You’d think it was a shufflin’ minstrel show the way it has been stigmatized. When I finally saw an episode of the The Amos 'n Andy Show, I wondered what all the fuss was about. It’s basically like a black Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton.
TV shows never did, and the last time American movies did was in the 1930s. Even Disney removed the Yiddish accent from a stereotypical Jewish peddler in The Three Little Pigs (1933) when they reissued it a few years later.
It wasn’t just the accent; they deleted the whole character and replaced him with another of the Big Bad Wolf’s disguises: a Fuller Brush man “woikin’ me way troo college.”
Forgot to mention the main point of the Mark Twain post, though.
Hal Holbrook made a video of his Mark Twain Tonight! Broadway show in the mid 1960s that was shown on PBS at the time and spawned a bestselling record. It was released onto DVD in the late 1990s almost as an afterthought and with no marketing it sold way way better than anybody expected, selling out its first pressing (or printing or whatever DVDs have). In 1998 plans were made to produce a second version (Holbrook has about 18 hours of Twain material memorized and essentially wings each performance, so it’s rarely the same show twice) with the then 73 year old Holbrook (who today at 81 has been performing as Mark Twain more than a decade longer than Sam Clemens did).
Holbrook agreed, producers agreed, all systems were go. Until PBS told Holbrook “oh, you can’t say the word nigger or speak in dialect or directly insult anybody’s religious beliefs” etc. etc… Now, it would have been possible to have done this and complied, but Holbrook, who likes the show to be spontaneous and plays to his audiences, absolutely balked. He wasn’t getting paid a lot of money for this (he makes more for a single show in a major venue than he’d have gotten for the notoriously low paying non-profit television) but was willing to do it for posterity, and he refused to have binders put on his performance. HOW CAN YOU DO A TWO HOUR MONOLOGUE OF MARK TWAIN WITHOUT MENTIONING RACE, MAKING JOKES ABOUT RELIGION OR OTHERWISE OFFENDING SOMEBODY!
The whole thing came to naught. This article states that PBS declined Holbrook’s offer but he discussed the event directly on a TV interview a few years ago and I found his version (the above) much more believable. What a damned shame, because it is an incredible show and only 90 minutes has been captured on film.
Song of the South was last released theatrically in the U.S. in 1986. As of December 2001, Song of the South was withdrawn worldwide. It isn’t available on home video anywhere. However, there is a strong rumor that Disney will be releasing it on DVD in November 2006, in a 60th Anniversary Edition.
It’s the same Jewish peddlar, with a different voice dubbed in. I’ve got it on DVD.
I believe Mel Brooks has said there’s no way you could make Blazing Saddles these days, either.
This reminds me of the **Seinfeld ** episode in which the gang attends the annual Puerto Rican Day parade in NYC. Apparently, the portrayal of some of the Puerto Rican characters in the episode did not go over too well. I have never seen the episode in syndication.
While Disney gets a lot of criticism - justifiably, I think - for censoring old material and then pretending they didn’t do it, a recent series of DVDs of classic animated shorts, e.g. The Chronological Donald, has taken a different approach. Before each cartoon that could offend modern sensibilities, the narrator breaks in briefly and says, essentially, “This was considered funny back when this cartoon was made. Nobody would do it now, but most people then weren’t shocked or upset. Take it in the spirit intended.”
I remember seeing Song of the South in one of its theatrical releases. I didn’t think the live action story was anything special, but the Brer Rabbit animated shorts were charming. I’d gladly put up with that sort of narrator’s lecture just to be able to get a legal copy of those cartoons and/or the whole movie, so my husband and the little flodnaks can see them too (they never have).
That, for some reason, reminds me of a cut in Red Dwarf: ‘Kryten’ - Rimmer (referring to a skeleton) “She’s got less meat on her than a chicken mcnugget”
The ‘mc’ was cut in repeats. I’ve no boubt it was for legal rather than PC reasons, though.
They pulled that episode from syndication showings for a few years, but it has been put back in the line-up. It was the burning of a Puerto Rican flag that angered people, I think.
