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Hattie McDaniel (1895 - 1952)
Hattie began studying drama at an early age, winning a medal in dramatic arts at fifteen. But her first love was singing, and at the age of twenty she began touring with Professor George Morrison's Orchestra, headlining at the Orpheum and the Pantages. Her singing talent and stage presence was such that she came to be known as "The Colored Sophie Tucker." The distinctive headgear she wore on-stage led to another nickname, "Hi-Hat Hattie." But by the 1930s, the Depression and the popularity of films and radio had combined to rob vaudeville of its audience, and more and more acts and performers found themselves playing to empty houses. Now broke, the former headliner used what money she had to leave her last gig in Milwaukee in 1931 and head to Hollywood, where her brother Sam and sister Etta were finding work doing bit parts. Here she took what dramatic and singing work was available, hiring herself out as a maid, cook, or washerwoman when nothing else was available. While working as a ladies' room attendant at the Suburban Inn, she auditioned for and won a starring spot as a singer in the floor show. This led to a brief revival of her singing career, and to one of the many firsts in Hattie McDaniel's life, as she became the first African-American performer to sing on American network radio. In 1932, Hattie McDaniels made her film acting debut in The Golden West, playing the uncredited role of housekeeper Mammy Lou. That same year she appeared in five other movies, including Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich, all of which had her in uncredited roles and playing maids in all but one. In two more movies made that year, she finally was a credited performer, but still played a maid in one. Only in Washington Masquerade did she display the singing talent that had made her a star. Her debut year pretty much defined Hattie's film career. While she would appear in over 300 films, in nearly all of them she would play a domestic, and often went uncredited. In only three other films, 1934's Judge Priest, James Whale's 1936 version of Show Boat, and 1937's Saratoga, with future Gone With The Wind co-star Clark Gable, would she have the chance to show her great singing abilities. When asked about this typecasting, and knowing from firsthand experience the hard work and low wages which went with the domestic work for which many African-Americans of the time had to settle, Ms. McDaniels remarked, "I'd rather play a maid than be one." When word got out that David O. Selznick had purchased the film rights to Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With The Wind, Hattie McDaniel read the book and was fascinated by the character of Mammy, the O'Hara's strong-willed and no-nonsense house servant who acted (not always successfully) as Scarlett O'Hara's conscience. She felt that she could play the character and "create in it something distinctive and unique." Selznick auditioned three other candidates, including Eleanor Roosevelt's maid Elizabeth McDuffie, before giving the role to Hattie, for which she earned $1000 a week. She had won the role of one of the most important and strongest characters in the story, and appeared in over half the scenes in the film. Yet when Gone With The Wind premiered in segregated Atlanta in December of 1939, neither Hattie McDaniel nor any of the other black actors that had worked in the film were invited to the ceremonies. Worse, programs for the film which featured a picture of her on the back cover were destroyed and replacements printed with the picture removed, for fear they would offend white theater goers. But in February 1940, Hattie seemed vindicated when at the Academy Awards banquet she won the honor for Best Supporting Actress, beating out GWTW co-star Olivia deHavilland. While her acceptance speech had been ghost written by the studio, her tears of joy were quite genuine. She had become the first African-American to win the Oscar, an achievement that would not be repeated until the 1960s by Sidney Poitier, and not repeated by a woman until fifty years later by Whoopi Goldberg. Despite this great achievement, the remainder of Hattie's career was business as usual, playing maids, housekeepers, and nannies, though her days of being an uncredited bit-player or working as a real maid were over. Among her later credits were Since You Went Away, with Shirley Temple, Claudette Colbert, and Alla Nazimova, Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House, and the Walt Disney film Song of the South, based on the Uncle Remus stories. Her performances proved so memorable and familiar that the character of Mammy in the Tom'n'Jerry cartoons of the 1940s was based on her. She also played Buckwheat's mother in several Our Gang comedy shorts, and made guest appearances on the Eddie Cantor and Amos'n'Andy radio shows. In 1947 she began playing the title role on the radio sitcom Beulah, and continued playing the role for four years. After the show made the transition to television, she replaced departing star Ethel Waters in 1952, but declining health forced Hattie herself to leave the show after only three episodes, after which she was replaced by Louise Beavers. Hattie McDaniels was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer, and the disease finally claimed her on October 26, 1952. She had expressed her wish to be buried at