Hooray for Blacks in Hollywood! Part 1 – TV

Welcome back, my dearest friends and readers!

As promised, this week I am delving into how blacks have been – and are -portrayed in Hollyweird – er Hollywood – over the years! 😂

In the past, I have written about how gays have been portrayed in both daytime TV (soap operas) and in primetime TV and Hollywood. Please see the banners to the links below:

How Soap Operas Handled Queer Characters

Gays in Hollywood, an Often Inaccurate Portrayal

The contributions that black actors and actresses, and black entertainers, comedians and comediennes have made to television and the movies is astronomical and vitally important.

We have shown that we can go beyond portraying the overdone and stereotypical slave/subservient/butler/maid roles and take on more challenging roles often portrayed by our white counterparts. The yes, ma’am/no ma’am trope does get a little old, as well as the junkie, the hoodrat, the drug dealer, and even the doorman. We can do so much more than that.

The one thing I have always liked is seeing black actors and actresses take on roles where THEY are the rich and powerful, where they are the villains but not in a stereotypical way.

But let’s take a step back in time to see how Hollywood treated black characters in some very iconic TV shows. I will be exemplifying the good AND the bad.

Let’s start with the good.

What Hollywood Got Right

It was in 1966 when we were introduced to the original Star Trek, yes the one with William Shatner (Captain Kirk).  What was very interesting was the main female crew member was black. And that black female was Nichelle Nichols who portrayed Nyota Uhura.  And the show did something very interesting back then:  It featured the first interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura!!!  VERY ahead of its time.  I would say that Nichols’ portrayal was very ahead of its time, as well.  She was a very important part of the crew, very knowledgeable and capable. And there wasn’t anything, to my knowledge, making references to her race or to her being female.  And to even have a black FEMALE actress on this show during the turbulent 60s was EXTREMELY bold and cutting edge. 

Julia with Diahann Carroll!!!  Yes!  The first TV show to show a black female in the lead, but who was also SINGLE raising a child!!!!  Well, Julia was widowed.  But still.  And she was a professional. She was a nurse!! The fact that there was a show from, again, the 1960s that focused on a black female as the lead was rare and simply unheard of.  This show even came before The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which focused on a single, white female navigating her way through the 1970s. 

Side note: Diahann Carroll, two decades later, would appear on Dynasty as, well the way she put it “the first black bitch on primetime TV!” AND she was Blake Carrington’s (John Forsythe) sister!!!! 😱📺

The Jeffersons!!!!! The entire cast was beyond amazing and hilarious!  Enough said!!  But again, a show focusing on the success of a black male, and not portraying any stereotypes, was fabulous!!  I loved the fact that George Jefferson, this 5-foot nothing guy was feisty AF and able to stand up to the likes of an Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), since The Jeffersons was a spinoff of All in the Family.  Honestly, I am just glad that George wasn’t a drug-dealing black buffoon!!! What we seemed to move to in the 1990s, just saying.  But I will save that for later…

Don’t forget Louise Jefferson (Isabel Sanford) and Helen Willis (Roxie Roker) were so well written.  They were very classy BLACK ladies.  

And Lionel, I felt, was portrayed realistically by both actors who played the part. (Mike Evans first, then later Damon Evans, no relation, with Mike Evans returning for seasons 6, 7, and 8). 

Also, a bit of trivia – Mike Evans was also a creator and writer for Good Times!! Often wondered where the character name Michael Evans came from… 🤔

Lionel was someone who was smart and well educated, but who also knew his culture and where he came from.  And he was NOT hood in any stretch of the imagination!   

And then there was Florence, the maid, played to hilarious perfection by Marla Gibbs, who of course went on to star in her own show 227, with of course Jackee Harry!  227 was another show with a predominantly black cast that didn’t delve into stereotypes. 

Then there’s SOAP, with another brilliant cast, no matter the race!!!  Well, mostly white, but then we have the character Benson, portrayed by Robert Guillaume.  Watching Benson be sassy and ask Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) “Do you want me to get that?”  whenever the doorbell rang, was HIGH-LARIOUS!!! 

