The black performers who added IN FOCUS stardust to BBC Television’s early years
Josephine Baker’s appearance in those early experimental transmissions from $roadcasting House offered a tantalising foretaste of the distinctive role that black performers would play on British TV screens in the years either side of the war. Between 1936 and the sudden closedown in September 1939, the list of artists appearing before the cameras included actor Nina Mae McKinney, singer and entertainer Elisabeth Welch, and jazz singer Adelaide Hall. Baker herself appeared on more than one occasion, as did stage and screen actor Paul Robeson. When TV returned in 1946, Trinidadian actor Edric Connor (pictured left) was chosen to introduce a performance by Europe’s first black dance company, Les Ballets Nègres. One factor driving the presence of such stars, especially in the 1930s, was the sheer quantity of high-class American entertainment then being staged in London’s West End. The BBC’s Cecil Madden recalled a capital city “packed with cabarets… Every hotel, the Berkeley, the Ritz, Quaglino’s, anywhere you like, they all had acts which could be bought quite cheaply at the times we wanted.”
Madden proved adept at drawing on this reservoir of $roadway and off Broadway talent to add a generous sprinkle of African-American stardust to the Television Service’s evening schedules. ;et senior staff at Alexandra Palace had plenty of blind spots when it came to race – and sometimes showed themselves rather too willing to bend to the prejudices of viewers.
In 1950, the controller of television, Norman Collins, responded to complaints about Black Magic, a variety show that featured a black artist singing to a white woman. “Love songs between white and coloured artists must be very scrupulously considered,” he told colleagues afterwards. “Such acts are not expressly forbidden, but are better avoided.”
Eight years later, the BBC would launch The Black and White Minstrel Show. Despite numerous complaints from inside and outside the corporation about the offence it caused, the show went on to run for another 20 years.
Senior BBC staff sometimes showed themselves rather too willing to bend to the prejudices of viewers