Ban Rochester Van Jones

Everyone loved Rochester on the Jack Benny show. Almost everyone.

We don’t know if Lloyd Binford actually disliked Eddie Anderson. But I strongly suspect he’d certainly want Anderson to, as some odiously put it back then, “know his place.”

In looking for stories about Rochester and the Benny show, I stumbled upon this column from the Scripps-Howard News Service that appeared on editorial pages beginning November 14, 1950. That was almost four score and seven years to the day that President Abe Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.

Is TV a Modern Abe Lincoln in Dixie?
By ROBERT C. RUARK
MEMPHIS.—Mr. Lloyd T. Binford, the bull censor of Memphis, is confronted with a new and horrifying medium to test his mettle, and may wind up as the most frustrated censor in the land.
Television has come to Memphis, thereby posing quite a problem for Mr. Binford, who has long fought a valiant battle against anything in the entertainment business which might show the Negro in the light of equality.
When he banned a film called “Imitation of Life,” he said it illustrated “one of most disgusting cases of racial equality I have ever seen.” He also slew a comedy called “Curley” because, he said, it showed equality between children of different races.
Mr. Binford has a long, proud record in the banning business. He cut an oldie called “King of Kings,” a Biblical show. He banned “Lost Boundaries" while approving “Pinky,” a story of a Negro girl who was light enough to pass for white, but decided not to.
He also banned a road show version of “Annie Get Your Gun,” because “Negroes sing, and dance on equal terms with white performers.” He killed “Duel in the Sun,” one of the dullest hoss-operas ever compounded and in this instant did the town a favor.
But in the case of television, Mr. Binford is undecided. He tells me he has never seen a television show which is just as well for his heart because all sorts of horrifying examples of racial' equality are in daily evidence.
Mr. Arthur Godfrey, who get into more Southern homes than the South’s entire population of meter readers, steadily employs a mixed quartet called “The Mariners.” Horrors of horrors, the Mariners are composed of two white, two black, and they sing on equal term with Mr. Godfrey and his other white associates.
* * *
Then there is the awful example of Jack Benny and Rochester. Rochester is declaredly a Negro and often winds up as the sly superior of his boss, Mr. Benny. He is sarcastic with Mr. Benny, and taunts him all the time, and makes cracks behind his back. This would be unsettling to Mr. Binford, I am sure.
Then you got Ethel Waters, Negro actress, playing a recent TV show called “Beulah”; and, of course, most of the talent variety shows feature Negro entertainers. Recently, on a Cedric Adams talent show, a little Negro boy who won hands down over flock of white competition.
We have also the reissuing of the old movies for the Video screen possibly many of the very movie banned by Mr. Binford. The equalizing effect on Memphis' children must be terrifying indeed, since note that the old “Our Gang” comedies are being replayed for TV—over, of all things, Howdy Doody, a children’s program. If I remember rightly, the most appealing member of the gang was Farina, a little Negro girl with a runny nose.
* * *
Mr. Binford tells me he does not believe that he can censor television so long as people see it a home, and is also somewhat dubious about the possibility of banning it in public places.
“I will cross that bridge when I come to it,” Mr. Binford says. "But I imagine some sort of legal structure could be set up to protect the public, if this becomes necessary.”
Television is red hot in the South, and on its screen, at least, equality is rampant. It would be odd indeed if the coaxial cable eventually takes up where Abe Lincoln left off, despite the valiant effort of Mr. Binford in other fields of artistic endeavor.

Ruark, for what it’s worth, was from North Carolina. Lest anyone think from the column above that he was a raving small-l liberal, a month earlier he penned a snide and smug piece about Paul Robeson not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, succumbing to the red-baiting of the day.

As for Mr. Binford, his muzzling mantra became much quieter soon after this story. He spent his last few years in arthritic pain and died in 1956. Remarkably, he was a member of several service clubs and fraternal orders which champion equality amongst humanity. You can read about him at this site.

Eddie Anderson’s Rochester is still loved by countless fans of TV and old radio shows. No one can ban that.