50 years of blacks in entertainment

Jet, Nov 26, 2001

JET was on the scene in the 1970s to explain to readers the relationship of soundtracks to movie ticket sales when Shaft exploded onto the movie and music scene. The film, which starred Richard Roundtree, was a major hit as was the Academy Award-winning soundtrack by Isaac Hayes.

Some of the other breakthrough films of the last 50 years included the 1950s musical Carmen Jones with Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey and Sidney Poitier, Member of the Wedding with Ethel Waters, and The Defiant Ones with Sidney Poitier. In 1972, for the first time two Black actresses (Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues and Cicely Tyson in Sounder) were nominated for best actress Oscars. Melvin Van Peebles both raised eyebrows and good box office with Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song. And The Color Purple, which featured Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery and Oprah Winfrey, received a whopping 13 Oscar nominations in 1983. Other Black actor nominees have included Beah Richards (Guess Who's Coming To Dinner), James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope), Diahann Carroll (Claudine), Morgan Freeman (Street Smart and Driving Miss Daisy), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne (What's Love Got To Do With It).

When JET began publishing, television was in its infancy and Blacks were virtually invisible. From 1950 through 1952, Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters and Louise Beavers appeared as "Beulah," the first Black television show. During this period, the comedy "Amos `N' Andy" was also shown. The only other Black to have a television show was Nat King Cole in 1956.

Bill Cosby, one of the biggest icons in television's history, became the first Black to be featured in a prime-time drama in "I Spy" in 1965. He has had four other television shows including "The Cosby Show" in the 1980s, a program that garnered some of the most phenomenal ratings the medium has ever known. And it did it on a weekly basis. By the late 1990s, programs with half that show's ratings are considered big successes.

Diahann Carroll, who had performed on Broadway, in films and nightclubs, became the first Black woman to have her own prime-time show in 1968 when she starred in "Julia."

Virtually all television observers were stunned in 1977 when the television adaptation of Alex Haley's family history Roots brought in ratings never before seen. The miniseries remains the highest-rated in television history.

The late 1970s and 1980s witnessed the largest number of television programs featuring Black artists including "The Jeffersons," "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "Good Times," "Facts of Life," "A Different World," "That's My Mama," "Room 222," "Diff'rent Strokes" and "227."

The Broadway stage has seen Blacks emerge as some of the most sought after performers. Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun made history in 1959 when she became the first Black woman to have a play on the Great White Way. That play featured Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands and Glynn Turman.