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WMAQ, the Chicago Daily News station, hired Gosden and Correll and their former WGN announcer, Bill Hay, to create a series similar to Sam 'n' Henry. They offered higher salaries than WGN and the right to pursue the "chainless chain" syndication idea. The creators later said they named the characters Amos and Andy after hearing two elderly African-Americans greet each other by those names in a Chicago elevator. Amos 'n' Andy began March 19, 1928 on WMAQ, and prior to airing each program they recorded their show on 78 rpm disks at Marsh Laboratories, operated by electrical recording pioneer Orlando R. Marsh.
For the program's entire run as a nightly serial, Gosden and Correll portrayed all the male roles, performing over 170 distinct voice characterizations in the show's first decade. With the episodic drama and suspense heightened by cliffhanger endings, Amos 'n' Andy reached an ever-expanding radio audience. It was the first radio program to be distributed by syndication in the United States, and by the end of the syndicated run in August 1929, at least 70 stations besides WMAQ carried the program by means of recordings. The toy company produced a special autographed version of the toy as gifts for American leaders, including Herbert Hoover. There was also a book, All About Amos 'n' Andy and Their Creators, in 1929 by Correll and Gosden (reprinted in 2007 and 2008), and a comic strip in the Chicago Daily News. At this time the Blue Network was not heard on stations in the West. Western listeners complained to NBC that they wanted to hear the show. Under special arrangements Amos 'n' Andy debuted coast-to-coast November 28, 1929, on NBC's Pacific Orange Network and continued on the Blue. At the same time, the serial's central characters—Amos, Andy and George "The Kingfish" Stevens—relocated from Chicago to New York City's Harlem. The program was so popular by 1930, that NBC's orders were to interrupt the broadcast of it only for matters of national importance and SOS calls. Correll and Gosden were making a total of $100,000 a year as the stars of the show, which they split three ways, including their announcer, Bill Hay, as he was with them when they started doing radio.
The story arc of Andy's romance (and subsequent problems) with the Harlem beautician Madame Queen entranced some 40 million listeners during 1930 and 1931, becoming a national phenomenon. Many of the program's plotlines in this period leaned far more to straight drama than comedy, including the near-death of Amos's fiancee Ruby from pneumonia in the spring of 1931, and Amos's brutal interrogation by police following the murder of the cheap hoodlum Jack Dixon that December. Following official protests by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, Correll and Gosden were forced to abandon that storyline – turning the entire sequence into a bad dream, from which Amos gratefully awoke on Christmas Eve.
The innovations introduced by Gosden and Correll made their creation a turning point for radio drama, as noted by broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod: :As a result of its extraordinary popularity, Amos 'n' Andy profoundly influenced the development of dramatic radio. Working alone in a small studio, Correll and Gosden created an intimate, understated acting style that differed sharply from the broad manner of stage actors – a technique requiring careful modulation of the voice, especially in the portrayal of multiple characters. The performers pioneered the technique of varying both the distance and the angle of their approach to the microphone to create the illusion of a group of characters. After a long and successful run with Pepsodent, the program changed sponsors in 1938 to Campbell's Soup; because of Campbell's closer relationship with CBS, the series switched to that network on April 3, 1939.
In 1943, after 4,091 episodes, the radio program went from a 15-minute CBS weekday dramatic serial to an NBC half-hour weekly comedy. While the five-a-week show often had a quiet, easygoing feeling, the new version was a full-fledged sitcom in the Hollywood sense, with a regular studio audience (for the first time in the show's history) and an orchestra. More outside actors, including many African-American comedy professionals, were brought in to fill out the cast. Many of the half-hour programs were written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, later the writing team behind Leave It to Beaver and The Munsters. In the new version, Amos became a peripheral character to the more dominant Andy and Kingfish duo, although Amos was still featured in the traditional Christmas show, where he explains the Lord's Prayer to his daughter, Arbadella, voiced by Elinor Harriot and later by the Asian American Barbara Jean Wong. The Christmas show also became a part of the later television series. The later radio program and the TV version were advanced for the time, depicting Blacks in a variety of roles including successful business owners and managers, professionals and public officials, in addition to the comic characters at show's core. In that same year, Correll and Gosden sold all rights to Amos 'n' Andy to CBS for a reported 2.5 million dollars.
