All About Amos 'n Andy and Their Creators (first edition in rare dust jacket)

Chicago: Rand McNally, 1929. First edition. Hardcover. fine/very good. First edition. Hardcover in orange cloth lettered in black. Illustrated endpapers. 126 pp. Illustrated with full page photographs of Correll and Gosden in and out of character. Fine in the rare dust jacket, bright, very good, slight scuff to the front panel, small chip to one tip and light wear to the flap folds. The inside story of the creation of one of the most popular radio programs ever, 'Amos n' Andy", told by the two men who created the characters and the show. It answers the questions posed on the jacket flap: "Are the "boys" white or colored? Who writes the material for their episodes? Who takes the part of Amos? Who takes the part of Andy?" The radio program (and later the TV series) was set in Harlem and broadcast beginning in 1928 on Chicago's WMAQ. It was one of the first radio comedy shows and ran first as a nightly and later a weekly program. It was radio's first syndicated program and by 1929 was carried by 70 stations. Correll and Gosden were white and claim to have created the characters after overhearing two old black men conversing in an elevator. By the early 1930s, the progarm was being denounced by many in the African American community, particularly by the Pittsburg Courier which was then the second largest African American newspaper in America. The series was adapted for televison and ran for 52 episodes in 1951-53; the lead characters on the televison series were played by African American actors Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams.