Beulah was the first television series to star an African-American performer. It ran on ABC from 1950 until 1953.
"Somebody bawl fo' Beulah" she exclaimed as TV's favorite black maid came once again to the rescue of her ever-bumbling employers. Beulah one of the most popular comedy characters of the 1940's and 1950's, originated as a supporting role on radio's Fibber McGee And Molly program in 1944. Its creator was a white male actor Marlin Hurt, who eventually began a seperate Beulah series on radio beginning in 1945. Hurt died of a heart attack suddenly in 1946 and the character of Beulah was then played by a second white male Bob Corley, before Hattie McDaniel of Gone With The Wind movie fame took over the radio role in 1947.
When ABC brought the popular show to television in 1950 the role was filled by veteran singer-actress Ethel Waters, with Percy Harris as her shiftless boyfriend Bill and Butterfly McQueen as her girlfriend Oriole.Her employers, The Hendersons, were a virtual caricature of a white middle-class family, giving Beulah plenty to do, as one crisis after another overtook the household ( such as Mr. Henderson's burning the steaks at a picnic, falling into the water while fishing, or trying to stop his young son Donnie from running away from home).
In April 1952 there was a major cast change. Hattie McDaniel, was hired to take over the role of Beulah as she had been doing on radio , but she suddenly became ill ( she died soon after). McDaniel played the role in only a few episodes and the part went to Louise Beavers who had a long list of movie credits of her own. At the same time the entire Henderson family changed faces. Beulah was still receiving high ratings in September 1953 when it went off the air because Miss Beavers decided to leave the role.
An Article From Time Magazine
Beulah
Monday, May. 29, 1944 Article
It was a big week for Beulah, the Negro maid on Fibber McGee & Molly's famed air show (NBC, Tues., 9130 p.m., E.W.T.). Her sponsor, Johnson's Wax, gave her a fat, new two-year contract.
Few of Fibber McGee & Molly's millions of listeners know that Beulah is neither female nor Negro. She is a husky, 6-ft., 39-year-old radio actor named Marlin Hurt.
Beulah breezed into the show four months ago with an immediately successful trademark — "Love that man!" (meaning Fibber McGee). This opulent pronouncement is followed by good-natured philosophizing (e.g., "the proper ingrediums for a woman-hater are one good-lookin' woman an' one homely man").
Beulah first appeared on the air about seven years ago. Hurt, whose father was once head of "second car advertising" (posting the big billboards) for Ringling Brothers Circus, ad-libbed Beulah into a Chicago radio show one quiet night on the Mutual network, and she caught on with her listeners. One Negro listener even proposed marriage.
Another Article From Time Magazine
Egg Fry
Monday, Dec. 01, 1947 Article
The sound effecters in radio's pioneer days had a terrible time trying to make a "noise like a frying egg. They tried everything, go the story goes, from crumpling Cellophane to popping corn. At last someone held a mike close to a sizzling skille-ful of frying eggs. That was it.
This week, radio reached the end of another fried-egg hunt. Since her introduction to Fibber McGee's cluttered household in 1944, fat, jolly, colored Beulah, the housemaid, had been impersonated by two thin, tense, white men. Now, at long last, the new Beulah show (CBS, Mon.-Fri., 7 p.m., E.S.T.) had a Beulah that was really fat, jolly and colored: Cinemactress Hattie McDaniel. Everyone agreed that she made an ideal Beulah.
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