Blackout

It could not be so--yet it was. After 15 years and some 4,000 airings (not including rebroadcasts), Amos 'n' Andy were scheduled to leave the air next month. Campbell Soup Co., its domestic output halved by the tin shortage, no longer was willing to spend $1,800,000 yearly to sponsor the pair five nights a week.

Millions of loyal radio fans will miss them. So will Henry Ford, who writes fan letters, J. Edgar Hoover, James Thurber, Vincent Astor, and countless others whose addiction approaches that of the late Arthur Brisbane, who sometimes telephoned breathlessly after the broadcast to find out what would happen in the next episode.

Since March 1928, when Freeman F. Gosden, onetime egg-bearer for Thurston the Magician, became the long-suffering Amos, and Charles J. Correll, onetime Peoria bricklayer, became turgid, blustering Andy, they have had but one vacation --eight weeks in 1934. Now 43 and 52, respectively, they have salted away plenty, earned a rest. Their last reported salary (1938) was $7,500 weekly.

No radio performers have made more broadcasts. They were radio's first great national program. They were the chief instigators of the habit of listening to a fixed program night after night. They were the great American institution of blackface comedy at its greatest spread and financial return. Their droll dramatizations, a blend of simple narrative interest and skillful characterization, caught the Negro attitude and idiom without burlesque.

Amos 'n' Andy hit their peak in 1931 when even newspapers found it good business to carry daily accounts of Amos' trial for murder. Albert Lasker, then Lord & Thomas advertising head, finally had to phone the pair to "get Amos out of that spot fast." The awful nationwide suspense was beginning to tell. The strain had become too great for thousands of parent & teacher groups, etc.

Time, familiarity, World War II and its problems have cut Amos 'n' Andy's 1939 audience (estimate: 40,000,000 weekly). Their latest Crossley rating is surpassed by about 60 nighttime programs. Even so, Campbell Soup was willing to continue them on a half-hour one-night-a-week basis. But "the boys," as they refer to themselves, were unwilling to swap programs in midseason.

Another season will begin in October. But no one wanted radio's most sustained and beloved troupers to be silent that long.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.