Hi, it's me, Mo.

I hope you're enjoying season three of Mobitch Waries.

Now if you listened to our Peggy Rusk episode about the interracial marriage that landed

on the cover of Time magazine in 1967, I think you'll be especially interested in the story

of an earlier interracial union between the fabulous actress Leslie Agams and her husband,

the very charming Graham Pratt.

I interviewed Leslie and Graham for CBS Sunday Morning in 2020.

They told me about their wedding, which took place in 1965, a time when interracial marriage

was still illegal in many states.

But here's something I recently learned.

Art was going to imitate life just a few years later in 1970 when television producer Danny

Arnold, who had worked on TVs bewitched and that girl and would go on to create Barney

Miller, developed a sitcom for Leslie, featuring an interracial couple.

The show never made it to air.

The three major television networks all passed on it.

Danny Arnold would later tell variety that he'd been informed by the networks that quote,

this was a subject they were not ready to deal with.

It wasn't until 1975 that an interracial couple started to appear on TV screens on a regular

basis.

As Georgian Weezie Jefferson moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky on the Jefferson's,

we met their neighbors, Tom and Helen Willis, a white man and black woman who just so happened

to be married.

...