This was the pilot for the TV show.

NAACP eventually got this taken off the air.

Name: Amos 'n' Andy, NAACP pressures CBS to cancel program

Date: 1951 - 1975

Location: North America , Africa

Subject: Racial/Ethnic , Political/Economic/Social Opinion

Medium: Television , Radio

---

Artist: Freeman Goshen and Charles Correll were the original actors in the Amos 'n' Andy live and radio minstrel shows. Tim Moore, Spencer Williams and Ernestine Wade were the lead actors on the television version. Confronting Bodies: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the government of Kenya. Date of Action: 1953 through the 1960s Specific Location: The United States and Kenya Description of Artwork: Amos 'n' Andy was a popular minstrel show that began as a live performance by two white actors in blackface, continued to become a nationally syndicated radio program and became a television program in the 1950s. The show featured several main characters: George Stevens, also known as "the Kingfish," was a con-man trying to make an easy dollar; Andy, a gullible cab driver; as well as Kingfish's wife, girlfriend and mother. The show was a comedy routine composed of malapropisms, mispronounciations and misunderstandings based on African American stereotypes. Description of Incident: Amos 'n' Andy was attacked by African American Civil Rights groups for many years before it was banned from television. In 1931 the African American press petitioned the Federal Radio Commission to cancel the show because it was an unfair representation of African Americans. They believed that the show could be used, through its racially stereotypical character personalities, for whites to justify slavery and maintain segregation. CBS cancelled the television program in 1953 in response to pressure from the NAACP and other civil rights organizations. In 1963, CBS sent reruns of Amos 'n' Andy to Kenya and Nigeria. Kenya banned the show in 1963. In 1964 a Chicago television station announced that it would air reruns of the show, however, ceased after national protest. Results of Incident: Currently, the show is being examined for its complex historical context. Some academics believe that the characters were more intricate than they appeared during the years of its production.

http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/792

[missus_vegas]

we r from two diff worlds. i dont let dem tings bother me really.

ETA: most tings dat bodda u come in like nothing to me. in fact very few tings really bodda.

[Tropicana]

A black person who doesn't let racial stereotyping bother them. What a concept!

[missus_vegas]

A black person who doesn't let racial stereotyping bother them. What a concept!

Does that bother you?

[Tropicana]

No...it just puzzles and stuns me.

[missus_vegas]

No...it just puzzles and stuns me.

poor yuh. i hope u tekkin some good herbal remedy fi yuh nerves cus wid all the tings weh stun and shock u, u soon start shake.