![]() ![]() ![]() When television began to upstage radio as the primary entertainment medium, nearly all of the major radio programs were adapted for the small screen. The resulting productions were completely unlike the radio show: crude, unfunny and (tragically) blatantly racist. Gosden and Correll played their characters in blackface in a film called “Check and Double Check,” while a cartoon series based on the show was also produced. In fact, Gosden and Correll hired African-American actors to round out their cast, making “Amos ‘n’ Andy” one of the very few integrated shows in the golden age of American radio.ĭuring the 1930s, two attempts were made to take “Amos ‘n’ Andy” from the aural medium of radio to the visual medium of motion pictures. Despite the racial impersonation, Gosden and Correll never cheapened their material with overt racist humor. To bring life to their African-American characters, Gosden and Correll used exaggerated black speech patterns which fractured the language with improper grammar and syntax (later generations would dub this “ebonics”). It was the creation of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two white actor-writers who invented a series depicting the misadventures of two black cabdrivers and their wacky friends. “Amos ‘n’ Andy” originated on radio in the late 1920s. Even at this late date, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” is still banned from the airwaves. The most controversial program in the history of American television was broadcast more than a half-century ago and continues to generate endless debate for its content: “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the all-black sitcom which divided audiences between those who saw it as an entertaining comedy and those who viewed it as a blatantly racist travesty.
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