Hollywood Memorial (now Hollywood Forever) Cemetery, but the cemetery's racial policies of the time prevented this. She was instead buried at Rosehaven Cemetery, becoming the first African-American to be interred there. In 1999 a pink granite monument to her was erected at Hollywood Forever. Hattie McDaniel willed her Oscar to Howard University, but during race riots there in the 1960s the statuette was lost and has never been found. Hattie McDaniel had had four marriages in her life, all unhappy and short-lived. Her first husband, George Langford, was murdered shortly after their marriage in 1922. Her other marriages ended in divorce, with the longest lasting only four years. None produced children. But it was not until twenty years after her death that Hattie Mcdaniel's lesbianism became known outside Hollywood, when Kenneth Anger and others made mention of her relations with Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. Around this same time, she became roundly criticized for her portrayal of domestics and accused of perpetuating stereotypes of African-Americans. Hattie's critics should note, however, that the role of domestic was practically the only role available for black actors in her day. And while black domestics were usually portrayed in films as shuffling, ignorant, and stupid, Hattie McDaniel's characters were strong-willed, intelligent, and outspoken. The telling off her character delivers to her white employer and her socialite friends in The Mad Miss Manton was unheard of at that time, and would even have garnered a lynching in parts of the American South, and so ranks a milestone in the portrayal of blacks in the movies. The assertiveness Hattie injected in her portrayals, together with the frequency of her appearances, created a visibility for people of color in the American public eye which contributed much more to the tearing down of stereotypes and barriers than they did to perpetuate them. Lastly, anyone who has actually seen her performance in Gone With The Wind can see that the Best Supporting Actress Oscar was an honor which Hattie McDaniels deserved and earned, and not the back-handed charity some of her detractors have tried to dismiss it as. This talented, headstrong, and spirited woman deserves far more honor, respect, and gratitude than her critics have been willing to give her. Hattie McDaniel's film credits include Impatient Maiden (1932); Are You Listening? (1932); Washington Masquerade (1932); Crooner (1932); Blonde Venus (1932); The Golden West (1932); The Boiling Point (1932); Hypnotized (1932); Hello, Sister (1933); I'm No Angel (1933); Goodbye Love (1933); Merry Wives of Reno (1934); Operator 13 (1934); King Kelly of the U.S.A. (1934); Judge Priest (1934); Flirtation (1934); Lost in the Stratosphere (1934); Fate's Fathead (1934); Imitation of Life (1934); Babbitt (1934); The Chases of Pimple Street (1934); Anniversary Trouble (1935); Okay Toots! (1935); Little Men (1935); The Little Colonel (1935); Transient Lady (UK title, False Witness,1935); Traveling Saleslady (1935); The Four-Star Boarder (1935); China Seas (1935); Alice Adams (1935); Murder by Television (1935); Harmony Lane (1935); Music Is Magic (1935); Another Face (UK title It Happened in Hollywood, 1935); We're Only Human (1935); Wig-Wag (1935); Our Gang (1935); Next Time We Love (UK title Next Time We Live, 1936); The First Baby (1936); The Singing Kid (1936); Arbor Day (1936); Show Boat (1936); Hearts Divided (1936); Star for a Night (1936); Libeled Lady (1936); Reunion (1936); Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (1936); Postal Inspector (1936); High Tension (1936); Gentle Julia (1936); Can This Be Dixie? (1936); The Bride Walks Out (1936); Racing Lady (1937); Don't Tell the Wife (1937); Saratoga (1937); Sky Racket (UK title Flight Into Danger, 1937); Over the Goal (1937); Merry Go Round of 1938 (1937); Nothing Sacred (1937); Quick Money (1937); True Confession (1937); Mississippi Moods (1937); The Crime Nobody Saw (1937); 45 Fathers (1937); Battle of Broadway (1938); Vivacious Lady (1938); The Shopworn Angel (1938); Carefree (1938); The Mad Miss Manton (1938); The Shining Hour (1938); Everybody's Baby (1939); Zenobia (UK title Elephants Never Forget, 1939); Gone with the Wind (1939); Maryland (1940); The Great Lie (1941); Affectionately Yours (1941); They Died with Their Boots On (1941); In This Our Life (1942); George Washington Slept Here (1942); The Male Animal (1942); Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943); Johnny Come Lately (UK title, Johnny Vagabound, 1943); Since You Went Away (1944); Janie (1944); Three Is a Family (1944); Hi, Beautiful (1944); Janie Gets Married (1946); Margie (1946); Song of the South (1946); Never Say Goodbye (1946); The Flame (1947); Mickey (1948); Family Honeymoon (1949); and The Big Wheel (1949). In addition to her starring role in the television series Beulah in 1950, archive footage of Hattie McDaniel has been used in the television documentaries Mo' Funny: Black Comedy in America (1993); The Young and the Dead (2000); and Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel (2001). American Legacy: The Woman That Was Mammy Seeing Black.Com: What We Don't Know About Mammy Find A Grave - Hattie McDaniel Femmes noires, Hattie McDaniel - [ En Francais ] Meredy's Hattie McDaniel Trivia Mania Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel
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