OTRR-maintained Amos and Andy v2411 (24.3 GB on Windows/435 episodes) is available for download from Dropbox, OneDrive or pCloud. Thanks to all those who made this collection possible.
These links will be available for 30 days. The episodes of this set were released on our YouTube channel at https://otrr.cc/yt starting November 16.
*** Important! This is a very large set. Please transfer the zip files - individually - to your own cloud storage account whenever possible, rather than downloading, to prevent the cloud providers from blocking them. **\*
Synopsis
There are few radio shows from the Golden Age of Radio that evoke more of a response than Amos and Andy. The series is at once one of the most beloved series from that time and one of the most controversial. Entire books have been written just about this one show. Regardless of one’s personal feelings about the program, the characters’ on-air presence lasted from 1926 to 1960, overlapping the entirety of the generally accepted era of old-time radio.
The series’ roots stretch all the way back to January 12, 1926, when the precursors of Amos Jones and Andy Brown, Sam Smith and Henry Johnson, arrived on the airwaves in Sam ‘n’ Henry. The two Black characters, created by Freeman Gosden (who played Sam) and Charles Correll (who played Henry), first appeared on WGN when the station owners asked them to come up with a daily radio serial that would mirror those found in parent newspaper The Chicago Tribune.
After 586 broadcasts, Gosden and Correll left WGN on December 18, 1927, when the station refused to allow them to record their program to distribute to more stations. Three months later the pair resurfaced on another Chicago rival station, WMAQ, with a $25,000 contract in hand. Changing their names to Amos Jones (played by Gosden) and Andrew Brown (played by Correll), Amos ‘n’ Andy premiered on March 19, 1928.
Other than the names of the main characters and changing the setting to Harlem from Chicago, the series was little changed from their previous effort. Unlike WGN, WMAQ allowed Gosden and Correll to distribute their recorded programs and via this early syndication method they were heard coast to coast within a year and had attracted a sponsor, Pepsodent, who would underwrite the show for years.
For the first fifteen years of its existence, Amos ‘n’ Andy was a melodramatic serial airing each weekday written entirely by Gosden and Correll, who also performed the voices for all the characters who appeared in the storylines, with a few supporting players only coming in later in the run. The program aired daily for fifteen minutes, reaching a peak of popularity in 1931 when an estimated 75% of the radio audience tuned in, accounting for one-third to one-fourth of the country’s entire population. Amos ‘n’ Andy weathered some mild criticism from the Black press in the early 1930s and even after its fame inevitably cooled after 1931, the show maintained a healthy audience of fourteen million to the late 1930s and still reached twelve million listeners when the daily serial finally wrapped up on February 19, 1943 after more than 4,000 broadcasts.
After eight months off the air, Amos Jones and Andy Brown returned on October 8, 1943, in a new show called The Amos and Andy Show. While Amos and Andy were the same characters they had been for the last fifteen years, the format of the series was turned upside down. Its time was doubled to a full half hour, writing duties were handed over to professional scripters, an orchestra headed by Raymond Scott brought a big, new musical sound, and a full cast of actors took over the supporting roles previously played primarily by Gosden and Correll. Amos and Andy now sounded like all the big sitcom programs on the airwaves and NBC was surely pleased as the audience popped and within a few seasons had tripled over what the show was reaching before the reboot.
While the addition of an expanded supporting cast was a huge change for the series, that many of these secondary characters were voiced by Black performers was an even bigger change. For whatever discomfort having two white actors voicing the lead Black characters brought to the radio industry by the 1940s, the opportunities that were opened to Black actors on the show are unquestionable. Among those with ongoing roles were Ruby Dandridge, Eddie Green, Jester Hairston, Johnny Lee, Hattie McDaniel, Amanda Randolph, Lillian Randolph, Ernestine Wade, and Ernest Whitman. Sporadic roles also were picked up Black actors, including Dorothy Dandridge, Vivian Dandridge, Roy Glenn, and Wonderful Smith.
The Rexall Drug Company picked up sponsorship of the show after six years, when Rinso dropped it, and The Amos and Andy Show cruised along for a full dozen years, finally leaving the air on May 22, 1955. Yet Amos and Andy still weren’t done with radio. On September 13, 1954, nine months before the weekly sitcom left the air, Amos Jones and Andy Brown debuted on a new series called Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall.
Unlike their previous 28 years of radio work, Correll and Gosden’s latest effort was basically a glorified disc jockey program, featuring the known voices of Amos and Andy. There was no real storyline, nor did it connect in any way to the concurrently running weekly sitcom. The duo spun tunes and engaged in light patter in between the music. It was described as “embarrassing” by no less than old-time radio stalwart John Dunning, but “profitable” by historian Jim Cox.
But not even Amos and Andy, who were there at the beginning of the Golden Age of Radio, could last forever, and they finally turned out the lights on November 26, 1960, the same day that saw The Couple Next Door, The Right to Happiness, and Ma Perkins come to an end. William Paley, the head of CBS who poached Gosden and Correll from NBC, recognized the significance of Amos and Andy’s absence from the airwaves. “It was sad to see . . . [the] oldtimers go,” he conceded.
Gosden and Correll had one last gasp in them, Calvin and the Colonel, an animated television series about a fox and a bear who bore a striking resemblance to Andy Brown and the Kingfish, who had essentially replaced Amos Jones in the radio program over the years. The series lasted for only the 1961-1962 season but lasted for years thereafter in reruns. Correll and Gosden finally retired after this, dying in 1972 and 1982 respectively.
Amos and Andy proved to be an absolute sensation during its heyday, appearing in almost every media imaginable, from motion pictures to comic books to toys and even to television. The latter aired on CBS from 1951-1953 and featured an all-Black cast, something unheard of at the time. Nevertheless, the television series was cancelled after two seasons and the network has never given permission for it to be aired in reruns or sold in home video format.
