Beulah

Some TV watchers get extremely annoyed by the phenomenon which they call 'same character, different actor'. I've never understood why they go into high moral outrages about this. I quite agree that Dick York was a better Darren Stephens (on 'Bewitched') than Dick Sargent, but I also feel that an episode of 'Bewitched' with 'the wrong Darren' is still better than no 'Bewitched' at all. Maybe some TV-watchers object to 'same character, different actor' because it forces them to confront the fact that TV isn't actually real life.

The vintage TV sitcom 'Beulah' must infuriate such people: during the run of this TV series, the lead role was played by four different actresses ... and every other recurring role in 'Beulah' was recast at least once during the sitcom's four-year run. Even more bizarrely, the title character - an African-American woman - had originally been played (on radio) by a white male!

'Beulah' was a spinoff from the popular radio sitcom 'Fibber McGee and Molly'. The homespun McGees, of Wistful Vista, employed a sassy black maidservant named Beulah. This being radio, Beulah was voiced by a white male actor named Marlin Hurt, who dressed normally (no blackface, no drag) and began each live-studio radio transmission standing with his back to the microphone. Eventually, actor Jim Jordan (Fibber McGee) would summon the maid by calling: 'Oh, Beulah!' This was Hurt's cue to spin round and shout directly into the mike his high-pitched catchphrase: 'Who dat bawlin' fo' Beulah?' The studio audience, astonished to hear this ostensibly Negress voice emerging from a white man, would always react in surprised laughter. At the end of each episode of 'Fibber McGee', the radio announcer would always read off the cast credits - including Marlin Hurt as Beulah - yet audiences were continually surprised that this recurring character was played by a white male.

Eventually, actor Hurt received his own spinoff radio sitcom, 'Beulah', in which the McGees' black servant went to work for the wholesome Henderson family. Like many other popular radio programmes of the late 1940s, this sitcom was eventually adapted for television. But 'Beulah' - like "Amos 'n' Andy", for the same reason - required racially authentic casting for its transition to video.

The tv series 'Beulah' originally starred Ethel Waters, in Hurt's original part as the Hendersons' maid/cook: this demeaning role was the only steady employment the talented Waters could get at this time. Waters eventually left in disgust, to be replaced by Hattie McDaniels: one of the first Oscar winners to star in series tv, McDaniels was ill and needed the money. After starring in only six episodes of 'Beulah', McDaniels died and was replaced by Louise Beavers, a much less talented performer than Waters or McDaniels. Eventually, Beavers also got tired of the 'yassuh!' dialogue, and she was replaced by Amanda Randolph (who?).

What's really offensive about 'Beulah' isn't the minstrel-show repartee or Beulah's subservience to her white employers the Hendersons, but the fact that the scripts continually had the well-meaning but stupid Beulah causing problems which were invariably solved by her wise caucasian employers. (Beulah's white massah was a respectable suburban lawyer named Harry Henderson, no relation to the title character in 'Harry and the Hendersons'.) In a typical episode, son Donnie Henderson thinks he'll be more popular with girls if he learns how to dance ... so Beulah and her boyfriend (handyman Bill Jackson) taught Donnie to dance. Unfortunately, being stereotyped Negroes in a 1950s sitcom, Bill and Beulah give Donnie lessons in boogie-woogie and jive. Donnie's parents, being respectable white folks in a 1950s sitcom, are scandalised. Beulah moans: 'I put my big foot into it again.' (All of the actresses who played Beulah were hefty, and much of the sitcom's alleged humour was derived from this.)

The role of Bill, slightly less yassuhfied than Beulah, was originally played by Ernest Whitman but was recast with Dooley Wilson, the immortal piano-playing Sam of 'Casablanca'. Wilson did his own singing, but he was in fact unable to play piano: in 'Beulah' and in 'Casablanca', his piano-playing was dubbed.