The paper, among other publicly stated efforts, published a petition to get the program pulled from the air, with a stated goal of one million signatures. While many prominent African-American newspapers refused to back the drive, the Courier found support from Bishop Walls, the National Association of Colored Waiters and Hotel Employees and several African-American fraternal orders. The NAACP national office declined to endorse the protest, although some of their local chapters stood behind the effort.
Before the campaign was dropped, the paper claimed to have 675,000 names on their petition, although the figure was never independently verified. Gosden and Correll never commented on the Courier's efforts.
While the depiction of African-Americans in the sitcom version of the show is regarded by some as racially offensive by today's standards, the characterizations on the daily serial version were actually much more sympathetic and rounded than that of other shows of the period, The film pleased neither critics nor Gosden and Correll themselves, but briefly became RKO's biggest box-office hit prior to King Kong before falling off rapidly. Audiences were curious to see what their radio favorites looked like and were expecting to see African-Americans instead of men in blackface. RKO ruled out any plans for a sequel. Gosden and Correll did lend their voices to a pair of Amos 'n' Andy cartoon shorts in 1934: The Rasslin' Match and The Lion Tamer. These were also not successful. Years later, Gosden was quoted as calling Check and Double Check "just about the worst movie ever." Gosden and Correll also posed for publicity pictures in blackface. They were also part of The Big Broadcast of 1936 as Amos 'n' Andy.
The main roles in the television series were played by the following African-American actors:
This time, the NAACP mounted a formal protest almost as soon as the television version began, The show was widely repeated in syndicated reruns until 1966 when CBS acquiesced to pressure from the NAACP and the growing civil rights movement and withdrew the program. Until recently, the television show had been released only on bootleg videotape versions, but by 2005, 72 of the 78 known TV episodes were available in bootleg DVD sets.
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.
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.
In 1978, a one-hour documentary film, Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy, aired in television syndication (and in later years, on PBS). It told a brief history of the franchise from its radio days to the CBS series, and featured interviews with then-surviving cast members. The film also contained a select complete episode of the classic TV series 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.
Radio historian Elizabeth McLeod examined thousands of radio script pages in order to write her authoritative 223-page study, The Original Amos ’n’ Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial, published by McFarland in 2005. They were friends of "Mama" played by Theresa Merritt who wanted to see Clifton played by Clifton Davis (later of TV show Amen) at the beginning of the episode. Ernestine played Augusta and Lillian played Mrs. Birdie. Jester Hairston (who played Henry Van Porter and Leroy Smith on "Amos 'n' Andy") was a regular on both That's My Mama as "Wildcat" and on Amen as "Rolly Forbes." He was also quite prominent in a brief role as a butler in the racially charged film In the Heat of the Night.
Johnny Lee released a record (as "Johnnie Lee") in July 1949 called "You Can't Lose A Broken Heart" (Columbia Records #30172), with backup vocals by The Ebonaires. Lee also starred in an all-black musical comedy called "Sugar Hill" in 1949 at Las Palmas Theatre in California. Horace "Nick O'Demus" Stewart had a memorable cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as a hapless driver run off the highway. With all their belongings falling off their overloaded truck as he tries to retain control, Stewart finally looks at his wife and intones "I said it before and I'll say it again, I didn't want to move to California." Johnny Lee (Calhoun) and Nick Stewart (Lightnin') both provided voices in the Walt Disney film Song of the South in 1946. Johnny did the voice of Br'er Rabbit and Nick was heard as Br'er Bear.
Category:1951 television series debuts Category:1953 television series endings Category:1920s American radio programs Category:1930s American radio programs Category:1940s American radio programs Category:1950s American radio programs Category:1950s American television series Category:American comedy radio programs Category:American television sitcoms Category:Black-and-white television programs Category:Black sitcoms Category:CBS network shows Category:English-language television series Category:Fictional African-American people Category:Television series by CBS Paramount Television Category:Television shows set in New York City
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