Blacks on Television, Part 2

Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority
by John McWhorter

(Page 2 of 3)

In its original radio incarnation, Beulah had been played by a white man, and for all of the discomfort this arouses in us today, Marlin Hurt's portrayal is a guilty pleasure. Few could resist laughing today hearing his uncannily accurate giggles, laughs, and intonations, picked up from his black childhood nursemaid, all the more evocative in the poised restraint of Hurt's delivery. (Hurt was truly amazing, also playing the man Beulah worked for, as well as boyfriend Bill.) Furthermore, on radio Beulah, while no Einstein, was no dummy and got her licks in in Eddie "Rochester" Anderson style. Hurt died suddenly and his replacement, Bob Corley, was merely adequate in the role, but when Hattie McDaniel took over in 1947, she predictably reinfused the character with her trademark spark.

In contrast, the television version of Beulah was a glum, sodden affair, even for television of the era. Largely at the center of the action in the radio show, on television Beulah took second place to the anodyne comings and goings of the white family she worked for, all the more disturbing given that this family managed to out-Wonder Bread even the stock families of this type then prevalent in sitcoms. Today, Beulah's sidelining is especially hard to watch in its implication that these bland automatons are more interesting than her.

The show went through no fewer than three large black actresses in the lead role-Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, and Louise Beavers. Beavers, picked up last and playing the role the longest, could barely conceal her lack of interest, walking through it as if she were in a children's play (which she essentially was). She eventually left the role because she was tired of it. And with that, having gone through all three of the leading black mammies in Hollywood, the producers simply closed shop.

Bogle is correct in noting, however, that the miraculous Waters managed to draw some kind of character out of the wan scripting. Waters's episodes are the only ones that approach watchability today, as she conveys a kind of warmth and sexual affection between her and Bill, and manages to give an appearance of intelligence and control despite what the lines nominally convey. Throughout her life Waters simply could not help filling empty space with sheer charisma in this way. Bogle movingly describes an episode of the usually frothy Person to Person in 1954 when Waters diverted the interview into sincere psychological self-revelation: Waters was intense.

Indeed, one of the strengths of Primetime Blues is Bogle's wise choice to cover television movies, specials, and guest appearances, as in the 1950s black performance history was made more here than in the all-too-rare black series. Waters appeared in a number of dramas and specials, and appeared in a savory episode of Route 66 about the reunion of a group of jazz musicians which, in including not only Waters but jazz artists Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge, and Coleman Hawkins, stands at the top of my list of shows that ought be included in any future video anthology of early black television that Primetime Blues may inspire. Ex-boxer James Edwards had a brief eminence turning in nuanced and top-rate performances in numerous episodes of the drama anthology series popular in the decade. Sidney Poitier costarred in the early black-white "buddy" drama A Man Is Ten Feet Tall, eventually filmed as Edge of the City with him repeating his role. Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., the sadly forgotten Juano Hernandez, and Waters all got work in drama anthology episodes as well. It is easy to suppose that the only way to see blacks on television in the 1950s was through Amos 'n' Andy, Beulah, or Nat King Cole's short-lived variety show. However, Bogle shows that those watching at the time saw somewhat more black performance on their screens than this-although surely far from enough.

The sun began breaking through the clouds in the 1960s, as the dawning of the Civil Rights Era brought race relations and "the Negro question" to the forefront of America's consciousness. Perhaps the most immediately memorable black icon of this era is Bill Cosby's erudite undercover operator Scotty on I Spy, portrayed as every bit the equal of his white partner, Robert Culp. (It was indicative to see Cosby decades later host Culp, by then a figure of the past, as a one-shot guest on The Cosby Show, rather than it being the other way around.) From our vantage point, we miss any indication of racial identity in Scotty, and this is largely true of other blacks in series of this decade, such as Greg Morris on Mission: Impossible, Lloyd Haynes on Room 222, and Nichelle Nichols's Uhura on Star Trek. To many analysts, including Bogle, this reflected white America's desire to "tame" the Negro beginning to be seen as a threat. This was part of it-but then only by the end of this decade would the salad bowl metaphor triumph over the melting pot one in most thinking Americans' consciousness. In an era when the main call from Civil Rights leaders was still for integration, many white producers and writers sincerely considered themselves to be doing good by portraying blacks without any particular "cultural" traits.

Today, however, the seams show in efforts like this, in ways that make the space blacks were assigned to fill require major historical adjustment. The Dick Van Dyke Show, for example, ventured an episode where the Petries are accidentally sent home with another couple's baby, the couple having been left with theirs. The snafu discovered, the other couple come to the Petries' to make the switch. They turn out to be black. The audience screams with laughter; the handsome couple sit down; there are a few more jaunty lines of dialogue capped by some jolly topper, and the episode fades out with the two couples sitting there in the living room all asmile. The producers' gesture was heartfelt. But I have always wondered: Since the Petries surely did not just hustle the couple out the door right then, what did they all talk about after that? I assume we are supposed to think that they simply interacted as "people," talking about mowing the lawn and the crowds on the train into Manhattan. But we also know that this was an era a heartbeat past legalized segregation, and that interracial relations were hardly that simple, as they still are not. Only in the 1970s would sitcoms begin to explore what happened after that fade-out.

Drama shows, however, were somewhat more concerned with the tensions that would soon transform integrationism into separatism, although usually more interested in class and injustice than what we would call "diversity." Shows like The Defenders and The Nurses often addressed race issues. In East Side, West Side (which my parents always recalled fondly) Cicely Tyson as a social worker made a lasting impression sporting the first "natural" black hairdo on television. This show did not shy away from race-based episodes that were surprisingly rich for television of the era, including ones with Diana Sands, Ruby Dee, and James Earl Jones. (One of Bogle's nervier opinions is that Jones is a "fake old windbag"-I have always quietly thought so but would never have dared say it out loud!) And from our vantage point, Clarence Williams III's Linc on The Mod Squad, with his large Afro, thanks-but-no-thanks reserve, and "I don't fink on soul brothers," is most certainly anybody's conception of a Black Man.

Copyright © John McWhorter, 2003. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

John McWhorter is the author of the bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, and four other books. He is associate professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor to The City Journal and The New Republic. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, Politically Incorrect, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.