 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2022) |
Beulah is an American sitcom that ran on CBS Radio from 1945 to 1954, and on ABC Television from 1950 to 1953. The show is notable for being the first sitcom to star an African-American actress, for being ABC TV's first hit situation comedy, and the first hit TV sitcom without a laugh track. The show was controversial for its caricatures of African Americans.[ clarification needed ] [1]
 Hattie McDaniel as Beulah, 1948 | |
| Other names | The Marlin Hurt and Beulah Show (1945–46) |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Running time |
|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | |
| Starring | |
| Announcer |
|
| Created by |
|
| Written by |
|
| Original release | July 2, 1945 – May 28, 1954 |
| Sponsored by |
|
| |
Originally portrayed by a white male actor, Marlin Hurt, Beulah Brown first appeared in 1939 when Hurt introduced and played the character on the Hometown Incorporated radio series and in 1940 on NBC radio's Show Boat series. In 1943, Beulah moved over to That's Life and then became a supporting character on the popular Fibber McGee and Molly radio series in March 1944.
On July 2, 1945, Beulah was spun off into her own radio show on CBS, The Marlin Hurt and Beulah Show, sponsored by Tums. Hurt was still in the role of Beulah, and also played the voice of Beulah's boyfriend, Bill Jackson. Beulah was employed as a housekeeper and cook for the Henderson family: father Harry, mother Alice and son Donnie. Rounding out the cast was Oriole Winston, the housekeeper for the family next door to the Hendersons.
After Hurt died of a heart attack in 1946, he was replaced by another white actor, Bob Corley, and the series was retitled The Beulah Show, which ran on ABC as a sustaining program from February 24 to August 20, 1947. [2]
When African-American actress Hattie McDaniel took over the role on November 24, 1947, with the program returning to CBS. She earned $1,000 a week for the first season, doubled the ratings of the original series and pleased the NAACP which was elated to see a historic first: a black woman as the star of a network radio program.
McDaniel continued in the role until she became ill in 1952 and was replaced by Lillian Randolph, who was in turn replaced for the 1953–54 radio season by her sister, Amanda Randolph.
From 1947 to 1953, The Beulah Show was sponsored by Procter & Gamble for their Dreft laundry and dishwashing detergents. The show had multiple sponsors for their final 1953–54 season: General Foods, General Motors and Murine.
In the Hurt and Corley eras of the program, the radio program was a 30-minute weekly sitcom. For most of the show's run (1947–54), the series ran as a 15-minute daily sitcom, a format popular among daytime serials.
| The Beulah Show | |
|---|---|
 Louise Beavers as Beulah, doing her monologue at the start of a TV episode | |
| Genre | Situation comedy |
| Created by |
|
| Starring |
|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 87 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Tom McKnight |
| Production company | Roland Reed Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | October 3, 1950 – September 22, 1953 |
In 1950, Roland Reed Productions adapted the property into a TV situation comedy for ABC, and the Beulah TV show ran for three seasons, Tuesday nights at 7:30 Eastern Time from October 3, 1950, to September 22, 1953.
Most of the comedy in the series derived from the fact that Beulah, referred to as "the queen of the kitchen", has the ability to solve the problems that her employers cannot figure out. Other characters included Beulah's boyfriend Bill Jackson, a handyman who is constantly proposing marriage, and Oriole, a befuddled maid for the family next door.
For at least the first season, Beulah was filmed at Biograph Studios in the Bronx while Ethel Waters was simultaneously appearing on Broadway in The Member of the Wedding . [3]
Ethel Waters starred as Beulah for the first year of the TV series before quitting in 1951. [4] When production moved to Hollywood, Hattie McDaniel, star of radio's Beulah, was cast in the title role in Summer 1951, [4] but only filmed six shows before falling ill. She was replaced by Louise Beavers later in 1951. The McDaniel episodes were shelved pending an improvement of her health, and so the second season began in April 1952 starting with the Beavers episodes. The six McDaniel episodes were tagged onto the end of the second season, starting July 1952 and running until August 1952. It was around this time that McDaniel learned that she had advanced breast cancer. Beavers returned in the role of Beulah for the first part of the third Beulah season, which aired from September to December 1952.
Butterfly McQueen (McDaniel's fellow cast member from Gone With the Wind ) starred as Oriole for the first season. Ruby Dandridge, who had played Mrs. Kelso in Cabin in the Sky and the voice of Oriole on the radio version of Beulah, replaced McQueen when the entire television cast was overhauled upon the arrival of Hattie McDaniel. Percy "Bud" Harris originally portrayed Bill, but he walked out on the part during the first season, accusing the producers of forcing him to portray an "Uncle Tom" character. He was succeeded in the role by Casablanca pianist Dooley Wilson, until Ernest Whitman followed radio co-stars McDaniel and Dandridge to TV in April 1952. The show was directed at various times by future sitcom veterans as Richard L. Bare and Abby Berlin.
Like the contemporaneous television program Amos 'n' Andy , Beulah came under attack[ when? ] from many critics, including the NAACP, which accused the show of supporting stereotypical depictions of black characters, with Beulah viewed as a stereotypical "mammy" similar to Aunt Jemima.
A total of 87 episodes were filmed and produced of the television program. All 87 episodes were included in syndication packages throughout the latter half of the 1950s for local stations across the country. Only seven episodes are known to exist on 16mm format and circulate among collectors.[ citation needed ] All 87 episodes are housed in an archive in their original 35-millimeter format.