Robert Guillaume’s Benson was so successful and popular that he was spun off into his own show, which ran for SEVEN seasons!!!  Benson still had his wisecracks, but he totally took over the household of the governor, Jessica Tate’s ditzy cousin Eugene Gatling (James Noble).  And at the end of the series, Benson even ran against the governor for well… governor!!  (Sorry for the spoiler alert!) 😂🤣

Speaking of running a household, Nell Carter COMPLETELY took over the Kanisky household in Gimme A Break!  Nell Harper, as the character was named, came to run the Kanisky household when her friend, Margaret, died of cancer.  That meant looking after Margaret’s husband, Police Chief Carl Kanisky and their three girls, Katie (Kari Michaelsen), Julie (Laurie Hendler), and Samantha (Lara Jill Miller).  What I really liked about the show is how tough Nell was with those girls, but it was with love.  You saw that, though she could be strict, she truly loved those girls.  And keeping up with the chief – and HIS father – was no picnic either, but it made for a lot of laughs. 

Nell was not portrayed as the “mammy” to this family.  Instead, she was not only a member of the household, and not just a part of the staff, but a treasured and valued member of the family.  Often the girls came to her for advice, like a mother, and oftentimes ran interference between the girls and the chief. And when the chief died, because sadly in real life actor Dolph Sweet died, that mother role really intensified.  Great show with a lot of laughs and a lot of heart. 

Sanford & Son! Starring Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, and LaWanda Page!  What can I say about this iconic show about a black junk man in Los Angeles running the business with his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson)? I mean, this show was off the chain with the funny!  And in my opinion, there really would not have been a show without LaWanda Page’s Aunt Esther.  Goodness me, her fights with Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) were the highlight of the show, especially when she would go into her “oh glory!” religious routine, but as religious as Aunt Esther claimed to be, she always came with the zingers, SUCKER!!  🤣😂😁

Good Times, a spinoff from the popular show Maude – a show about a  black family – husband, wife and their three children – in the projects, was something you really wouldn’t expect, considering for the first three seasons of the show, you had a very strong role model in the father, James Evans, portrayed by John Amos.  The stereotype has always been that in the projects, a single mother was raising her children on her own and possibly on drugs and having a lot of different men running in and out of the household.  But not this show. Esther Rolle, who played Florida Evans, INSISTED that she have a husband.  She did not want to perpetuate that stereotype.  Unfortunately, James Evans was written out of the show, at the end of the third season, killed in a car crash in Mississippi. 😔

I think the one thing I definitely loved and appreciated about Good Times, besides the fact that it featured a core family with a father who worked and was right there to raise his three kids, but that each of these kids were very talented in their own way:  J.J. (Jimmy Walker) was an extraordinarily talented artist.  Thelma (Bern a dette Stanis) was an aspiring dancer and actress, and of course the “militant midget” Michael Evans, portrayed by Ralph Carter, was the smart one in the family and VERY pro black!  Rounding out things was neighbor and best friend Wilona Woods (Ja’Net Dubois) and of course later Janet Jackson was added to the cast as Wilona’s adopted daughter, Penny.  Oh and can’t forget the underhanded and sometimes scheming, yet funny, Nathan Bookman (Boogah as Wilona called him) played by Johnny Brown, who coincidentally was very good at impressions.

I have to give honorable mention to The Cosby Show, I mean regardless of what we all may think about Bill Cosby, I greatly appreciated the fact that the show was about an upwardly mobile black family in the late 80s/early 90s.  Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) played an OB-GYN and Phylicia Rashad played Claire, his lawyer wife. Again, regardless of what we now know about Bill, the show was ground-breaking in a sense that this was a black family that was upwardly mobile and didn’t resort to ANY stereotypes.

I can also appreciate the fact that The Cosby Show was a good antithesis to Good Times, where you are seeing blacks of affluence rather than a poor family from the projects.

Norman Lear

Now, I must give credit where credit is due to Good Times, Sanford and Son, and The Jeffersons – and that credit actually goes to a WHITE man named Norman Lear.

Mr. Lear came into prominence with All in the Family back in 1971, and then Sanford and Son. Pretty much after that, it was spinoff after spinoff after spinoff, with both Maude (starring Bea Arthur) and The Jeffersons coming out of All in the Family, and Good Times coming out of Maude.