The family next-door over to the Hendersons also employ a black maid, named Oriole. (Is that meant to be funny?) Oriole was originally played by Butterfly McQueen, the most annoying black performer I've ever seen. Why is she named Butterfly, when she has the voice and cheeks of a chipmunk? The role of Oriole was later recast with Ruby Dandridge, somewhat less annoying. The resident director for this series was Jean Yarbrough, a prolific but untalented hack who worked with some of Hollywood's major comedians yet who ruined everything he touched. Many of the performers in 'Beulah', black and white, did splendid work elsewhere ... but none of them are worth watching here. I'm tempted to rate 'Beulah' zero points out of 10, but I have a deep passion for the artefacts of early television, so I'll rate this racist rubbish one point in 10.

With response to WMAV08's questions about its airing, "Beulah" aired on ABC, for starters. There were syndicated shows that were in more broadcast markets than ABC in 1950-52, and many times ABC would share a channel with another network. In TV's early days, channels might be dually aligned with more than one network (you still had DuMont which in the early 50s might have been more established than ABC.) Just because you were a network station didn't mean you by default would carry all their shows. (That's why on old programs you will hear a phrase like "over MOST of these same CBS stations".) That may account for the difficulty finding it in network listings. I would also hazard a guess that it cleared in few southern markets as well, in spite of the resumes of those who filled Beulah's role in the TV show. There were sly hints at how times were slowly changing for African- Americans. For instance, the opening credits had Beulah winking at the camera and saying, "Don't let nobody tell you I'm in the market for a husband. I could be, but they don't SELL husbands in the market..." Consider that line in the historical context of slavery, and it's pretty subversive. The show may play a bit to stereotypes of the time, but Beulah seems to be more of a forerunner for later "maids" like Shirley Booth's "Hazel" and especially Ann B. Davis's portrayal of Alice on "The Brady Bunch." Of course the primary successor to Beulah would be Robert Guillaume's 70's character "Benson" from "Soap". Because of the changing mores of the time, Benson's wits got him promoted from a butler to a government official in his own right in his own show.

Like Amos And Andy, Beulah started out on radio and started with a white man doing an imitation of a black woman who was a maid. Beulah was a character on a number of radio shows and so popular she eventually got a show of her own.

Early television was mostly radio shows moved over to TV with established public favorites and like Amos And Andy, Beulah now had to be played by a black actress.

One thing about Beulah as you look on the credits you see an ever changing cast of regulars of the white family that employed her Beulah and her friends. Beulah was played by Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters, and Louise Beavers and she had as a boyfriend handyman Bill and as her Ethel Mertz the occasionally scatterbrained Oriole.

One thing that remained constant was that Beulah was the wisest one in the house. Always tactful her wisdom got the family out of many a crisis.

Health reasons were why McDaniel quit and other commitments limited Ethel Waters. Louise Beavers finished the series up.

When you come down to it, Beulah was in many ways a black version of Hazel. Or maybe it's the other way around.

With people today being so sensitive to practically everything, the tendency is to assume that "Beulah" was racist. This is simply not true.

Although a domestic, Beulah was never subservient. It was to Beulah that the family turned whenever there was a problem, and it was Beulah that always kept her cool no matter what was happening.

Its true that her boyfriend, Bill Jackson, was somewhat lazy, but even he owned a fix-it shop. It just that was never in a hurry to fix anything. He was more interested in Beulah's cooking.

Butterfly McQueen played Beulah's best friend Oriole. Oriole was scatterbrained, but sort of in the same way that Gracie Allen was scatterbrained.

None of the characters was ever demeaned, talked down to, or "dissed" (I hate that word.) Today the racism industry calls it racist simply because it depicted a black woman as a domestic. Actually, it was simply a light-hearted family comedy which reflected life in the early 50s.

I've picked up a few of these episodes from the internet archive of public domain shows. These episodes star Louise Beavers, and I believe they are from 1952. I can't find a good episode list but according to IMDb there were 3 more Beulahs besides Louise Beavers, including Hattie McDaniel from "Gone with the Wind", Ethel Waters, and Amanda Rudolph all in a 3 year period. Why so many changes? I know Hattie McDaniel died in 52, but I still can't believe a show with so many main character changes, let alone the fact she was black in the 50's would stay on TV. Stranger still I have a spattering of early TV listings from 1952 and 1953, this show is not in any evening lineup. Was this some kind of show syndicated to different markets? Any experts out there can educate me?