One thing I like about posting on WordPress is that I can write any way I choose. I can start a sentence with the word “and” or I can use “I’ve” instead of “I have”. I can even place my commas or periods in the wrong place. We are informal. So, let me begin. The other day a Twitter friend posted an Amos n Andy 1951 television broadcast on Youtube, titled “The Young Girl’s Mother”. It seemed familiar and I remembered that in 1951 the same story had been performed on the Amos n Andy radio program and my mother, Norma Green and Dorothy Dandridge were two of the characters in the episode: “The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show. February 25, 1951. CBS net. “Andy Meets Girl’s Mother”. Rexall. Andy has proposed to twenty-two year-old Brenda Thompson, not realizing she’s the daughter of Madame Queen! Madame Queen is willing to settle for Andy as a son-in-law, if not a husband. The opening is slightly upcut. Bill Hay does one of the commercials. Bob Ross (writer), Griff Barnett (commercial spokesman), Bill Hay, Jeff Alexander and His Orchestra (music), Ken Niles (announcer), Bob Mosher (writer), Joe Connelly (writer), Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, Johnny Lee, Lillian Randolph, Dorothy Dandridge, Norma Green.” Radiogoldin.library
I was too surprised when I found this out in 2015 since my mother hadn’t bothered to tell me about it. Anywho, I watched the television episode. The episode was funny, however, I could see why the NAACP tried successfully to get it off prime time television (I think it ran a while in re-runs). The Andy and Kingfish characters, Spencer Williams and Tim Moore, had been instructed and coached on how to be the voices of Andy and Kingfish. So they both spoke like this: “I done popped the question and she done accepted”. And this: “You gone with a lot of girls since I knowed you”. And this: “what is I gonna do?”
As I watched this show today, I cringed at the way they talked. I wondered if we as Black people really talked that way back then. Or did Correll and Gosden, the show’s creators, just want them to talk that way because that was how Correll and Gosden talked when they pretended to be Black men when the show was on the radio. I do believe Williams and Moore went along with the script because that was one of the only ways a Black man could make a decent amount of money. Racism was rampant in 1951 in the entertainment business.
But racism was present also in Black families. Take my family, for instance. My maternal grandmother looked White. She listed herself as Spanish on my mother’s elementary school papers. She was not Spanish. Her mother and father were lightskinned Black people. My maternal grandfather was Italian, so my mother looked White. When my father, Eddie, started courting my mother, (here they are on the left) my grandmother would make Eddie come around to the back door as opposed to letting him in the front. Yes, because Eddie was dark-skinned. Fast forward to 1980, the rumor was that I was asked by an older family member to live in and take care of “nana’s” house because I am light-skinned as opposed to asking one of our darker skinned family members. The same person who requested this of me would not even entertain the thought of having a dark-skinned grandchild. Even though her own mother was dark-skinned.
Racism exists everywhere. Still. Today. It is not surprising to me from whence it comes. It exists. As a lightskinned person I have been accused of ignoring a man who spoke to me at a bus stop because I thought I was “too good” because I was light. I have friends today who speak about me as being “high-yellow”. Why do they mention the color of my skin when they see me? Who knows. Everyone has an opinion on something. We cannot censure the thoughts that run through people’s heads and if these thoughts pop out of their mouths, we can’t stop that either.
There has been some so-called “shocking” news in the world today, which makes me believe that people are refusing to live in the world of reality. They seem to want to believe in a fictional world. Which is why I have written this post. I try and find a way to express my opinions without being nasty, and because if I say nothing these thoughts just keep me awake at night.
The thing is, in my opinion, is that not everybody is going to be ok with everybody. Not just in the area of skin color, but in what school you attend, or whether you say tomato or tomawto. Or whether you mention your religious beliefs online. Some people will not have it. There was a time when I let that stop me from sharing my thoughts on how I worship, now I know that other people’s opinions are their opinions and that the reality is their opinions have nothing to do with how my life is lived.
In writing my books about The Jeffersons and about the TV sitcom Maude, I have had to figure out how to connect the fiction of a television program’s scripts with real life in order to be able to write an interesting, relevant and entertaining book. And believe you me, some of these shows dealt with some serious and controversial reality issues, even while providing laughs. For instance, in the Maude episode “The Kiss”, Maude catches her next door neighbor, Vivian kissing her (Maud’s) husband, Walter. Walter gives her an explanation about how Vivian and Maude are such good friends and how that spills over to Walter and somehow they were just consoling each other as friends. And Maude seems to go along with the explanation. Of course, I’m sitting there watching this and screaming at my laptop BS!! I don’t know too many women who would go for THAT explanation in real life!
I appreciate your stopping by and spending some time with me and my thoughts. Until next time, thanx. 🙂 Tell your friends about me. Share the love. Comments and shared experiences are always welcome. Stay safe.
