AMOS "N" ANDY

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Amos 'n' Andy is an American radio and television sitcom set in Harlem, Manhattan's historic black community. The original radio show, which was popular from 1928 until 1960, was created, written, and voiced by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played a number of different characters, including the titular Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll).



When the show moved to television, black actors took over the majority of the roles; white characters were infrequent. Amos 'n' Andy began as one of the first radio comedy series and originated from station WMAQ in Chicago. After the first broadcast in 1928, the show became a hugely popular radio series. Early episodes were broadcast from the El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs, California.[3]:168–71 The show ran as a nightly radio serial (1928–43), as a weekly situation comedy (1943–55), and as a nightly disc-jockey program (1954–60). A television adaptation ran on CBS (1951–53) and continued in syndicated reruns (1954–66). It would not be shown to a nationwide audience again until 2012.

Hired by CBS as producers of the television show, Gosden and Correll were ready to try bringing the show to television as early as 1946; the search for cast members went on for four years before filming began. According to a 1950 newspaper story, Gosden and Correll had initial aspirations of voicing the characters Amos, Andy and Kingfish for television, while the actors hired for these roles performed and apparently were to lip-sync the story lines. A year later, both spoke about how they realized they were visually unsuited to play the television roles, citing difficulties with making the Check and Double-Check film. No further mention was made about Gosden and Correll continuing to voice the key male roles in the television series. Corell and Gosden did record the lines of the main male characters to serve as a guideline for the television show dialogue at one point. In 1951, the men targeted 1953 for their retirement from broadcasting; there was speculation that their radio roles might be turned over to black actors at that time.


Adapted to television, The Amos 'n Andy Show was produced from June 1951 to April 1953 with 78 filmed episodes, sponsored by the Blatz Brewing Company. The television series used black actors in the main roles, although the actors were instructed to keep their voices and speech patterns close to those of Gosden and Correll. Produced at the Hal Roach Studios for CBS, the show was among the first television series to be filmed with a multicamera setup, four months before I Love Lucy used the technique. The series' theme song was based on radio show's "The Perfect Song" but became Gaetano Braga's "Angel's Serenade", performed by The Jeff Alexander Chorus. The program debuted on June 28, 1951.


The main roles in the television series were played by the following black actors:


Amos Jones – Alvin Childress

Andrew Hogg Brown (Andy) – Spencer Williams

George "Kingfish" Stevens – Tim Moore

Sapphire Stevens – Ernestine Wade

Ramona Smith (Sapphire's Mama) – Amanda Randolph

Madame Queen – Lillian Randolph

Algonquin J. Calhoun – Johnny Lee

Lightnin' – Nick Stewart (billed as "Nick O'Demus")

Ruby Jones – Jane Adams

This time, the NAACP mounted a formal protest almost as soon as the television version began,[35] and that pressure was considered a primary factor in the show's cancellation, even though it finished at #13 in the 1951-1952 season in the Nielsen ratings and at #25 in 1952-1953[54] (the sponsor, Blatz Beer, was targeted as well, finally discontinuing their advertising support in June 1953).[55] It has been suggested that CBS erred in premiering the show at the same time as the 1951 NAACP national convention, perhaps increasing the objections to it. The show was widely repeated in syndicated reruns until 1966 when, in an unprecedented action for network television at that time, CBS finally gave in to pressure from the NAACP and the growing civil rights movement and withdrew the program, being also pulled from Australian network ABC, which had been broadcasting it for almost a decade. The series would not be seen on American television regularly for 46 more years. The television show has been available in bootleg VHS and DVD sets, which generally include 72 of the 78 known TV episodes.



When the show was cancelled, 65 episodes had been produced. An additional 13 episodes were produced to be added to the syndicated rerun package. These episodes were focused on Kingfish, with little participation from Amos 'n' Andy. This is because these episodes were to be titled The Adventures of Kingfish, but they premiered under the Amos 'n' Andy title instead. The additional episodes first aired on CBS on January 4, 1955. Plans were made for a vaudeville act of the television program in August 1953, with Tim Moore, Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams playing the same roles. It is not known whether there were any performances. Still eager for television success, Gosden, Correll and CBS made initial efforts to give the series another try. The plan was to begin televising Amos 'n' Andy in the fall of 1956, with both of its creators appearing on television in a split screen with the proposed black cast.


A group of cast members began a "TV Stars of Amos 'n' Andy" cross-country tour in 1956, which was halted by CBS; the network considered it an infringement of their exclusive rights to the show and its characters. Following the threatened legal action that brought the 1956 tour to an end, Moore, Childress, Williams and Lee were able to perform in character for at least one night in 1957 in Windsor, Ontario.



In the summer of 1968 the premiere episode of a CBS News documentary series, Of Black America narrated by Bill Cosby, showed brief film clips of "Amos 'n' Andy" in a segment on racial stereotypes in vintage motion pictures and television programing . In 1983, a one-hour documentary film called Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy aired in television syndication (and in later years, on PBS and on the Internet). It told a brief history of the franchise from its radio days to the CBS series, and featured interviews with then-surviving cast members, as well as then-popular black television stars, such as Redd Foxx and Marla Gibbs, reflecting on the show's impact on their careers. Foxx and Gibbs emphasized the importance of the show featuring black actors in lead roles and expressed disagreement with the NAACP's objections that had contributed to the program's downfall. The film also contained a select complete episode of the classic TV series ("Kingfish Buys a Lot") that had not been seen since it was pulled from the air in 1966.


In 2004, the now-defunct Trio network brought Amos 'n' Andy back to television for one night in an effort to re-introduce the series to 21st century audiences. Its festival featured the Anatomy of a Controversy documentary, followed by the 1930 Check and Double Check film.


In 2012, Rejoice TV, a small independent television and Internet network in Houston, started re-airing the show weeknights on a regular, nationwide basis for the first time since CBS pulled the series from distribution in 1966.