George Mitchell : Obituary

From: The Times, London August 31, 2002

George Mitchell : obituary Non-musical accountant who was the surprising inspiration behind the success of the Black and White Minstrels

TALL, bespectacled and looking every inch the accountant he once was, George Mitchell was the unlikely guiding force behind The Black and White Minstrel Show, one of television's most popular and longest-running programmes until it was killed by political correctness in 1978. The show ran for 20 years and drew on the tradition of blackface, which had become a staple of American vaudeville, made a star of Al Jolson, and was made popular in Britain through music-hall performers such as G . H. Elliott, who in a less sensitive age could bill himself as the "chocolate-coloured coon". In reviving blackface at the end of the 1950s, George Inns, the show's producer, and Mitchell, its musical director, were tapping into a well-established strain of popular entertainment. Although some questioned why the male singers blacked up while the females did not, the show soon became a huge audience-puller. With ITV providing the only other television channel, The Black and White Minstrel Show was being watched by more than 16 million people. In 1961 it won the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux, defeating an American entry featuring Fred Astaire and the Kirov Ballet. Slick and fast-moving, a typical show might get through 60 songs in 45 minutes, from the banjo-strumming classics of the American minstrel composer Stephen Foster to modern show tunes. Despite their make-up, the soloists, Dai Francis, Tony Mercer and John Boulter, became household names. The shows also featured the high- kicking Television Toppers dance troupe and had comedy interludes. In contrast to the extravagant costumes of the singers and dancers, Mitchell conducted in evening dress, initially seen back to camera but turning at the end to take a bow. The show successfully transferred to the stage, succeeding the Crazy Gang at the Victoria Palace, in London, in 1962, and running, with a short break, for ten years. It toured the regions, as well as Australia and New Zealand, and was playing in theatres years after the end of the television series. In 1975 the 17-year-old Lenny Henry became the first black performer to appear. The surprise, perhaps, was that the show lasted so long. As early as 1964 Clive Jenkins, a prominent trade union leader, called it a disgrace and added: "At a time when the coloured peoples of the world are demanding their rights and their dignity, it is a cultural obscenity." Three years later his call for a ban was echoed by the Campaign for Racial Discrimination. A whiteface version was tried to appease the critics but it was soon abandoned. Eventually, the Black and White Minstrels fell victim to a changed political climate and ended its days as something of a dinosaur. George Mitchell was born in Falkirk but moved to Leeds and then to London, where he attended Highgate School. After leaving he decided to study accountancy and this became his main occupation until he was 30, interrupted only by war service. Not only did he start his second career late but he came to it with no obvious credentials. He was no singer, could barely play the piano and his musical enthusiasms were more for Wagner than The Camptown Races. But it was during the Second World War, when he was a sergeant in the Army Pay Corps stationed in the Bank of England, that he drew on a family interest in choral singing by starting an army choir. Mitchell's talent as an arranger came to the fore, and his Swing Group became good enough to broadcast with the Forces Network and win a spot on the BBC radio show Variety Bandbox. The decision to give up accountancy and concentrate on musical broadcasting was prompted by an invitation from Charles Chilton, a leading radio producer of the day who had known Mitchell's work with the Swing Group. Chilton wanted Mitchell to arrange negro spirituals for a series called Cabin in the Cotton. Mitchell set about reassembling his wartime singing group, which became the Glee Club, and then the George Mitchell Singers. On the back of Cabin in the Cotton, which ran for nine months, Mitchell's singers appeared on many other radio shows, including ITMA, Hi Gang! and Stand Easy. By the mid- 1950s, Mitchell, with more than 150 singers on his books, was earning the not inconsiderable sum of £35,000 a year. So by 1958, when George Inns, who had put on a minstrel show on children's television and decided to try the format before a wider audience, Mitchell and his singers were able to provide the crucial element. To Mitchell's sadness, BBC Television virtually omitted the show from its 50th anniversary celebrations in 1986, fearing that it would be seen as "racist and patronising". But Mitchell kept the memories alive with a huge collection of letters and newspaper cuttings, including a 1967 verdict from John Lennon: "If anyone digs this stupid show, let him dig it." His first marriage in 1940 to Irene Wordley produced a son and a daughter. She died in 1970 and, seven years later, he married Dorothy Ogden, one of his singers. She survives him, with his children. He was appointed OBE in 1975. George Mitchell, OBE, musical arranger and conductor, was born on February 27, 1917. He died on August 27, 2002, aged 85.