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.

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've picked up a few of these episodes from the internet archive of public domain shows. These episodes star Louise Beavers, and I believe they are from 1952. I can't find a good episode list but according to IMDb there were 3 more Beulahs besides Louise Beavers, including Hattie McDaniel from "Gone with the Wind", Ethel Waters, and Amanda Rudolph all in a 3 year period. Why so many changes? I know Hattie McDaniel died in 52, but I still can't believe a show with so many main character changes, let alone the fact she was black in the 50's would stay on TV. Stranger still I have a spattering of early TV listings from 1952 and 1953, this show is not in any evening lineup. Was this some kind of show syndicated to different markets? Any experts out there can educate me?

I am charmed and impressed by the arguments of F. Gwynplaine McIntyre, above. (Also charmed by the clever pseudonym--a fan of both Victor Hugo *and* The Munsters, eh?) But honestly...isn't "racist" a little rough and anachronistic when describing an early 50s sitcom? "Racisme" was a obscurantist cant word invented by Stalinists in Paris circa 1946, and it didn't hit the English-speaking world till about 1970.

And even if we translate the word the way Gwynplaine presumably intends--as a stand-in for "prejudiced" or "biased"--the argument is preposterous. Beulah and her ilk were not cringing, shuffling darkies at all. They were proud and capable Negro folk, and in fact much of the routine humor of the series came out of the juxtaposition between their honestly and adeptness, and that of the white folks who lived in parallel. Every time the man of the house got sick, the doctor came over and prescribed a diet of milktoast. You never saw the colored people having to eat milktoast. When the boy in the series wanted help or advice he didn't go to Mr. Milktoast, no, he went to that Negro boxing coach over the fence, the one who dispensed wisdom out the side of his sassy satchel-mouth; or he went to one of Beulah's friends.

Really, it was precisely the same setup as the TV show 'Hazel' a few years later; though of course Hazel was a white American maid and the cast of characters wasn't nearly as colorful (pun not intended--though it brings up a good point: where were all the black people circa 1958-1965?)