Funniest Sitcom?

@SW-User My parents used to watch the tv show in the 1950s and enjoyed it. But the initial radio show, and then the movie with the white creators, Charles Correll & Freeman Gosden, voicing the characters was different. In the movie they appeared in blackface. When it showed at the colored theater near where my grandparents lived in 1930, they said many people walked out because they were expecting to see black actors. There was also resentment from the perception that the creators were getting rich, making fun of black people, and there were some protests, even back then.

@bijouxbroussard Amos n' Andy,the TV version,was screened here around the late '50s - the early days of TV in Australia - and I remember watching a few episodes back then.

@bijouxbroussard

All true about the movies and radio. I mentioned the TV show because I, too, watched and enjoyed some of those episodes in reruns in the late 1950's. My TV service offers many, many TV shows - entire runs - of all kinds. For example Leave It To Beaver including the pilot with a different Wally and a different Ward.

Getting back to the TV Amos 'n' Andy - I've recently watched the 13 of the 52 episodes my service offered. Your parents were right. Here is what one watcher said on an Amos 'n' Andy appreciation site:

[i]Amos N Andy was a brilliant show of the 1950's very much like Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. It consisted of three main characters, the Kingfish, always coming up with a scheme to get rich or get out of trouble. Amos, a big friendly bear of a man rather slow in the way Gracie Allen portrayed on the Burns and Allen show. Andy was a cab driver who was the level headed one who sometimes made the Kingfish think better of a scheme or least switch to another one. Unfortunately, it's been "black balled' due to the NAACP's wanting to upgrade the (African American) image while The Honeymooners shows up now and then. Understandable, but these excellent and very professional, very funny performances won't be seen. Long live the Kingfish![/i]

@SW-User I don’t know if it’s still available but I bought a boxed set of CDs for my parents a few years back, so they could watch it whenever they wanted to, and sometimes when I’d visit, we’d watch it together. There were interesting backstories, too. Spencer Williams (Andy) was a WWI veteran, Alvin Childress (Amos) was originally pre-med, but graduated with a BA in Sociology. Childress once said that the role of Kingfish was almost offered to Cab Calloway, but apparently Gosden didn’t like Calloway’s straight hair !

@bijouxbroussard

Yes. And Tim Moore's Kingfish was my favorite because he always ended up doing the right thing no matter what the character's deviousness first entailed. Tim Moore (from Wikipedia's profile) - - "I've made it a point never to tell a joke on stage that I couldn't tell in front of my mother."

I LOVED that show in reruns as a kid. By the way, I wonder why All In The Family wasn't forced to cancel during its run? Talk about being truly offensive.

@bijouxbroussard

Cripes! There's a ton of the TV episodes on YouTube! Why I never thought to look before I don't know.

@SW-User It was the timing, apparently. It was celebrated back then as a new idea. It wouldn’t work now.