Check and Double Check is an Amos n Andy movie, the only one, starring the radio performers who created the duo, Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon. (the picture above is from the TV show) It's up to you to look it up since I don't want to waste space laying out the plot. In attendance was Correll's son, Richard, who unbeknownst to me (I'm ashamed) is a successful TV director and writer in his own right. Ever hear about this thing called Hannah Montana? He invented it. Seriously. Anyway, he got up and talked about his father, his father's partner in crime for thirty years and about the film.
Refreshingly, Correll made no apologies for the film. He shouldn't, but he's also a rare brave soul not to take the audience's hand in his and talk to them like a ten year old. An audience of adults at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California, doesn't need to be reminded that the movie we are about to see contains subject matter that some people might find offensive. We are there because we know that already and just want to see the damn movie. Kudos to you, Mr. Correll.
Richard Correll's parting words were something like, "I'll probably be the only one laughing for most of this, but enjoy." The audience's reaction, however, was extremely positive, and the movie holds up really well, thanks in no small part to it having been made well and to surviving in its original form. The jokes are also way less dated than, say, a Marx Brothers movie where they make jokes about Abie's Irish Rose.
I'm going to go out on a limb here: This movie is not offensive! Its central characters are uneducated black men played by white men in blackface, but their relationship is complex and plays out with admirable subtlety and humanity. There's an especially moving scene where Amos learns that his own employer, who was like a father to him and Andy, has passed away. His reaction, even in the minstrel-y dialect, is heartfelt and moving.
I will also point out a scene where they have to spend a night in a haunted house. As fearful as they are of houses' alleged ghost, they are still able to work strategize and keep their cool. When somebody's coat tail gets caught in a door, they don't behave any differently than Edgar Kennedy or Laurel and Hardy would. For a 1930's comedy made by white people about black people, that's about as unoffensive as you can get.
One more thing to consider: Charles Correll and Freeman Gosdon were both known to be supportive of equality both in the recording studio and in the real world. A number of black performers, including Hattie McDaniel, go their start on the Amos n' Andy radio show. They were even lauded by the NAACP.
This movie was the first half of a double feature program. At the end of the second feature, a guy sitting near me and my cohorts asked us about Check and Double Check, which he had skipped because he didn't want to see a racist movie. We did our best to assure him, in a polite and round-about way, that he missed a well-made and interesting movie that had a lot more than that to offer than some politically incorrect makeup choices. We did our best to paraphrase what Richard Correll had said, but it didn't seem to change his mind.
As much as I want him to understand us, I can see where he's coming from. We all have our red flags that we can't see past. It's like opening a window for a bird stuck in a house, and all they could do was keep hitting their head on the wall space next to it. Certain accents make me wary of people. Certain word choices make me judge them. And yet I feel like, in America, blackface is one of those things that refuse, at this point, to get past. By its very nature, it has become territory that nobody dare cross into. In the previous night's show He Fell In Love with His Wife, Lydia Yeamans Titus played a brutish, rabble rousing Irish housekeeper, but nobody at that screening seemed to bat an eye. There is something so outrageous, so unnatural and invasive about blackface, that its very appearance cancels out its context. It made me sad that, outside from academic-filled screenings like this one, this sort of film was unlikely to see much appreciation, or at least be given the chance it deserves.
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