Actors: Crossing the Bar

TV executives and advertising agencies have so many fingers on the pulse of America that an occasional heartbeat is bound to get recorded. And this fall, as never before, television shows are reflecting the Negro revolution. Negro actors are finding work—and they are getting roles that could be filled by whites. Ad agencies are actually instructing producers to increase Negro casting for the good of sales.

There is a Negro teacher in Mr. Novak, a Negro secretary in East Side, West Side, Negro students in the classroom of The Patty Duke Show and on the campus of Channing. On The Outer Limits, a Negro recently played a would-be Pierre Salinger, press secretary to a presidential candidate. Another Outer Limits show will have a Negro astronaut. All three networks now have Negro newsmen. There is a Negro girl in Jackie Gleason’s chorus. A Chicago TV station has a Negro weather girl.

Wrong Baby. Various shows like The Great Adventure and The Fugitive are fighting for the services of Negro stars like Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Diahann Carroll. Perry Mason had eight Negroes on one recent show. The Nurses had eight that same night—one addict, two extras, and five R.N.s. The New Phil Silvers Show has a regular Negro.

The list of Negro roles is growing, but an even more significant breakthrough, perhaps, has come in television commercials. A Negro shaved with a Gillette razor between innings in the World Series. Rambler ads use Negroes. So do ads for All, Whisk and Oxydol. When a movement in TV reaches the commercials, it can truly be said to have reached the heart of the matter.

Subways for Everybody. In Hollywood, Negroes have been shut out of My Fair Lady but little else this season. Central Casting is paying out more than seven times as much cash for Negro extras as it was a year ago. Connie Frances will go to a mixed party in Looking for Love. Robert Goulet and Robert Morse share a Negro secretary in His and His. Ossie Davis will appear as a Catholic priest in The Cardinal. Negro couples are guests at a cocktail party in The Out-of-Towners and are spectators in formal dress at a Paris art exhibition in What a Way to Go. Moreover, Wendell Franklin—the first Negro member of the Screen Directors Guild—is also the first to be assigned a film, assisting George Stevens on The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Broadway lags. Pickets last year paraded outside How to Succeed and Subways Are for Sleeping because there were no Negroes in either cast. Now David Merrick, who produced Subways, is putting token Negroes into his new productions, 110 in the Shade (one Negro in the chorus) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (three Negro bit parts). There were only 20 shows in all of Broadway and off Broadway last season in which parts were filled by Negroes when whites could have done the job. The number of Negroes in these so-called integrated roles has not significantly increased this year.