Amos 'n' Andy

Amos Jones and Andy Brown worked on a farm near Atlanta, Georgia, and during the episodes of the first week, they made plans to find a better life in Chicago, despite warnings from a friend. With four ham and cheese sandwiches and $24, they bought train tickets and headed for Chicago where they lived in a State Street rooming house and experienced some rough times before launching their own business, the Fresh Air Taxi Company. With the listening audience increasing in the spring and summer of 1928, the show's success prompted the Pepsodent Company to bring it to the NBC Blue Network on August 19, 1929. 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 Harlem.

Amos was naïve but honest, hard-working and (after his 1933 marriage to Ruby Taylor) a dedicated family man. Andy was more blustering, with overinflated self-confidence. Andy, being a dreamer, tended to let Amos do most of the work. Their lodge leader, the Kingfish, was always trying to lure the two into get-rich-quick schemes. Other characters included John Augustus "Brother" Crawford, an industrious but long-suffering family man; Henry Van Porter, a social-climbing real estate and insurance salesman; Frederick Montgomery Gwindell, a hard-charging newspaperman; William Lewis Taylor, the well-spoken, college-educated father of Amos's fiancee; and "Lightning", a slow-moving Stepin Fetchit-type character. The Kingfish's catch phrase "Holy mackerel!" soon entered the American lexicon.

The story arc of Andy's romance (and subsequent problems) with the Harlem beautician Madame Queen entranced some 40,000,000 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:^[1]

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. Listeners could easily imagine that that they were actually in the taxicab office, listening in on the conversation of close friends. The result was a uniquely absorbing experience for listeners who in radio's short history had never heard anything quite like Amos 'n' Andy.

While minstrel-style wordplay humor was common in the formative years of the program, it was used less often as the series developed, giving way to a more sophisticated approach to characterization. Correll and Gosden were fascinated by human nature, and their approach to both comedy and drama drew from their observations of the traits and motivations that drive the actions of all people: while often overlapping popular stereotypes of African-Americans, there was at the same time a universality to their characters which transcended race... Beneath the dialect and racial imagery, the series celebrated the virtues of friendship, persistence, hard work, and common sense, and as the years passed and the characterizations were refined, Amos 'n' Andy achieved an emotional depth rivaled by few other radio programs of the 1930s.

Above all, Correll and Gosden were gifted dramatists. Their plots flowed gradually from one into the next, with minor subplots building in importance until they took over the narrative, before receding to give way to the next major sequence, and seeds for future storylines were often planted months in advance. It was this complex method of story construction that kept the program fresh, and enabled Correll and Gosden to keep their audience in a constant state of suspense. The technique they developed for radio from that of the narrative comic strip endures to the present day as the standard method of storytelling in serial drama.

Amos 'n' Andy was officially transferred by NBC from the Blue Network to the Red Network in 1935, although the vast majority of stations carrying the show remained the same. Several months later, Gosden and Correll moved production of the show from NBC's Merchandise Mart studios in Chicago to Hollywood. 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.

Advertising pioneer Albert Lasker often took credit for having created the show as a promotional vehicle. After the associations with Pepsodent toothpaste and Campbell's Soup, primary sponsors included Rinso detergent, the Rexall drugstore chain and CBS' own Columbia brand of television sets. President Calvin Coolidge was said to be among the devoted listeners. Huey P. Long took his nickname of "Kingfish" from the show. At the peak of the popularity, many movie theaters began the practice of stopping the films for the 15 minutes of the Amos 'n' Andy show and then playing the program through the theater's sound system or simply by placing a radio on the stage.

The first sustained protest against the program found its inspiration in the December 1930 issue of Abbott's Monthly, when Bishop W.J. Walls of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church wrote an article sharply denouncing Amos 'n' Andy, singling out the lower-class characterizations and the "crude, repetitional, and moronic" dialogue. The Pittsburgh Courier was the nation's second largest African American newspaper at the time, and publisher Robert Vann expanded Walls' criticism into a full-fledged crusade during a six-month period in 1931.

