Media References
In the 1940s, Bilbo was referred to in multiple ways in the media. He was referred to in the 1947 Academy Award-winning film Gentleman's Agreement; a 1947 blues song "Bilbo is Dead" by Andrew Tibbs; in Bob and Adrienne Claiborne's song, "Listen Mr. Bilbo" (1946); and in Lee Hays' song, "Talking Bilbo". The character of "Senator Billboard Rawkins" in the musical Finian's Rainbow (1947) is believed to have been based in part on Bilbo.
Jack Webb devoted an episode of his crusading 1946 radio show One Out of Seven to attacking Bilbo's racial views. He dramatized extracts from Bilbo's speeches and letters attacking Negroes, "Dagoes" (Italians), and Jews, while asserting after each extract some variation of "...but Senator Bilbo is an honorable man. We do not intend to prove otherwise." (John Dunning, the author of On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, says this was a deliberate reference to Marc Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar).
The novel Sophie's Choice by William Styron (1979), set in the postwar years of World War II, also makes reference to Bilbo.
Andy Duncan's short story, "Senator Bilbo," which appears in the collection, Seekers of Dreams (2005), edited by Douglas A. Anderson, takes the coincidence of Bilbo sharing a name with J. R. R. Tolkien's character as an excuse to imagine racial segregation in Tolkien's fictional village of Hobbiton.
Read more about this topic: Theodore G. Bilbo
Famous quotes containing the word media:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)