Dialect comedies are a genre of radio (and later television) 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. [1]
The genre has its roots on the vaudeville stage and in the minstrel shows that became popular in the 19th century. The ethnicities of the actual actors portraying the dialects did not have to match the characters; while much Jewish dialect comedy was created and portrayed by actual Jews, other dialect comedies, such as those involving blackface, were often not.
Often overlooked in modern times were regional dialects that were not directly based on ethnic humor. Hillbilly humor was a somewhat common form of dialect comedy during the radio era, with shows such as Lum and Abner using the genre to full effect. Southerners (especially haughty aristocrats from the South and their distinctive accents) were another target of dialect comedy, with one of the most famous examples being fictional U.S. Senator Beauregard Claghorn from The Fred Allen Show .
Occasional use of dialect comedy continued even after political correctness led to the dramatic decline of its usage in the 1950s. Sara Berner, a noted dialect comic, noted in 1950: "Dialects are a natural part of American speech. And the sooner people stop being on the defensive about them, the sooner we can wipe out all that silly prejudice," also noting that "in all the years I’ve been doing them, I’ve never, not even once, got a nasty letter." She conceded: "You have to do them sympathetically. Otherwise you can cause trouble." [2] José Jiménez, a fictional Bolivian immigrant who was created by non-Hispanic comedian Bill Dana, remained popular as a guest act well into the 1960s; Dana never intended the character to be offensive and killed him off in the late 1970s, complete with a mock funeral. Foreigner Latka Gravas was one of Andy Kaufman's most popular characters in the late 1970s and 1980s, while Bronson Pinchot regularly relied on dialect comedy for his characters Balki Bartokomous ( Perfect Strangers ), Jean-Luc Rieupeyroux ( Step by Step ) and the title character on Meego . The 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls included Scandinavian dialect humor in the form of Betty White's Rose Nylund character, a Norwegian-American who fit early 20th-century stereotypes of the good-hearted but dense Swede. [3]
One of the most notable dialect comedies was The Goldbergs , the brain child of creator/star Gertrude Berg about a Jewish family living in the Bronx. After its debut in 1929, the series had several incarnations in radio, television and a musical on Broadway. Berg continued to play the character of Molly Goldberg until 1955. In an article in the May 1936 issue of Radio Mirror, in a piece called "Ghetto guides the Goldbergs", writer Dan Wheeler describes Berg's "double life". Berg, the successful actress and business woman, takes the reporter to a Jewish Ghetto on New York's lower East Side, where she spends a few hours a week gabbing in Yiddish with the old Yentas of the neighborhood about their children and poring over the vegetable carts that line the streets. This is her inspiration for her characters; Berg emphasized both realism and being a positive role model in portraying the lead character as a Jewish mother. [4]
Probably the most enduring program in this genre, Amos N Andy had two feet planted firmly in the minstrel tradition. In 1928, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two white performers took their blackface act, Sam N Henry, which they did not have the rights to and changed it to Amos N Andy, which became one of the most popular shows of the time. In 1948 Variety proclaimed the show “a national habit, almost as familiar as radio itself.” [5] Upon transitioning the show to television, Gosden and Correll took on the role of producers and hired a black cast including Alvin Childress (Amos), Spencer Williams (Andy) and Tim Moore (as King Fisher); Gosden and Correll had appeared as their characters in blackface on-screen in the 1930 talkie film Check and Double Check , which received poor reception. By the time of its final broadcast in 1960, the show had been renamed Amos N Andy Music Hall.
Life with Luigi premiered on CBS in 1948 and centered around Luigi Basco, an Italian immigrant living in Chicago. The title character was portrayed by J. Carrol Naish, an Irishman. Many of the plots were either about Luigi attending “citizenship classes” and the wacky immigrants he meets there or about his cranky landlord trying to convince Luigi to marry his overweight daughter. The TV version premiered in 1952 and was cancelled shortly after, in part due to the bumbling helpless portrayal of a character often referred to as “the little immigrant” who didn’t understand how banks work even though there were banks in Italy at the time. [6]
Mama (alternately “I Remember Mama”) was a series about a Norwegian family living in San Francisco, CA starring Peggy Wood, Judson Laire and Rosemary Rice.
Beulah was a radio series on CBS from 1945–1954 and a TV show on ABC from 1950-1952. It was the first series to feature an African American woman in the main role. Beulah drew much of the same criticism from the black community as Amos N Andy. The show was criticized for its portrayal of the “Mammy” or the happy go lucky black servant who wanted nothing more from life than to serve white folks. When it first hit the radio waves, the character of Beulah was voiced by her creator, Marlin Hurt, a white male; the character was originally introduced nationwide as a supporting character on Fibber McGee and Molly before getting her own show. After Hurt's unexpected death in 1946, the character of Beulah was played by Bob Corley, another white man. In 1947, African American actress Hattie McDaniel took over, followed by two African American sisters Lillian Randolph and later Amanda Randolph. The TV version of Beulah was portrayed by Ethel Waters and Louise Beavers.
