Hello, my name is Justin Acluor, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're talking about a pioneer when it comes to cinema, Spencer Williams.

You may not know Spencer Williams, but he is the second most prolific African-American film director of the first half of the 20th century, second only to Oscar Michelle.

He has directed 10 features and three shorts.

I mean, when you consider that he was working in the 30s and the 40s, yeah, that's very good.

That's like a thousand features for any white person. So for that

alone, being the second most prolific African-American filmmaker of his time, Spencer Williams is

interesting and worthy of study. But he had a long life. He did many things. For many years,

he was much better known for having played Andy on TV's Amos and Andy in the 1950s.

But we're not going to talk about that for obvious reasons.

Well, no.

But, I mean, it's worth addressing, I think.

Amos and Andy, for those who don't know, was a very popular radio show.

They probably existed in other media as well, of two goofy black

characters. Specifically on the radio they were played by two white guys, who also appeared

in Blackface as those characters before the TV show started. But by the time CBS commissioned a TV

series in the 1950s, Blackface was, you know, pretty much on the way out. So they hired two actual black actors, one of whom was Oscar Mischo. And though Amos and Andy was popular on TV, it was still quite controversial. And it ended up being canceled around 1955, actually because of complaints from the N,

AACP.

But it was like a

massive hit,

though.

...