Hello out there! What a lucky girl am I. I have started researching a third book. Just writing those words down makes me have to stop and ponder. I’ve never considered writing 3 books. Just the one-about my father- a rags-to-riches biography about the legendary Eddie Green, Old Time Radio icon (Duffy’s Tavern once a week radio show and others), composer, filmmaker, singer, dancer magician, TV star. A Black American who made it big despite the travails of Blacks in the early 1900s.
Duffy’s Tavern was on the air for ten years. It was funny. Especially Eddie the waiter’s lines. Apart from a very few, the weekly guests were White. The cast was White. The announcer was White. Eddie was the only Black cast member on that show. And he was hilarious.
My father made a movie titled Mr. Adam’s Bomb (1949). His idea was to show the world how regular every day Black people reacted to the use of the Atom Bomb. It was a horrible episode in our country. Eddie, as an ex vaudevillian and as a comedian chose to include humor and singing and dancing as in this movie as he had in his first four movies.
Now here’s a Fun fact: Mr. Bob Schiller and Mr. Bob Weiskoph (both gone now) wrote for Maude. The two Bobs also wrote for Duffy’s Tavern and probably knew my father. I love their picture.
I have been asked to do an essay on a Mr. Perry Bradford. Perry was born in 1893. As a vaudeville performer and composer and songwriter, he too worked in theater circuits throughout the South and into the North. I imagine that he had the same worries as every other Black man in the South at that time. But he had a goal in mind. Bradford persevered in getting the recording industry to value recordings of African-American artists. In 1957, Little Richard had a hit with Bradford’s “Keep A-Knockin'”. In 1965 he wrote his autobiography Born With the Blues. Later in 1994 his song “Crazy Blues” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Perry lived a long time, too. He died in 1970.
More recently, there was Arlando Smith, born 1952. Arlando came up during the Civil Rights era, police with hoses and dogs and batons. He worked at becoming successful. Arlando was a TV writer and director. During my research for my book on The Jeffersons I learned about this gentleman. He worked on What’s Happening Now, All In The Family, Silver Spoons, 227, The Richard Pryor Show, She’s The Sheriff, The Robert Guillaume Show. The Jeffersons (2 episodes) and Malcolm and Eddie. He was the stage manager for All in the Family, 51st Annual Academy Awards, The Richard Pryor Show, What’s Happening, Sanford and Son, That’s My Mama, Good Times, and The Jeffersons (48 episodes). In 2015 when Arlando Cooper Smith died The San Pedro Sun reported that: “Smith was an award-winning director who directed the first episode of La Isla Bonita Telenovela. He also contributed to several American television series, Arlando Cooper Smith made the Isla Bonita his home, has selflessly supported the island in ways too numerous to count for many years. He will be missed by all those who knew and loved him.”
I’ve been doing what I like to do best-researching. I saw a story online about the 1918 Spanish Flu and it dawned on me that my father was alive back then. As a matter of fact, he was married to his first wife, had his first daughter, had signed up for WWI, had written a song and was on the road traveling down south with his “Deluxe Players”. The 1918 pandemic lasted from, I think, August of 1918 through December of 1920. Eddie began his first on stage vaudeville work in 1920. He was a comedian. The 1918 flu was targeting young adults. About half of the deaths were in the 20-40 range. Eddie was about 29. He had already experienced diseases and poverty being born in 1891 in Baltimore during a time of no indoor plumbing and rampant Leukemia in the East Baltimore slums. It’s one of the reasons he left home at nine years old and worked as a boy magician until someone suggested that he was so funny he really didn’t need a lot of props to entertain people. It seems that Eddie never got sick. Vaudeville and Burlesque were pulling people in. Eddie was performing in Tampa, Fla., in 1919 with his Deluxe Players when he applied for and got a job as a comedian in New York in 1920. The flu had hit Haskell County, Kansas In January 1918.
The “Roaring Twenties”. Booze and parties. Eddie was appearing onstage in “All In Fun”, dancing and singing now along with his comedy. I read he and his partner were encored many times. So everyone must have been having a good time. Duke Ellington was coming along. Eddie opened a publishing business, a movie studio and wrote “King Tut’s Blues” because of the discovery of the tomb in 1923. And better things were yet to come. Even so, there was also the fact that in those early 1900 years racism was also a death sentence for Blacks. And Eddie was touring the country with Burlesque shows. In Blackface. And he was a hit everywhere he went. Fascinating when you think about it.
Never having experienced this I tend to forget that Black entertainers of the early 1900s faced blatant racism constantly. Maybe even daily. It had to have been a constant stressor. Yet, actors like Gee Gee and my father, Eddie Green, lit up a room when they walked in. They were gracious off stage and dedicated to their craft on stage. These trailblazers have, because of their fortitude, become my heroes. I chose to write about Gee Gee James today because she and my father were once comedic partners. But like Eddie before I wrote my book, Gee Gee has pretty much been forgotten or over-looked. In this extremely bad copy you can see her from 1937: “Luis Russell, Eddie Green, Gee Gee James and Louie Armstrong, who on Friday night, over station WJZ, under the sponsorship of the Fleischman Yeast Company, made show world history.”—Photo by Continental News 1937
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