Beulah

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.

I'm not sure you can review this show or Amos and Andy by 2018 "racial sensibilities." Beulah was a maid, an anomaly in the households of 99 percent of the country, who pretty much raised the Hendersons' son Donnie with the help of her friends. The humor was gentle and the show ran on ABC in the 7:30 slot. The "Seven to Eight" hour was one pretty much ignored by adults but was prized by kids. On the DuMont Television Network ran one of the best shows ever for kids: Captain Video and his Video Rangers. Beulah followed on ABC and retained a lot of the kids. That kids' audience is now in their 70's and I doubt many recall Beulah clearly. I can't recall Captain Video all that clearly either.

Thanks to the Internet and the plethora of cable networks, some of these old shows rise to the surface once again. For me many bring back some good attached memories; some make me wince seeing the cheap sets and terrible acting. I am left to wonder what synapsis in my brain were connected/created to shape the person I am today. Did the vestigial images of Beulah from decades past shape my view of Blacks today? I don't know but I still get a smile when I see Beulah or Amos and Andy. If that's the take-a-way, then I don't see any problems. I know I don't appreciate it when someone suggests I enjoy those shows because I harbor racist views. Beulah was nice, she was loyal to her friends, always tried to follow her heart and do the right thing. What was wrong with that picture?

With response to WMAV08's questions about its airing, "Beulah" aired on ABC, for starters. There were syndicated shows that were in more broadcast markets than ABC in 1950-52, and many times ABC would share a channel with another network. In TV's early days, channels might be dually aligned with more than one network (you still had DuMont which in the early 50s might have been more established than ABC.) Just because you were a network station didn't mean you by default would carry all their shows. (That's why on old programs you will hear a phrase like "over MOST of these same CBS stations".) That may account for the difficulty finding it in network listings. I would also hazard a guess that it cleared in few southern markets as well, in spite of the resumes of those who filled Beulah's role in the TV show. There were sly hints at how times were slowly changing for African- Americans. For instance, the opening credits had Beulah winking at the camera and saying, "Don't let nobody tell you I'm in the market for a husband. I could be, but they don't SELL husbands in the market..." Consider that line in the historical context of slavery, and it's pretty subversive. The show may play a bit to stereotypes of the time, but Beulah seems to be more of a forerunner for later "maids" like Shirley Booth's "Hazel" and especially Ann B. Davis's portrayal of Alice on "The Brady Bunch." Of course the primary successor to Beulah would be Robert Guillaume's 70's character "Benson" from "Soap". Because of the changing mores of the time, Benson's wits got him promoted from a butler to a government official in his own right in his own show.

Like Amos And Andy, Beulah started out on radio and started with a white man doing an imitation of a black woman who was a maid. Beulah was a character on a number of radio shows and so popular she eventually got a show of her own.

Early television was mostly radio shows moved over to TV with established public favorites and like Amos And Andy, Beulah now had to be played by a black actress.

One thing about Beulah as you look on the credits you see an ever changing cast of regulars of the white family that employed her Beulah and her friends. Beulah was played by Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters, and Louise Beavers and she had as a boyfriend handyman Bill and as her Ethel Mertz the occasionally scatterbrained Oriole.

One thing that remained constant was that Beulah was the wisest one in the house. Always tactful her wisdom got the family out of many a crisis.

Health reasons were why McDaniel quit and other commitments limited Ethel Waters. Louise Beavers finished the series up.

When you come down to it, Beulah was in many ways a black version of Hazel. Or maybe it's the other way around.

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.