Amos 'n' Andy - Later Years

Later Years

In 1955 the format of the radio show was changed from a weekly to a daily early evening half-hour to include playing recorded music between sketches (with occasional guests appearing), and the series was renamed The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall. The final Amos 'n' Andy radio show was broadcast November 25, 1960. Although by the 1950s the popularity of the show was well below its peak of the 1930s, Gosden and Correll had managed to outlast most of the radio shows that came in their wake.

In 1961, Gosden and Correll attempted one last televised effort, albeit in a "disguised" version. They were the voices in a prime time animated cartoon, Calvin and the Colonel, featuring anthropomorphic animals whose voices and situations were almost exactly those of Andy and the Kingfish (and adapting several of the original "Amos 'n' Andy" radio scripts). This effort at reviving the series in a way that was intended to be less racially offensive ended after one season on ABC, although it remained quite popular in syndicated reruns in Australia for several years afterwards.

In 1988, the Amos 'n' Andy program was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. A pair of parallel, one-block streets in south Dallas, Texas are named Amos Street and Andy Street in honor of these performers.

Radio historian Elizabeth McLeod examined thousands of radio script pages in order to write her authoritative 223-page study, The Original Amos ’n’ Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial, published by McFarland in 2005. Currently, the scripts of Amos 'n' Andy are performed on a shortwave station broadcasting from Maine, WBCQ on 7490 kHz and also on the internet at 12:00am, 8am and 8pm eastern by Ed Bolton, who performs all roles. The radio show still airs occasionally on various talk radio stations in Canada.