Beulah

I am a baby boomer and have very fond memories of the Golden Age of Television. As a child growing up during that time, one of my favorite shows as "Beulah." It was originally aired on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 with Ethel Waters then Louise Beavers (with a different cast) as the star. The 6 or 7 TV episodes Hattie McDaniel filmed were never aired until the show went into syndication (approximately 1955). It aired locally in Cleveland, Ohio on a Monday-Friday basis from 1955-1962. Pretty long time for a syndicated show. It was extremely popular and well-liked locally by kids and their families. I am pleased to say I have audio copies of all the shows, video copies of about 9 of the shows (2 with McDaniel, 2 with Beavers, 3 with Waters). I also have 15-20 copies of the original radio show with Marlin Hurt, Hattie McDaniel and McDaniel's replacement (upon her death) Amanda Randolph (played "Mama" in "Amos-n-Andy"). I love this show!!!

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.

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.

I am charmed and impressed by the arguments of F. Gwynplaine McIntyre, above. (Also charmed by the clever pseudonym--a fan of both Victor Hugo *and* The Munsters, eh?) But honestly...isn't "racist" a little rough and anachronistic when describing an early 50s sitcom? "Racisme" was a obscurantist cant word invented by Stalinists in Paris circa 1946, and it didn't hit the English-speaking world till about 1970.

And even if we translate the word the way Gwynplaine presumably intends--as a stand-in for "prejudiced" or "biased"--the argument is preposterous. Beulah and her ilk were not cringing, shuffling darkies at all. They were proud and capable Negro folk, and in fact much of the routine humor of the series came out of the juxtaposition between their honestly and adeptness, and that of the white folks who lived in parallel. Every time the man of the house got sick, the doctor came over and prescribed a diet of milktoast. You never saw the colored people having to eat milktoast. When the boy in the series wanted help or advice he didn't go to Mr. Milktoast, no, he went to that Negro boxing coach over the fence, the one who dispensed wisdom out the side of his sassy satchel-mouth; or he went to one of Beulah's friends.

Really, it was precisely the same setup as the TV show 'Hazel' a few years later; though of course Hazel was a white American maid and the cast of characters wasn't nearly as colorful (pun not intended--though it brings up a good point: where were all the black people circa 1958-1965?)

I'm white - no real life experience with non-whites until the late 50's and I was born in '46. Though no real life, I watched Amos and Andy and Beulah. What I learned from them, as they were my only contact with the subject, was: there are people with skin darker than mine, they talk slightly differently than my parents and relatives in(state I was born) but a lot like my relatives in (state we moved to just before I turned 6), some are smarter than others, they are more likely to be helpful, most of them are trustworthy (I refer to those not Kingfish/partners in small cons),they have lives like my family and me.

In other words, with only those shows as data, during the time most likely for it to happen, I had no racist beliefs and a quite positive view - which nothing later changed. I understand in the vaguest possible way the NAACP attitude, but, for me, those shows were very positive!! I firmly agree with that Hazel connection - though Hazel was not one of my favorites and Beulah was.