Word: showings
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Jerry Seltzer, the president of Bay Promotions, Inc., in Oakland, Calif., is still fuming. When the TV show What's My Line? telephoned from New York to ask for one of his girl skaters to appear on the program, Seltzer says, the caller explained that the show was looking for someone with a "weird and unusual occupation-one that is nearly extinct." Obviously, says Seltzer, those isolated New Yorkers did not realize that he was promoting the Big Comeback of that riot on roller skates called the Roller Derby...
...lips. The ABC Department of Broadcast Standards and Practices (the censors) deleted the actual contact of the lips, but the audience knew exactly what was going to happen after the rest of the scene ran intact. Half a dozen other racial jokes were included in the one-hour show, including jabs at the N.A.A.C.P., the K.K.K. and black militant students...
...reconciliation is real, on network television, at least, there is certainly a new relaxation. For the first time since Amos 'n' Andy went off in 1953, black comedy (al beit in a somewhat more sensitive and sophisticated form) fills the air. On an upcoming Rowan and Martin show, the entire cast appears in black face for one number; Chelsea Brown, the show's sassy Negro comedienne, naturally is in white face, as is Guest Tony Curtis. For the snapper, Judy Carne turns to Chelsea and says: "I have only been black for five minutes...
Carol Burnett repeatedly gets her teeth into the problem with guests like Flip Wilson on her CBS variety show. Flip, during one segment, complained of his wife's cuisine. "She cooks like an extremist-burn, baby, burn." Another week, Carol spoofed TV's own new cliche characterization of what some blacks refer to as "Supernegro." Opening the door of her home to find a young, leather-jacketed black (Charles Moore), she chirped: "Why, it's a good-looking young Negro. Now don't tell me. I'll bet you're a doctor, a lawyer...
Obviously, the networks are still caught somewhat nervously between the stereotypes of Supernegro and a campy version of old Stepin Fetchit. Digby Wolfe, a former writer on the Laugh-In and Soul shows, warns that the "here-come-de-judge syndrome can be very dangerous, because it is apt to convince white audiences that Negroes are, after all, just kidding." He misses the point. No matter what the show or how limp the humor, the "Yassuh, boss" jokes are still, basically, satire...