Jewish performers such as George Burns, Jack Benny and Milton Berle had shows that were arguably forms of dialect comedy. Each of these comedians used cultural markers of Jewishness such as incorporating Yiddish words and phrases into their dialogue and referencing places that were known for being Jewish neighborhoods such as New York’s East side. Comedians like Berle and others had come out of the same vaudeville tradition as the minstrel performers and as such did their shows in a classic variety format which included characters who were often based on racial and ethnic stereotypes. As late as the 1990s, the work of Jerry Seinfeld was seen as having a distinctly New York Jewish flavor to it, which initially hindered his show Seinfeld (which later became a smash hit) from being picked up as a series. [7]
Blackface is the practice of non-black performers using burnt cork or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment.
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish, or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian.
Amos 'n' Andy was an American radio sitcom about black characters, initially set in Chicago then later in the Harlem section of New York City. While the show had a brief life on 1950s television with black actors, the 1928 to 1960 radio show was created, written and voiced by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll), as well as incidental characters. On television, 1951–1953, black actors took over the majority of the roles; white characters were infrequent.
Charles James Correll was an American radio comedian, actor and writer, known best for his work in the radio series Amos 'n' Andy with Freeman Gosden. Correll voiced the main character Andy Brown, along with various lesser characters.
Freeman Fisher "Gozzie" Gosden was an American radio comedian, actor and pioneer in the development of the situation comedy form. He is best known for his work in the radio series Amos 'n' Andy.
Sam 'n' Henry was a radio series performed by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll that aired on Chicago radio station WGN from 1926 through 1928. The ten-minute program is often considered the first situation comedy. Gosden and Correll reworked the premise on a more ambitious scale to create their long-running radio show Amos 'n' Andy.
The Goldbergs is a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on American radio, and from 1949 to 1956 on American television. It was adapted into a 1948 play, Me and Molly; a 1950 film The Goldbergs, and a 1973 Broadway musical, Molly. It also briefly spun off a comic strip from June 8, 1944, to December 21, 1945, with art by Irwin Hasen, a comic book artist who worked on various DC Comics titles and would later do the Dondi comic strip.
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.
Calvin and the Colonel is an American animated sitcom about Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a shrewd fox, and Calvin T. Burnside, a dumb bear. Their lawyer was Oliver Wendell Clutch, who was a (literal) weasel. The colonel lived with his wife Maggie Belle and her sister Susan Culpepper, who did not trust the Colonel at all. Colonel Klaxon was in the real estate business, but always tried get-rich-quick schemes with Calvin's unwitting help.
Check and Double Check is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film produced and released by RKO Radio Pictures, based on the Amos 'n' Andy radio show. The title was derived from a catchphrase associated with the show. Directed by Melville W. Brown, from a screenplay by Bert Kalmar, J. Walter Ruben, and Harry Ruby, it starred Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll in blackface, in the roles of Amos Jones and Andy Brown, respectively, which they had created for the radio show. The film also featured Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra.
Spencer Williams was an American actor and filmmaker. He portrayed Andy on TV's The Amos 'n' Andy Show and directed films including the 1941 race film The Blood of Jesus. Williams was a pioneering African-American film producer and director.
Beulah was an American situation-comedy series 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.
A black sitcom is a sitcom that principally features black people in its cast. Prominent black sitcoms to date typically come from the United States with African American casts, forming a branch of African American comedy. Although sitcoms with primarily black characters have been present since the earliest days of network television, this genre rose to prominence in the 1990s, mostly then on upstart networks outside the Big Three.
American humor refers collectively to the conventions and common threads that tie together humor in the United States. It is often defined in comparison to the humor of another country – for example, how it is different from British humor and Canadian humor. It is, however, difficult to say what makes a particular type or subject of humor particularly American. Humor usually concerns aspects of American culture, and depends on the historical and current development of the country's culture. The extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous obviously depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including, but not limited to geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. People of different countries will therefore find different situations funny. Just as American culture has many aspects which differ from other nations, these cultural differences may be a barrier to how humor translates to other countries.
Flournoy Eakin Miller, sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", he wrote many successful vaudeville and Broadway shows, including the influential Shuffle Along (1921), as well as working on several all-black movies between the 1930s and 1950s.
Jeff Schaffer is an American film and television director, writer, and producer.
Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature.
The Gumps is an American radio sitcom broadcast from 1931 until 1937, mostly on CBS Radio based on the popular Sidney Smith newspaper comic strip The Gumps. It was the first radio adaptation of comics.
African American comedy has had a substantial role in American culture from minstrel shows, vaudeville, blackface, and coon songs to some of the world's most popular comedians, shows and filmmakers.