Lighten Up, It’s Comedy After All

When did we start taking comedy so seriously?

There was a time when this country could laugh at racial and ethnic stereotypes without feeling guilty, when it was assumed that most people were smart enough to know the difference between real characters and caricatures.

I suppose those were the days before modern mass entertainment. The stars of vaudeville, for example, included Fanny Brice, who parodied Yiddish “yentas”; Weber and Fields, who burlesqued the Irish; and Honey Bob Evans and Frank Tinney, who worked in blackface. Racial stereotypes were the stock-in-trade of other vaudeville comedians, including Smith and Dale, Eddie Cantor and Miller and Lyles.

The comedy formulas they created were soon adopted by the fledgling medium of radio, most successfully by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the creators of “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Theirs was arguably the biggest hit in the medium’s history and lasted from 1926, when it was born as a local radio show in Chicago, until 1960--long after the TV series based on it was driven off the air.

In his Feb. 19 column (“How Far Has TV Come Since ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’?”), Howard Rosenberg says that “Amos ‘n’ Andy” has come to symbolize “the essence of TV bigotry.” He then goes on to describe how many of the characters in it were little more than buffoons, illiterates and schemers--in other words, the same kinds of characters who populated most radio comedy shows of the time (and TV sitcoms today).

In fact, the characters on “Amos ‘n’ Andy” were loved by most Americans, blacks and whites. They formed huge fan clubs, wrote thousands of letters weekly to the characters. Al Smith blamed his defeat in the presidential election of 1936 in part on the show. “A large part of the American people,” he declared, “were more interested in Kingfish, the beauty parlor and the Fresh Air Taxi Co. than they were in the affairs of their country.”

Listen to those radio shows today, and it’s easy to understand why. They hold up remarkably well--they’re as funny now as they were then and truly represent the work of a comedy genius.

The genius, contrary to Rosenberg’s assertion, was neither Gosden nor Correll, who may have been the show’s creators and stars, but, except in the very beginning, were not its writers. In fact, the writer of the show, for more than 18 years, was Flournoy E. Miller, a black man.

Miller’s contributions to the performing arts were enormous. In 1921, he staged “Shuffle Along,” the Eubie Blake musical that was the first Broadway show with an all-black cast. He was instrumental in forming the first Negro performers union. He appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies with partner A.L. Lyles. He was the co-librettist of the Broadway musical “Running Wild,” in which he also appeared, and he was one of the first black members of ASCAP.

But mostly he should be remembered as the man who brought laughter and warmth into our homes every week for nearly two decades as the writer of “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” That he is now virtually forgotten says more about the treacherous course of race relations in this country than any principled commentary about media stereotyping. (Harry Belafonte said recently that he and director Robert Altman are teaming up to produce a film about “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” which may finally give credit where credit is due.)

But a parallel issue may be whether, in our overweening effort to become politically correct, we are losing our sense of humor. Have we now so limited the subject matter of comedy that one of the few things that we can safely laugh about is sex--a subject that was taboo back in the “golden days” of radio? Will we one day become like the Germans, who, according to the stereotype, rarely laugh in public and who, it is said, will never produce the author of a book titled “500 Years of German Humor”?

A New York Daily News writer recently asked a spokesperson for the South Dakota Film Commission whether any folks in her state were upset by the oh-yeah-sure-you-betcha Scandinavian accents and aloof mannerisms of the characters in the Oscar-nominated “Fargo.” She replied: “We found the film amusing because we all know people who have that dialect and those behaviors.”

I wish that were the sentiment of the rest of the country toward comic stereotypes. Holy mack’rel! Fargo must be a fun place.