The Black & White Minstrel Show

The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British television series that ran from 1958 until 1978 and was a popular stage show. It was a weekly light entertainment and variety show presenting traditional American minstrel and Country songs, as well as show and music hall numbers, usually performed in blackface, and with lavish costumes.

The show was first broadcast on the BBC on June 14, 1958. It began as a one-off special featuring the male Mitchell Minstrels (after George Mitchell, the Musical Director) and the female Television Toppers dancers in 1957. It was popular and soon developed into a regular 45 minute show on Saturday evenings, featuring both solo and minstrel pieces (often with extended segueing) as well as "comedy interludes". It was produced by George Inns with George Mitchell.

Audiences regularly exceeded 18 million. The Minstrels also had a theatrical show which ran for 6,477 performances from 19601972 and established itself in The Guinness Book of Records as the stage show seen by the largest number of people. At this time, the creation had gained considerable international respect and kudos. The show won a Golden Rose at Montreux in 1961 for best light entertainment programme and the first three albums of songs (19601962) all did extremely well, the first two being long-running number ones in the British album chart.

While the show started off being broadcast in (genuine) black-and-white, the show was one of the very first to be moved to colour by the BBC in 1967.

Several famous personalities guested on the show, while others started their careers there. Comedian Lenny Henry was one such star, being the first black comedian to appear, in 1975.
The show's premise began to be seen as offensive on account of its portrayal of blacked-up characters behaving in a stereotypical manner. A petition against it was received by the BBC in 1967, and since cancellation it has come to be seen more widely as an embarrassment, despite its popularity at the time.

The BBC1 TV show was cancelled in 1978 as part of a reduction in variety programming (although by this point the blackface element had been reduced), but the stage show continued. Having left the Victoria Palace Theatre, where the stage show played from 1962 to 1972, the show toured almost every year to various big city and seaside resort theatres around the UK, including The Futurist in Scarborough, The Festival Hall in Paignton and The Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth. This continued each summer until 1987, when a final tour of three Butlins resorts (Minehead, Bognor Regis and Barry Island) saw the last official Black and White Minstrel Show on stage.

This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

http://www.apts.org.uk

~ APTS ~
Preserving the televisual past for the digital future

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• bbc
• television
• apts
• alexandra
• palace
• simon
• vaughan
• black
• white
• minstrel
• minstrels

[splambert]

I never could figure out why none of the women didn't put on blackface. Seems like it's only the guys doing the minstrel shows. Was there ever a female minstrel performer?

[aptsarchive]

As far as I am aware women didn't put on blackface only the men.

[aifammafiaaifam]

isnt it nice to see black and white people dancing together.....singing confederate songs and having a jolly old time ....i have a dream.........................­....

[azusaka110]

And here I am, merely 19, watching it by choice.

Funny how that works.

[TheDaddyO44]

The White Minstrel Show. Infact they couldn't be whiter.....

[romanticrecluse]

Yes there was a Music Hall blackface performer called May Henderson. She was very popular in her day.

[OldMrMemories]

This is great! I wish we still had this. Too bad everyone has to be afraid to enjoy great stuff. I could not stop laughing at these funny negroes dancing around

[SilverHammerMax1]

Oddly entertaining

[RollaArtis]

The Black and White Minstrels only went off the air when colour television came along and they couldn't call themselves the Coloured Minstrels.

[liarsclub75]

ಠ_ಠ 

[riotgearhead]

Thank you for posting.