21 episodes of the radio series have survived to the present day, as does Bob Corley's audition tape. As a daily sitcom, preserving the radio version of Beulah was not as high of a priority as it was for primetime programming.[ citation needed ]
The following episodes can be found at YouTube and Archive.org.
Beulah was referenced in the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America . In order to make the mock documentary more believable, mock commercials for historical goods and services were used such as Darkie Toothpaste and Coon Chicken Inn. Beulah was advertised as being a show (titled Leave It to Beulah, combining the name of the series with that of Leave It to Beaver , and featuring Beulah as a domestic slave) which Confederate families had grown up watching.
Fibber McGee and Molly (1935–1959) was a longtime husband-and-wife team radio comedy program.
Hattie McDaniel was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedienne. For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975, and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
Ethel Waters was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", "Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Butterfly McQueen was an American actress. Originally a dancer, McQueen first appeared in films as "Prissy" in Gone with the Wind (1939). She also appeared in the films Cabin in the Sky (1943), Mildred Pierce (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946).
The Danny Thomas Show is an American sitcom that ran from 1953 to 1957 on ABC and from 1957 to 1964 on CBS. Starring Danny Thomas as a successful night club entertainer, the show focused on his relationship with his family, yet went through a number of significant changes in cast and characters during the course of its run. Episodes regularly featured music by Thomas, guest stars and occasionally other cast members as part of the plot.
A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting black women, usually enslaved, who did domestic work, including nursing children. The fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a dark-skinned woman with a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States, as slave women were often tasked with domestic and childcare work in American slave-holding households. The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of black women being happy within slavery or within a role of servitude. The mammy stereotype associates black women with domestic roles and it has been argued that it, combined with segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities for black women during the Jim Crow era, approximately 1877 to 1966.
Eugene Hugh Beaumont was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver, originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963, and as private detective Michael Shayne in a series of low-budget crime films in 1946 and 1947.
Louise Beavers was an American film and television actress who appeared in dozens of films and two hit television shows from the 1920s to 1960. She played a prominent role in advancing the lives of Black Americans through her work and collaborated with fellow advocates to improve the social standing and media image of the Black population.
Lillian Randolph was an American actress and singer, a veteran of radio, film, and television. She worked in entertainment from the 1930s until shortly before her death. She appeared in hundreds of radio shows, motion pictures, short subjects, and television shows.
John Herrick McIntire was an American character actor who appeared in 65 theatrical films and many television series. McIntire is well known for having replaced Ward Bond, upon Bond's sudden death in November 1960, as the star of NBC's Wagon Train. He played Christopher Hale, the leader of the wagon train from early 1961 to the series' end in 1965. He also replaced Charles Bickford, upon Bickford's death in 1967, as ranch owner Clay Grainger on NBC's The Virginian for four seasons.
Marlin Hurt was an American stage entertainer and radio actor who was best known for originating the dialect comedy role of Beulah made famous on the Fibber McGee and Molly program and the first season of the Beulah radio series.
Frank S. Ferguson was an American character actor with hundreds of appearances in both film and television.
Maudie Prickett was an American character actress who performed in over 300 stage, film, and television productions during a career that spanned nearly four decades.
Ernest Whitman was an American stage and screen actor. He was also billed in some Broadway plays as Ernest R. Whitman.
Anita Sharp-Bolster was an Irish actress who appeared in 88 films and 12 TV series from 1928 to 1978. She was sometimes billed as Anita Bolster.
Dialect comedies are a genre of radio sitcoms that were popular between the 1920s and the 1950s. They relied on the exaggerated and highly stylized portrayal of stereotypes, usually based on ethnic humor. The term "dialect comedy" was coined by David Marc in his essay, Origins of the genre.
This is the complete filmography of actor Audrey Totter. Originally a radio actress, she entered motion pictures in 1944 and became known for her portrayals of Femme fatales and hard-boiled dames. She is best remembered for her appearances in such features as Lady in the Lake (1947), The Unsuspected (1947), and The Set-Up (1949). She later found equal success in television with recurring roles on such syndicated sitcoms as Our Man Higgins, Cimarron City, Dr. Kildare, and Medical Center.
Simon "Stuffy" Singer is an American former United States and world singles champion American handball player. He has been inducted into the United States Handball Association Hall of Fame. He was also a teenage radio and television actor, starring on the television show Blondie and Dagwood in the 1950s.
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, was an American situation comedy television series that ran for 291 episodes over eight seasons (1950–58) on CBS. The show did not become weekly until the third season. The first two seasons of the show were biweekly broadcasts, with the last episode of Season Two being broadcast three weeks after the one that preceded it. The show was based on the Burns and Allen radio show (1929–50), which first ran for three years on the BBC radio network, before airing in the United States on CBS and NBC. The radio show itself was based on the characters George Burns and Gracie Allen had developed in vaudeville. Many of the early television episodes were a re-working of the same episodes that had aired on radio.
Biff Baker, U.S.A. is an American adventure television program starring Alan Hale Jr. in the title role and Randy Stuart as his wife, Louise. The series was broadcast on CBS from November 6, 1952, until March 26, 1953. After the show's network run ended, it was syndicated, with reruns being broadcast until late in the 1950s. Lucky Strike cigarettes sponsored the program.
