CONFINED within four walls of a rehab center room for the last few weeks, I have found myself overdosing on television.

Daily reruns of The Golden Girls, perhaps an homage to Bea Arthur after her recent death, are laugh-out-loud funny even the second time around.

But what has impressed me most is the pre-World War II movies on the Turner Classic Movies channel.

The racial stereotyping of 1930s films is downright shocking to view in our (somewhat) more enlightened times.

TAKE BUTTERFLY McQueen, for example. Anyone who has ever seen Gone with the Wind remembers her character Prissy, the young slave who told Scarlett O’Hara she could take charge of the saintly Melanie’s childbirth.

When the time comes, General Sherman is attacking Atlanta, townspeople are fleeing, the family doctor is too busy amputating limbs to leave the Confederate hospital and Prissy utters her famous line, “Lawdy, Miss Scarlett, I’se don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies.”

I was reminded of Butterfly the other day when I watched The Women, a 1939 film based on the play of that name by Clare Booth Luce.

Now recognized as a classic, this movie had more than 130 speaking roles, all of them female. The script revolved around a high society Manhattan matron, played by Norma Shearer, whose husband was stolen by a department store perfume sales lady played by Joan Crawford at her meanest.

Butterfly McQueen had a bit part as a perfume counter maid.

I HAD RECENTLY read that Hattie McDaniel, who won an Oscar for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, resented having to play darkie roles, but that was the only kind of work she could get.

Wondering if McQueen felt the same way, I researched her career using Google.

She agreed, and then some.

I learned that she was actually a successful Broadway dancer who was critically praised for her movie portrayals in the ’30s and ’40s She went on to rebel at Hollywood’s system of racial stereotyping, and announced in 1947 that she would no longer accept “handkerchief head” parts. And that almost destroyed her career.

ALTHOUGH there were more TV, movie and Broadway roles in her future (she lived until 1995, when she was 84) she had no movie offers for the next 20 years.

She worked as a sales clerk, a waitress, a dishwasher, and an old ladies’ companion in order to make ends meet.

Not quite time yet to say we’ve come a long way, baby. But at least racial stereotyping has been drastically reduced since the days when Amos and Andy were popular on radio and the white end men in the Gilmer Firemen’s Minstrels performed in blackface.

ALSO ON THE current TCM schedule has been the 1936 film, the Green Pastures, based on a novel by Roark Bradford and the subsequent play by Marc Connelly. An all-black cast depicts stories from the Bible. “De Lawd” is an old bearded man played by Rex Ingram, and Noah is played by Eddie “Rochester” Anderson.

Anderson played many other racially-stereotyped roles in movies, but was best known as Jack Benny’s valet on Benny’s long-running radio and TV programs.

According to Wikipedia, the relationship between Anderson and Benny became more complex and intimate as the years went by, with Rochester’s role becoming both less stereotypical and less subservient (though he remained a valet), reflecting changing social attitudes toward blacks.

According to Jack Benny’s posthumous autobiography, Sunday Nights at Seven, the tone of racial humor surrounding Rochester declined as a conscious decision between Benny and the writing staff during World War II, once the enormity of the Holocaust was revealed. Benny didn’t find racial humor funny any more, and he made an effort to erase it from the character of Rochester.

BACK IN MY everyday soap opera world, I have been keeping up with Days of Our Life, which I have been watching since it began in 1965. And I often wonder why, so much has changed since the days when Dr. Tom and Alice Horton were the “tent pole” characters around whom revolved a cast that more or less simulated the real world.

Today, the recorded voice of the late Dr. Tom (played by McDonald Carey) and an occasional cameo appearance by Alice Horton is about all that remains of the original story.

Today the soaps compete for the age 18 to 34 demographic, and the teen-age/early 20s cohort dominates. One by one favorite characters depart, the latest being Dr. Marlena Evans and her husband-of-several-identities, John Black.

MERE HABIT is all that keeps me watching the NBC soap. Meanwhile, over at CBS, word comes that The Guiding Light, longest-running drama on television, will bite the dust.

Begun as a 15-minute radio serial in 1937, it moved to TV in 1952. Among the future stars who got their start on The Guiding Light are James Earl Jones, Kevin Bacon and Calista Flockhart. During the height of the radio soap opera years, 1930-1960, there were as many as 200 serialized programs.

I recall my personal favorites — Stella Dallas, Young Dr. Malone and others — which were a special treat on days when I stayed home from school, sick.

According to USA Today, Guiding Light is the least-watched of eight remaining network soaps, averaging 2.2 million viewers this season. It’s a favorite only with viewers over 50, a sure kiss of death in today’s advertising world.

sgreene@tatertv.com Sarah Greene Archives