Never Aired In The South?
But Star Trek eventually did? Whether or not Star Trek's original run aired in Dixie is beside the point actually. Star Trek went off the air in '69. I recall the show as early as '70 or '71. I had seen the show by the time the cartoon began airing.
Yet I Spy was virtually unseen, even when Fat Albert became popular, and Cosby's earlier short-lived family sitcoms (I do recall Chet Kincaid).
Granted, some shows an actor did earlier seem to vanish when their 'careers' take off.
Matthew Laborteaux became popular on Little House, but the Saturday morning show, The Red Hand Gang, he did, vanished in America, but read the reviews here on IMDB. It was well-viewed in Europe.
Now I don't know if the same was done with I Spy, but again, I never even heard of this show.
When Culp turned up on Greatest American Hero, he was a virtual unknown. Took me a while to line up William Katt as the date in Carrie as well.
I caught Thank Your Lucky Stars on tv as a late movie about '76 or so. Decades later, I'd get it on dvd and was surprised to see the Ice Cold Katie number uncut.
I've heard of these scenes being removed 'due to racism' but to keep from offending who exactly?
The white audience who didn't want to see entertaining black people or was it now black people who were offended by the depiction?
I rather suspect in the case of Thank Your Lucky Stars, I simply viewed an old edited copy of the movie, that didn't have the scene replaced.
Are these scenes replaced back in movies when they are edited out for racial reasons?
I caught Variety Girl on an independent cable station and queried over the Pearl Bailey number (she's a maid singing about being tired) and thought, well, this scene must have been cut at one time, but it's included here.
In the case of I Spy, I can only guess it is very dated now. I saw The Fugitive for the first time about ten years ago (remember hearing about it all the time when Who Shot JR was popular) and I thought it was very dry.
So was I Spy dated or was it held back due to any chance of racial conflict?
I do recall a program called Beulah Land didn't air in the Ssip when a white officer shot a black woman with a gun, for fear it would increase racial tensions. We got old Cary Grant movies instead.
My brother told me later Beulah Land aired on the weekend afternoons and still had the commercials from the primetime showing.