Rise of Radio Comedy Shows in the 1920s
What Radio Shows Were Popular in the 1920s?
In the 1920s, radio became a household item as families gathered around their home radios. Broadcasting began in 1920 with KDKA in Pittsburg, PA and within two years 600 stations were operating nation-wide.
Broadcasts included news, serial stories, political speeches and music.
Radio enabled folks from coast to coast to share ideas, culture, language and style. It also brought America together as never before.
Amos ‘n’ Andy
The 1920s saw the rise of radio comedy shows such as Amos ‘n’ Andy. This popular show about two black taxicab drivers, Amos Jones and Andrew Hogg Brown, and their white associate, George “Kingfish” Stevens, became a national craze. The show was created, written and voiced by white entertainers Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, and many believed it encouraged negative Black stereotypes. Nevertheless, the show was so popular that it paved the way for future TV and radio comedies about African American characters that depicted them as successful business owners, lawyers, doctors and professionals rather than shiftless, conniving and not-too-bright.
Throughout its run as a nightly serial and then weekly radio series, Gosden and Correll performed more than 170 different voice characterizations. Although their dialogue often overlapped racial stereotypes, the characters were also universal and achieved an emotional depth that few other comic radio shows of this time could match. This success helped to pave the way for future TV and movie comedies about working-class black and white families, such as The Honeymooners and Sanford and Son.
The Great Gildersleeve
In its heyday, radio’s popularity was such that it became an important part of family life. Parents and children gathered around the set to listen to their favorite shows. A wide variety of formats and genres emerged, from the situation comedies of Fibber McGee and Molly to musical variety shows, daytime soap operas, play-by-play sports, detective and mystery dramas, gangster fiction and the science-fiction adventure Flash Gordon.
Radio comedy ran the gamut, from small town humor of Lum and Abner to the dialect characterizations of Mel Blanc and the caustic sarcasm of Henry Morgan. Quiz shows were lampooned on Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One and It Pays to Be Ignorant.
The Great Gildersleeve was a spin-off of the popular radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly and one of broadcasting history’s earliest spin-off programs. Actor Harold Peary played Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, who had also been a regular character on the parent show. In addition to his many nemeses, Gildersleeve had a circle of friends including pharmacist Richard Q. Peavey and barber Floyd Munson. He was also fond of his inept milkshake loving secretary Birdie Lee Coggins, who developed into a character all her own under the guidance of writers Leonard Lewis Levinson and Don Quinn.
The All-Negro Hour
Radio in the 1920s featured a mixture of positive and negative stereotypes for Blacks. While bandleader Duke Ellington and singer Paul Robeson exposed national audiences to talented and refined black artists, local stations eyed Black people differently. Most employed them part-time, procuring them through the brokerage system whereby a broadcast outlet sold blocks of air time to local entrepreneurs and organizations who wanted to advertise their products or services.
On November 3, 1929, White owned WSBC in Chicago premiered The All-Negro Hour. The first Black variety show, it starred Jack L. Cooper, who went on to a long career in broadcasting. His shows were a combination of live humorous skits and music, and created the ownership blueprint for black radio. Unlike traditional vaudeville or Hollywood comedy that targeted white consumers, the All-Negro Hour included a blend of positive and negative stereotypes for African Americans. It proved a hit and ran until 1936. Its success also led to the development of other situational comedies.
The Bob Hope Show
Bob Hope, pictured here in 1942 during a USO tour of Alaska, continued to entertain service members around the world throughout his career. He often took good-natured jabs at political leaders from both parties.
The popularity of radio in the 1920s was such that families gathered round at the time of the broadcast to listen to programs together. Early network shows included popular dramas, soap operas, game shows and music variety shows. Music genres included jazz, blues, swing and ragtime. Radio’s ability to reach into the home gave early programmers a reason to be cautious about what they said or sang on the air. For example, characters on Amos ‘n’ Andy were named after sponsors: the Gold Dust Twins for the Gold Dust laundry detergent, the Happiness Candy Stores’ Interwoven Pair and the Clicquot Club Eskimos for the brand of soft drinks.
A successful vaudeville actor, Bob Hope came to network radio in the early 1930s and was a regular on the USO tours during World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He died in 2003 at the age of 100.