Back to music and royalities: when Scrubs was released on DVD, they changed some songs, because they couldn’t get the rights for them. I can’t think of any specific examples, but if you go to epguides.com and look at the music listed for each episode, they’ll list what the original song was when it aired, and what the song was that replaced it on the DVDs. On the commentaries, some of the actors and the creator mention it, too.
“Oh, we had to replace this song!”
“That’s right, Artist ABC wouldn’t let us use it, so we changed the song to this other one by Artist XYZ for the DVD.”
It’s certainly still available in the UK:
One of The Young Ones episodes is missing the Musical Interlude because of licensing and broadcasting rights issues, IIRC.
I was amazed to see the comedy series Rising Damp on DVD at the local ABC Shop- I’ve never watched a complete episode, but the premise is basically a Boarding House owner has- The Horror!- Black people for Neighbours! Dun dun daaaaaah!
Bill Bryson mentions the show in Notes From a Small Island, saying he can’t remember the name, but that calling it My Neighbour Is A Darkie pretty well summed up the plot, context, and motivations of the show, as well as most of the humour…
After Disney released the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy they tried to re-release the old Dick Tracy cartoons that I grew up watching as a kid. In case you’re unfamiliar with these (young whippersnappers!), Tracy featured only peripherally in these, showing up at the beginning and end, while a bevy of cartoon detectives worked the actual cases . Typical was Hemlock Holmes, a true British Bulldog, wearing a Bobby’s cap. No one complained about him although I think they would’ve had a case. His accent was atrocious), but they did protest against the Japanese detective Joe Jitsu and the Hispanic Go-Go Gomez. You could make a case that these were positive role models (they were detectives, after all, good guys who caught the crooks, often using their characteristic ethnic means), but the drawings were heavy stereotypes, and “Go Go Gomez” trades on the opposite of the Mexican stereotype of the lazy peon (although “Speedy Gonzalez” still appears in Warner Brothers cartoons. Mel Blanc did the voice for both characters!). People protested the stereotyopes, and the cartoons were withdrawn.
The British show Spooks had its name changed to MI-5 when it aired here in the US.
I’m guessing that since ‘spooks’ is on a par with the n-word (although I’ve never actually heard it used that way), someone decided to change it.
That’s Leonard Maltin, or as my children call him, “the Boring Man”. He pops up before each cartoon that contains anything even the slightest bit controversial (including a penguin being spanked). Irritating for sure, but better than the alternative of editing the cartoons. I believe Maltin himself compiled the collections; I wonder whether it was his idea to do this to ensure they would get released uncut.
On a recent viewing of Dumbo I was surprised that the crows were intact (as far as I could tell). I think this is a good thing; they use a vaguely stereotypical black dialect, but are not otherwise negatively portrayed. In fact they are the only characters apart from the mouse to be supportive of Dumbo. And their song is great.
Jack Benny is still shown, pretty much uncut (except for the original commercials). I record it off a local channel every Sunday night.
Several musicals from the 1930’s and 1940’s had black-faced numbers removed for TV broadcast. Holiday Inn is the only one I can think of off-hand.
There was a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movie that was censored not long after its inital release. A number with Mickey and Judy as Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt was cut after FDR’s death, out of respect.
Jack Benny is still shown, pretty much uncut (except for the original commercials). I record it off a local channel every Sunday night.
Several musicals from the 1930’s and 1940’s had black-faced numbers removed for TV broadcast. Holiday Inn is the only one I can think of off-hand.
There was a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movie that was censored not long after its inital release. A number with Mickey and Judy as Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt was cut after FDR’s death, out of respect.
The rumor was shot down recently. See this link at Ultimate Disney . (read the March 11, 2006 update).
I have this vague memory of seeing something to the effect that the title was changed for American audiences because the creators didn’t want us thinking that it was about ghosts. But I could be wrong.
A Monty Python skit contained the line: “…and six months later he died of cancer.” spoken by Carol Cleveland.
When released on video a totally different male voice dubbed in the word “gangrene” in place of “cancer”. No one found out who did this and the Pythons themselves have no idea why it happened.