Mitchell's Minstrel Memories

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The success continued and in 1957 when BBC producer, George Inns, devised the format for The Black and White Minstrel Show, he asked Mitchell to front it.
The revival of this well-established style of entertainment ensured the show became a huge audience-puller.

A mixture of sing-along and dance was interspersed with comic exchanges from the likes of Leslie Crowther, Stan Stennett and George Chisholm, amongst others.

Apart from the three main singers, Tony Mercer, John Boulter and Dai Francis, the troupe were made up of the George Mitchell Minstrels and a group of female singers and dancers known as The Television Toppers and Mitchell Maids. Mitchell himself, as conductor, had his back to the audience until he turned to face the camera at the end of every show.

The history of the ‘Minstrel’ show goes back to the first half of the 19th century in America’s deep south when impersonations of blacks given by white actors was popular entertainment. American vaudeville developed from this, making songs like ‘Mammy’ and ‘The Swanee River’ firm favourites and singers like Al Jolson into stars. In Britain, the popularity grew through its own music-hall performers like G. H. Elliot.

The show transferred to the London stage, running at the Victoria Palace Theatre for 10 years, even after the end of the television series. In 1975, the 17-year-old Lenny Henry became the first black performer to appear in the show. The 22-year run on television ended after popular opinion deemed the ‘blacking up’ of the male performers was offensive to black people.

The show’s highest recorded viewing figures were 16.5 million in 1964. The show won the prestigious ‘Golden Rose of Montreux’ in 1961 for the ‘Best TV Show in the World’. George received the O.B.E. in 1975.

Ruby Speechley

© Regtransfers.co.uk - The World of Personal Number Plates Volume 1 Issue 2

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