[Ads-l] big apple

[Wilson Gray]

> I have watched about 45 of them
> now and have yet to see a black actor, not one.

To quote my favorite line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off,
"What country do you think this is?!"

There was Eddie "Rochester" Anderson on The Jack Benny Show, Willie Best,
the poor man's Stepin Fetchit, on Father Knows Best, and the black players
of MLB and of the NFL (one of whom, ironically, was Rochester's son) and
the CFL. (It may startle some of the younger folk to read this, but
Canadian football was once a staple of American TV. Any sports-fan of the
day could tell you who Sam Etcheverry [star, record-setting Basque-American
QB of the Montreal Alouettes who ended his career with the former St. Louis
Football Cardinals] was.) Louis Armstrong guest-starred on the Texaco Star
Theater, Your Show of Shows, Ed Sullivan, etc.  Oh, and there was Mantan
Moreland, of "Feets, don't fail me, now!" fame, who played "Alabama,"
Charlie Chan's chauffeur, as seen in TV re-runs of the Chan series.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2020 at 7:59 PM David Daniel <dad at coarsecourses.com> wrote:

> I've been watching old Perry Mason shows. Very cool, as well as
> nostalgia-ridden. Anyway, the episode I'm watching now (air date Nov 15,
> 1958) is about horse racing and Perry is defending a jockey accused of
> murder (of course he didn't do it). So Perry and Paul Drake are talking to
> the trainer who was the jockey's boss, and the trainer is talking about how
> you move up in the racing world. You start off small, etc. etc., and then
> one day you make it to the Big Apple. "The Big Apple?" Perry asks. "Yeah,"
> says the trainer, "Saratoga, Belmont..." meaning the big ones. Perry had
> never heard the term and there is no direct reference to New York, except
> of
> course that both those tracks are in New York. It's strictly treated as
> racing jargon. (A side note on these shows: I have watched about 45 of them
> now and have yet to see a black actor, not one. Feels very bizarre. Also
> everyone except Della Street is constantly - constantly - smoking.)
> DAD
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org