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 1930s, which perpetuated 19th-century minstrel show stereotypes and did not equal the immense success of Amos 'n' Andy. Prominent were the blackface act by the Two Black Crows, who did two-man comedy routines in vaudeville, short subjects and comedy records, and minstrel headliner Emmett Miller, who recorded a series of popular songs for Okeh Records in the late 1920s.

In 1930, RKO brought Gosden and Correll to Hollywood to do an Amos and Andy feature film, Check and Double Check (a catch phrase from the radio show). The cast included a mix of white and black performers (the latter including Duke Ellington and his orchestra) with Gosden and Correll disconcertingly^{[citation needed]} playing Amos and Andy in blackface. The film pleased neither critics nor Gosden or Correll themselves, but became RKO's biggest box office hit prior to King Kong. RKO offered Gosden and Correll a contract to do a sequel, which they declined (although they did lend their voices to a pair of Amos 'n' Andy cartoon shorts in 1934: The Rasslin' Match and The Lion Tamer). 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.

Adapted to television, The Amos 'n Andy Show was produced from 1951 to 1953 with 78 filmed episodes. The TV series used African American actors in the main roles, although the actors were instructed to keep their voices and speech patterns as close to Gosden and Correll's as possible. Produced at the Hal Roach Studios for CBS, it was one of the first television series to be filmed with a multicamera setup, four months before the more famous I Love Lucy used the technique. The classic theme song is "Angels' Serenade".

The main roles in the television series were played by the following African-American 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' - Horace Stewart (aka, Nick O'Demus)

This time, the NAACP mounted a formal protest almost as soon as the television version began, and that pressure was considered a primary factor in the video version's cancellation. The show was 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 DVD sets.

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.

Although the series is suggested to be in the public domain, the trademarks and copyrights to "Amos 'n' Andy" are controlled by CBS. Any official video/DVD release, if it ever does happen, will be handled via Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS DVD.

In 1955 the format of the radio show was changed to include playing recorded music between sketches, and the show was renamed The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall. The final Amos 'n' Andy radio show was broadcast November 25, 1960. Although by the 1950s the popularity of the show was well below its peak of the 1930s, Gosden and Correll had managed to outlast most of the radio shows that came in their wake.

In 1961, Gosden and Correll attempted one last televised effort, albeit in a "disguised" version. They were the voices in a prime time animated cartoon, Calvin and the Colonel, featuring anthropomorphic animals whose voices and situations were almost exactly those of Andy and the Kingfish. This effort at reviving the series in a way that was intended to be less racially offensive ended after one season on ABC, although it remained quite popular in syndicated reruns in Australia for several years afterwards.

In 1988, the Amos 'n' Andy program was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. A pair of parallel, one-block streets in south Dallas, Texas are named Amos Street and Andy Street in honor of these performers.

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. Currently, the scripts of Amos 'n' Andy are performed on a shortwave station broadcasting from Maine, WBCQ on 7415 kHz, at midnight Eastern Time, six nights per week, by Ed Bolton, who performs all roles.

Ernestine Wade (Sapphire) and Lillian Randolph (Madame Queen) appeared together on an episode of That's My Mama called "Clifton's Sugar Mama" on October 2, 1974. 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."

Johnny Lee recorded a record that was released in July 1949 called "You Can't Lose A Broken Heart" (Columbia Records #30172). It was released as "Johnnie Lee" and backup vocals were by The Ebonaires. Johnny also starred in an all black musical comedy called "Sugar Hill" in 1949 at Las Palmas Theatre in California.^[2]

Johnny Lee (Calhoun) and Horace Stewart (Lightnin') both provided voices in the Walt Disney film Song of the South in 1946. Johnny provided the voice of Br'er Rabbit and Horace provided the voice of Br'er Bear.

• OTR Fans: Amos and Andy (23 episodes)
• OTR Network Library: Amos 'n' Andy (219 episodes)

• Elizabeth McLeod: Amos 'n' Andy -- In Person
• Amos 'n' Andy: Past as Prologue?
• Meet Amos 'n' Andy
• Original Amos 'n' Andy web page
• Rechecking Check and Double Check
• Rich Samuels' Broadcasting in Chicago: 1921-1989