Amos N Andy's Check and Double Check (1930)

Amos and Andy operate a bare-bones taxi service in Harlem, struggling to keep their vehicle running and their tires inflated. When their lodge-master, Kingfish, offers them a lucrative job ferrying Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra to a gig in the Upper West Side, they jump at the chance. At the party, the two men run into an old friend, Ralph Crawford, who needs help finding the lost deed to his deceased father's house in order to prove his worth to his prospective in-laws. Amos and Andy spend a spooky night in the dead man's mansion, hoping to locate the papers that will set things right.

Check and Double Check is a rare cultural artifact from the dawn of sound film-making. Freeman F. Gosden and Charles J. Correll had already achieved radio stardom on the "Amos 'N' Andy" show, and their voices had become extremely familiar to American audiences. The two white actors had to don minstrel black-face in order to portray the duo in their first "all-talking" motion picture in 1930. Of course political correctness wasn't event a thought in the 1930s and Freeman and Charles had no thought of offending anyone. They just wanted to star in their own movie playing the characters they had created for radio. Actually, doubt if anyone gave racism much thought in the 1930s. Everybody was too busy just trying to survive. After all, other actors were playing on the stage and in movies in blackface. And there were other black characters on radio being played by whites. The Beulah show, for example. Beulah, brought to life in 1939 when Marlin Hurt introduced the character on Hometown Incorporated. In 1943, Beulah moved over to That's Life before changing employers again and finally settling in at 79 Wistful Vista, the home of Fibber McGee and Molly, one of network radio's most popular (and longest-running) programs. Marlin Hurt died unexpectedly in 1946 but his character eventually came back to radio then later to TV. In 1950 Beulah became the first ever network television series to star an African-American. (See more about Beulah).

The Amos 'N' Andy television show premiered in 1951. The show featured black actors Tim Moore, Alvin Childress, Spencer Williams, Jr. and Ernestine Wade, all hand-picked by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.