About 14-15 years ago, I rented a few grainy, bootleg Amos ‘N’ Andy videos from a mom & pop video store just to see what all the fuss was about. I expected to be able to laugh at them with a smug, condescending, “look-at-how-far-we-have-come” attitude.
I was floored.
This stuff was GOOD.
I saw sketches which were still being used in comedy today.
I saw actors performing professionaly delivering jokes, takes and reactions with deadly, precision timing.
I saw black characters treating each others in the 1950’s with the same respect and disrespect we see in TV shows made today.
My wife and I laughed our asses off.
I would like to see decent copies made of this fantastic show and have it get the respect it deserves.
Given today’s politically-correct atmosphere I doubt that you’ll see an A 'n A revival anytime soon. Given that the characters were written and played by white men will make it all the more unlikely.
IIRC, you can get copies of the show (both radio and TV) through “Signals” magazine that is put out by public radio and public TV stations.
Plnnr- thats not QUITE right. On radio, Amos and Andy were played by white actors. But on television, the entire cast was black.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of the show, and I wasn’t particularly impressed. But they didn’t strike me as any more racist than “Sanford and Son” or “The Martin Lawrence Show.”
Many of the characters WERE cartoonish, especially Kingfish- but they were cartoonish in a typical sitcom way, rather than a bigoted way. Ultimately, Kingfish was no more or less a buffoon than Ralph Kramden or Barney Fife.
I don’t expect the show will ever make a real comeback. It carries too much baggage. It’s been off the air so long, and has such a reputation for racism, I don’t think any TV station wants to be the first to bring it back. And from the little I saw, the show wasn’t all THAT funny, so we’re probably not missing a whole lot.
Still, my guess is, if the show ever WERE aired again, people would watch it and say, “THAT’S it? THAT’S what all the fuss was about? The show has been condemned so vehemently for so long, we were expecting something much worse!”
I haven’t seen Amos 'n Andy, but the actor who played Amos, Alvin Childress (who, as already stated, was black), was quoted as saying that he thought the show did not harm African-Americans. “…[T]he series had many episodes that showed the Negro with professions and businesses like attorneys, store owners, and so on, which they never had in TV or movies before.”
I recall seeing a VHS tape in one of those dollar bins with episodes of the show. I think I even had it in my hand and then got distracted and didn’t buy it.
I remember watching the show as a little kid and thinking it was funny - but as mentioned above, the same funny as Honeymooners or I Love Lucy. It was very much a buffoon situation comedy - get in a mess and try to get out of the mess. Stereotyping? Donno…it was a loooong time ago, but at the time it just seemed like all the other sitcom series. One thing I am sure of, it was a lot less stupid and demeaning than that godawful, “What’s Happenin’?”.
I’ve only seen an episode -
It made me cringe.
I don’t remember it being funny. I remember it making me feel ashamed and embarrassed, & I had no desire to watch it ever again.
Then again, I feel the same way about “Sanford and Son” & Martin Lawrence’s show.
I have almost all of them. There are about a half dozen that haven’t shown up anywhere, and there are one or two that have shown up since I got my set–but other than that. . .
BTW, while Kingfish, Andy, and Calhoun, and to a lesser extent Sapphire and Mam, were cartoonish–the supporting cast was composed of pretty normal people.
The big problem was not that it was cartoonish, as noted, a lot of programs of that era were cartoonish. The big problem was that it was virtually the only show with black characters on TV. (This criticism has been echoed by other minority groups about other programs through the years.)
If there had been, say, Nat King Cole’s variety show, Sammy Davis’ Jr.'s. talk show, Bill Cosby in I Spy and Dianh Carroll in Julia all running at the same time, A&A would probably be viewed as just another slapstick sitcom, fondly remembered by some, ignored by others.
I used to watch re-runs growing up as a kid in the late 50s/early 60s. It never struck me as being overtly demeaning - the Kingfish’s schemes, and Andy’s gullibility, were much like those of Ralph Kramden and Norton on the Honeymooners. (One notable exception was the lazy janitor Lightnin’.) And though as a kid I wouldn’t have had much perspective on what might be seen as demeaning, I recall that the really derogatory caricatures of Stepin Fetchit-type blacks seen on the Bowery Boys and other shows were much worse. I’d like to see some episodes again to see if my take on them is much different now.
The Akron Public Library has most of them, which I check out now and again. I saw most of them live on tv in the early/mid 50’s. It was just a sitcom. And funny by the standards of the day.
I’m a big fan of AnA and have been collecting their radio shows for years. It’s really well-written, clever material. Much funnier than what passes for situational comedy on TV today. I recommend people to pick up a few tapes to see what the fuss is about. It’s a great way to pass the time during a long commute (although people in other cars will give you strange looks when they see you guffawing hysterically)
amarinth–I don’t understand…why does Sanford & Son make you cringe? It’s based off of a British show called Steptoe & Son starring white people. In fact, some of Sanford’s scripts were just revised versions of Steptoe’s.
I guess my question to you is…would Steptoe & Son make you cringe?
