Correll, Charles and Gosden, Freeman 1890-1972, 1899-1982

RADIO COMEDIANS

Blackface and Blackvoice.

Two white men, Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, wrote and performed Amos 'n' Andy, a radio program about black characters that was the first radio serial and the most popular program of its time. Correll (born in Peoria, Illinois) and Gosden (born in Richmond, Virginia) had both been vaudeville song-and-chatter performers when they became friends in 1920, as the result of working for the Joe Bren Producing Company of Chicago, which produced minstrel shows. In 1925 they began singing and telling jokes in radio stations. Their breakthrough came in January 1926, when they began nightly ten-minute WGN broadcasts about Sam V Henry, two Southern black men who had moved to Chicago. Described as a "radio comic strip," Sam V Henry was the first radio program with a continuing story line; previously, every broadcast was expected to complete the narrative.

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