The White Shadow (TV)
"The White Shadow" is a one-hour drama series that aired on CBS from 1978 to 1981, created by Mark Tinker and Bruce Paltrow. The show stars Ken Howard as Ken Reeves, a former professional basketball player whose career is cut short by injury. Reeves takes on the role of head coach for the boys' basketball team at Carver High School, a predominantly black institution in Los Angeles. Initially met with skepticism by the players, Reeves earns their respect through his skills on the court, showcasing the series' emphasis on basketball as a backdrop to deeper social issues.
Unlike its contemporaries, which often leaned toward humor, "The White Shadow" tackled serious themes such as gang violence, poverty, and the challenges of growing up in the inner city. The show was notable for its realistic portrayal of these issues, often without easy resolutions, as exemplified by the shocking narrative choice of having a main character killed in a robbery during the second season. While the series adopted lighter tones in its final season, it is remembered for its pioneering approach to storytelling in a school setting and is seen as a precursor to future influential dramas like "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." It resonates with audiences for its blend of sports and social commentary, making it a significant entry in the landscape of television during its time.
The White Shadow (TV)
Identification Television drama series
Date Aired from 1978 to 1981
Although a comparatively short-lived entry in the long tradition of television series set in high schools, The White Shadow reflected the developing social awareness of its era to tackle themes previously ignored in television broadcasting.
An hour-long drama series produced by Mark Tinker and Bruce Paltrow for Mary Tyler Moore (MTM) Enterprises and airing on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network, The White Shadow starred Ken Howard as Ken Reeves, a former professional basketball player whose playing career was ended by injury. The series began with him accepting an offer from a former college teammate, now a Los Angeles high school principal, to coach the boys’ basketball team at Carver High School. The team’s mostly black players are skeptical of Reeves’s qualifications when he shows up on the court but are quickly won over when he trounces the team’s top players in a game of one-on-two.
High schools have been popular settings for television series since at least 1952, when the popular radio series Our Miss Brooks moved to television. When The White Shadow began airing in 1978, it followed closely on the heels of several other series with superficially similar themes. Bill Cosby had earlier played a high school gym teacher and basketball coach in The Bill Cosby Show (1969-1971), but that series focused on amiable humor and rarely even acknowledged racial themes or serious social problems. In contrast, Room 222 (1969-1974), set in a racially integrated Los Angeles high school, explored social issues. After that series ended, the genre arguably took a step backward with Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), a low-brow comedy set in a Brooklyn high school that showcased the talents of standup comic Gabe Kaplan and future film star John Travolta.
Created by veteran television producer and basketball fan Paltrow, The White Shadow contained a great deal of basketball but was mostly about the pressures of growing up in the inner city. Most of Coach Reeves’s players were African Americans and Latinos who cope with gang violence, poverty, academic pressures, and drugs. The show offered something new in television. Although humor pervaded the series, many of its episodes focused on realistically dark themes, and the series was unusual in not offering pat solutions to the problems that its characters confronted. Indeed, the show startled audiences in the last episode of its second season by having one of the basketball players shot to death as a bystander during a liquor store holdup.
In November, 1979, Saturday Night Live parodied the seriousness of The White Shadow in a sketch titled “The Black Shadow.” Inverting the series’ premise, that sketch featured former basketball star Bill Russell as a troubled black coach in a predominantly white high school whose basketball players help him work through his many personal problems.
Impact
During its third and final season, The White Shadow turned to generally lighter themes, but it is still remembered for its efforts to address realistic problems and is considered a forerunner to such later series as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. Those shows involved many members of the creative team behind The White Shadow, including composer Mike Post, who wrote the music for The White Shadow with Pete Carpenter.
Bibliography
Gray, Herman. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Hunt, Darnell M. Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
McNeil, Alex. Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. New York: Penguin Group, 1996.