The Orginal Amos & Andy - Get This Book!

[LizzieMaine]

I recall the series vividly. The paradox is that while the show presented a lot of positive images of African Americans, really the vast majority of the characters, it really made its bread and butter from the buffoons. This, of course, is typical of every sit com in history. But the characters of Kingfish (who wound up being the real star of the TV show), of Andy Brown, and especially of Calhoun, would probably still make people squirm. Just embarrassing.
That said, I think it's time to let people decide for themselves how they feel about it. It's history, almost ancient history, now.

Of course, what you're talking about here is the post-1943 and later the TV version. I've never cared much for either of these for the precise reasons you state -- they became increasingly exaggerated and buffoonish as time went on, and by the time the TV show came along, it had very very little in common with the original 15-minute nightly serial version that's the focus of my book. There were over 4000 episodes of that version, compared to just 79 of the TV series, but all most people know today are the TV shows, and that's done real damage to the program's reputation.

It's a case where a program devolved from carefully delineated, nuanced characters to broad caricatures of those characters, but because so little remains of that original program today all that's left is the caricature version. It's as if all we had to judge a great novel by was a "Classics Comics" adaptation.

 

[John in Covina]

History Detectives

By the way, I might mention that fans of the PBS "History Detectives" program should keep an eye out -- I'll be appearing on that show in one of the early episodes of the new season. I made a fast trip to NYC back in December to identify and authenticate for them an ultra-rare home recording of an "Amos 'n' Andy" broadcast from 1931, and they tell me that the segment will probably air sometime late in June.

The Amos'n'Andy episode has been shown a number of times in the past 2 weeks on the varous PBS TV stations here in the LA area. What a pleasant surprise to get to see our own LizzieMaine on the show giving definative information to the HD crew.