avxo71

Hello! I am quite new to this site but find it extremely interesting.
I wonder if anyone can help me. My dad was the biggest fan of 'The Black and White Minstrel Show' and i would love to obtain any copies of any shows that you good folk out there might have for his birthday!
He would love to watch them again and this would make his day! Dvd or video would be fine and more than willing to pay for your time.
Many thanks, Tracy x

Carmel

Im not sure wether these were ever released on DVd or video as these shows were banned from TV in the 70's for being racest, i dont see how as it was all done in fun and not to offend anyone. Well i hope someone can help you.

Marky B

I have to agree with Carmel on this one. I personally did not like them (not my scene),but they were inoffensive and just as innocent as the Robertson's Jam Gollywog. However,off my soap box. Try contacting the BBC,who made the shows,or indeed the popular press. The Daily Mail has an answers to correspondents column,where readers submit questions and other readers reply. I hope this is of some help to you.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

tvden

I think perhaps a least one person on the forum has a couple of these shows on dvd I am also looking for the shows but so far have been unsuccessful, I watched these shows when they were first aired and they were in no way offensive and were very entertaining with lots of nice songs, there was none of this PC crap about in those days, things were taken at face value

nellybly

Everybody was getting touchy in the 50s through 70s. Here in the States Amos 'n' Andy was a popular radio show about Blacks from 1929 to the early 1950s.The NAACP protested the show when it went to TV, saying that it was demeaning and offensive. The show was taken off the air putting several Black actors out of work. The production of "race" movies had also been hollered about by them and since movie studios pounced on any excuse to cut the budget, those went bye-bye also.

So much for the "advancement of colored people".

Blacks didn't find much work on TV and movies until the 1970s.

The show didn't offend anybody except the NAACP. They sure kept quiet when it was on radio and was being acted by white men using dialect.

It was a wonderful treat
To hear the patter of horsey feet.

Thanks For The Buggyride recorded by Percival Mackey

Mr Cosmo

Just a minor point - these shows were not banned. The BBC simply stopped making them due to dwindling audience numbers and the last show went out in 1978. (This was after punk rock and Saturday Night Fever)

I can remember when The Supremes came over to the UK in 1964 they were amazed to find that minstrel shows were considered TV entertainment - and at a later date Diana Ross was ready to pull out of the Royal Command Performance when she found that the Black And White Minstrels were on the same bill.
The fact is this was a tired format even in the late 1960s and is indicative of the lack of up-to-dateness of the BBC programme makers back then. (They offered The Osmonds a TV series 2 years after they were off the chart.)

Trivia - what is the first show the BBC recorded in colour - you've guessed it - The Black And White Minstrels!

christoph404

Im thinking of another "innoffensive" and "inocent" programme of the 70's called "Love thy Neighbour" That was a popular show in its time,to look at it now makes most sensible people cringe with embarrasement and shame, I personnaly think "the black and white Minstrels" is of a similar ilke,times have changed as have attitudes as to what is acceptable and what is not. Im not a fan of the PC brigade and some PC dictums are absolutely absurd but on this subject I would have to agree with miss Diana Ross. nuff said.

avxo71

That is such a shame but i managed to find a CD box set for him! Not quite the same but it will have to do. Thankyou for your reply.

avxo71

Thanks for your help, it is much appreciated and i shall let you know if i have any joy!

tvden

BBC 4 showed a clip of the Black and White Minstrals tonight as part of there Underground program there was quite a lot of b/w archive material shown and a dr who episode

clitheroekid

I have a Black & White Minstrel LP record if you are interested?

mel walton

Saw "The Black and White Minstrels' at Upton Knoll, spring or summer of 1972 on TV. Saw it at theater near Victoria same year also in 1968 same theater. Grade A musical show. Damn silly to ban or boycott it because of color. We had same deal with the 'Amos and Andy' show. When the cast had Tim Moore as Kingfish, Spencer Williams jr as Andy and Johnny Lee, it was very funny, at times, hilarious ( I have trouble remembering how to spell that). Hollywood had a policy during the 30s & 40s where they cut films when they were shown in the south, so the rednecks wouldn't boycott the film. Decent people in the south never got to see or hear Ethel Waters, Lena Horne or the Nicholas Bros, all the best mel

Torquemada

One thing I don't get about the people who judge 'Love Thy Neighbour' in hindsight forget/or never bothered to find out, that the white character was always clearly portrayed as the unreasonable bigot and his racist attitudes invariably led to him losing out in all ways to the more grounded, eloquent and cleverer black character who lived next door. You are right times have changed and I think that we could trust people to use their brains more in those days, instead of having to be spoon-fed and told what to think.

image45

There are a few studio bits on the 1978 BBC VT tape that people on this site have. They are small in general content so I would not expect much.

"Seya next time!"

Stephen Jones

My mum was a fan of The B and W Minstrel Show. "Aren't they smart," she would say, meaning well-dressed and glamourous. I think they were hideous and surely were really about some white people's need to laugh at or sentimentalize "funny black people." Why weren't real black singers used ? "Bamboozled," by Spike Lee, looks at the American background to minstrel shows.