70 Years of Black TV Drama in Britain
Writer: Stephen Bourne
Introduction | A Sort of Magic | 1960s – Enoch and Alf | 1970 and Beyond | Conclusion | Find Out More
A Sort of Magic
It is not generally known, but there was a time when British TV gave many starring roles to Black actors. Less than two years after the birth of BBC TV, on 2 November 1936, the Guyanese actor Robert Adams starred in The Emperor Jones. When the BBC re-launched its TV service just after the war, Adams returned to their studios to play another hero in All God's Chillun' Got Wings. His co-star was the Jamaican actress Pauline Henriques who says, 'It was a very important thing for the BBC to do at that time. After all, it was the 1940s and a very different world then for Black people. I think the BBC pioneered something in giving us a play of that stature to act in. It was transmitted live with just one television camera, and we had to remember to keep in shot, and yet a sort of magic came out of this chaos.'
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Eartha Kitt in a publicity shot from 1956
BBC Photo Library
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In 1955 the European-based American actor Gordon Heath played
Othello for the BBC
and he was featured on the cover of the
Radio Times. Racism was hardly absent from the minds of some programme makers, for instance, the BBC ran
The Black and White Minstrel Show from 1958 to 1978, but it coexisted with the assignation of major roles to Black actors in high profile TV dramas. In addition to Heath, there was America's Eartha Kitt in
Mrs Patterson (BBC 1956), Trinidad's Errol John in
A Man from the Sun (BBC 1956) and
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (ATV 1960), Guyana's Cy Grant in
Home of the Brave (Granada 1957), Jamaica's Lloyd Reckord in
Hot Summer Night (ABC 1959), Bermuda's Earl Cameron in
A Fear of Strangers (ATV 1964) and America's Elisabeth Welch with Jamaica's Millie in
The Rise and Fall of Nellie Brown (Anglia 1964).
1960s – Enoch and Alf >