Because of Lear, American black families were shown in a realistic, yet dignified way. He showed that black people had a voice and a right to be heard. Though they were sitcoms, he was able to exemplify poverty, or emerging from the poverty, while also showing some of the darker sides of not just black life, but life in general. To say that Norman Lear was a pioneer would be an understatement.

Honorable Mentions

I must also give some honorable mentions to the following shows:

Living Single – Kim Fields, Kim Coles, Erika Alexander, and of course Queen Latifah

Martin! – starring the HIGH-LARIOUS Martin Lawrence, of course; and Tisha Campbell; and Tichina Arnold!!

In the Heat of the Night – Howard E. Rollins and Carroll O’Connor

The Wayans – Okay. They are HILARIOUS, enough said!! But seriously, the Wayans actually capitalize on making fun of the black stereotypes, in my opinion, which I think is great.

Yes, 227 as mentioned above!

Sister! Sister! with Jackee and, of course, twins Tia and Tamara Mowry.

That’s My Mama with Clifton Davis, Theresa Merritt (as Mama), Ted Lange (Isaac from Love Boat fame), Theodore Wilson (feat. prominently in Good Times as Sweet Daddy Williams!!!) and Lynne Moody (who coincidentally later appeared on Soap as Danny Campbell’s (Ted Wass) love interest in an interracial relationship)!

And speaking of Clifton Davis, welcome new soap opera Beyond the Gates in which he is now appearing. This new soap focuses on a very wealthy BLACK family! And this new soap is being filmed here in the ATL!!! And also starring Tamara Tunie from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit!

Truthfully, I would be here all day if I delved into all of the phenomenal black-driven and written TV shows of Hollywood’s past.

So, let’s move on to some shows that got it WRONG!!

Where they got it WRONG! (In my opinion, of course) 😀😉

Designing Women – the story, as MANY of you know, centers around four WHITE Southern ladies, two of whom are sisters, who run a design company in Atlanta, GA – HATED IT ALREADY. They employ a BLACK man, an ex convict named Anthony Bouvier (portrayed by Meshach Taylor). To me, the way Anthony was portrayed was VERY subservient!!! Like a slave. I am used to empowered blacks from shows such as the ones listed above, especially from SOAP – Robert Guillaume as Benson, The Jeffersons – with Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson and Marla Gibbs as Florence, the maid. These people TALKED BACK! And I know a lot of you are saying well, they would have been fired. Would they?

It’s like Anthony from Designing Women had no backbone. Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am, bullshit. And he was supposed to have a friendship with Delta Burke’s character, Suzanne Sugerbaker. It seemed one-sided to me. Now, keep in mind I didn’t see the show, but unfortunately got roped into doing the stage version here in Atlanta called Designing Women Live, with all of the female parts portrayed by men in drag. Great concept, but I thought the show itself SUCKED! And I swear to God if I hear that Julia Sugarbaker the night the lights went down in Georgia one more GOTDAMN time, I am going to HURL!!!

Amos ‘n’ Andy

So. I have to be honest about this one. I have never really seen Amos ‘n’ Andy, but I have heard plenty about it. And from what I understand these two characters, black of course, were portrayed in a rather, extraordinarily stereotypical way. It was the dumb/ignant’/low-class/po’/uneducated black person. This stereotype was no doubt perpetuated by white producers who wanted to laugh at black culture at the time.

And again, this is why I must applaud Norman Lear in the 70s for stepping on those outdated and rather tired tropes and showing that black characters were not only strong, but rather educated and very capable individuals like our white counterparts. Not to mention the fact that blacks were not just from the ghetto or gang bangers or drug dealers or drug users.

I am for having TV shows that feature black characters, but I really don’t think it is necessary to ALWAYS go there in terms of racism either. How about we be more mainstream and that some of the problems our white characters face, black characters can also relate to?

And fortunately, there are a lot of current shows on mainstream TV and even on streaming platforms, where black characters are just regular people. And yes, there are/have been TV shows in the past that show black life in particular. But thankfully, these shows have been done with good taste and dignity.

Please return next time when I delve into Part 2 where I talk about some of the black movies. Until then, please be safe and as always, mentally well!!

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

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