Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel
File:Hattie1941.jpg
Spouse(s)	Howard Hickman (1911-1915) Nym Lankfard (1922-1938) James Lloyd Crawford (1941-1945) Larry Williams (1949-1950)

Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952) was an African-American actress. She was the first performer of African descent to ever win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). She is also the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp. McDaniel was also a professional singer, stage actress, radio performer and television star. She was one of the most respected and highly paid performers in the African-American show business community.

Early life

McDaniel was born in Wichita, Kansas to a former civil war soldier Henry McDaniel and Susan Holbert, a singer of religious music. Her grandmother had been a household slave cook on a Virginia plantation, and her father was born into slavery as a fieldhand. Henry McDaniel served as a soldier for the Union Army during the Civil War. Hattie was born on June 10, 1895, the youngest of thirteen children. The family briefly lived in Fort Collins, Colorado at 317 Cherry St (which still stands) and Hattie briefly attended Franklin School. In 1910 she was the only African American participant in a Women's Christian Temperance Movement event in which she won a gold medal for reciting a poem entitled Convict Joe. Winning the award was what started and sparked her dream of becoming a performer. She dropped out of East Denver High School after her sophomore year, traveling with a minstrel group started by her father and brothers Otis and Sam. In addition to performing, Hattie was also a songwriter, a skill she honed while working with Henry's minstrel show. After the death of her brother Otis in 1916 the family's minstrel group began to lose momentum, and it wasn't until 1920 that Hattie received another big opportunity. She joined George Morrison's Melody Hounds and received brilliant reviews.

Career

McDaniel was among the first African-American women to sing on the radio. In 1925 McDaniel began singing on KOA, a Denver radio station. Her radio job led to the recording of several songs, which she had written. She had the opportunity to tour many American cities, most frequently she was booked by the Theatrical Owners Booking Association, which was comprised of black theater owners. She was playing "Queenie" in Show Boat when the stock market crashed, and her company had to shut down. The only work McDaniel could find was as a washroom attendant at Club Madrid in Milwaukee. Despite the owner's reluctance to let her perform, McDaniel was eventually allowed to take the stage, and became a regular.

In 1931, McDaniel made her way to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam, sisters Etta and Orlena. When she could not get film work, she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was working on a radio program called The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, and he was able to get his sister a spot. Her show became extremely popular, but her salary was so low that she had to continue working as a maid. In the early years of the 1930's she received roles in several films, often singing in choruses. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she only received screen credits for about 80. She spent much of her career playing maids: "Why should I complain about making seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making seven dollars a week actually being one."

In 1934's Judge Priest, directed by John Ford and starring Will Rogers, was the first film in which she would receive a major role. She got to sing several times, including a duet with Rogers. McDaniel and Rogers became friends during filming, and Rogers would credit her with the film's success. McDaniel had prominent roles in 1935 with her classic performance as a slovenly maid in Alice Adams and a delightfully comic part as Jean Harlow's maid/traveling companion in China Seas, the latter her first film with Gable. She also attracted attention with a fine performance oppostite Paul Robeson in 1936's Show Boat and had major roles in Saratoga (1937) and The Mad Miss Manton (1938).

McDaniel had befriended several of Hollywood's most popular white stars, including Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Henry Fonda, Ronald Reagan, and Olivia de Havilland and Clark Gable, with whom she would star in Gone with the Wind. It was around this time that she began to be criticized by members of the black community for roles she was choosing to take. In 1935's The Little Colonel depicted black servants longing for a return to the Old South. Ironically, McDaniel's portrayal of Malena in Alice Adams angered white Southern audiences. She managed to steal several scenes away from the film star, Katharine Hepburn. This was the type of role she would be best known for, the sassy, sometimes outspoken, even opinionated maid.

The competition in Gone with the Wind 1939, for Mammy had been almost as stiff as that for Scarlett O'Hara. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to film producer David O. Selznick to ask that her own maid, Elizabeth McDuffiebe, given the part. McDaniel did not think she would be chosen, because she was known for being a comic actress. Gable wanted the role to go to McDaniel, and when she went to her audition dressed in an authentic maid's uniform, Selznick knew he had found Mammy.

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Hattie McDaniel (right) with Vivien Leigh in
Gone with the Wind (1939)

It was one such role, opposite Vivien Leigh and Gable, that won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first African American to win an Oscar. She was also the first African-American ever to be nominated.

Actors gone, but legends swirl around Gone With the Wind 65 years later
Associated Press
Saturday, November 20, 2004

The actors who played the iconic characters from Gone With the Wind - Rhett, Scarlett, Mammy, Ashley - are all long gone. Sixty-five years later, the lone survivor from the main cast is Olivia de Havilland. De Havilland answered the following question in a interview with Associated Press:

AP: Although you considered yourself one of the leads, you were nominated for best supporting actress. When McDaniel won that award, becoming the first black performer to claim an Oscar, was that a shock?

De Havilland: I was with Vivien, David (and others) and were just having a drink together before the limousines were going to take us from David's house to the Academy Awards at the Ambassador Hotel. The phone rang and David said, "Yes, yes . . . Scarlett, yeah . . . Best picture, hmm . . . Fleming, yes . . ." and he went down the whole list of awards and then said, "Hattie . . ." And my name wasn't mentioned. Of course, he got advance news of who had won. He had some kind of spy.

AP: Then came the ceremony . . .

De Havilland: I decided of course there was no God. (Laughs) Well, I was only 22! At the table, I was able to keep my composure until it was all over and then one tear started down my cheek. (The producer's wife) Irene Selznick saw that and said "Come with me!" and we went into the kitchen and then I really began to cry.

AP: Did McDaniel know in advance?

De Havilland: She didn't know. She was already at the awards. She was seated with her black escort and David made sure she was properly seated and he wasn't satisfied at first as to where she was seated. He rearranged things so it was more appropriate, from his point of view.

AP: She was in the back, and he moved her closer?

De Havilland: He arranged a table for two in a very good position for her and her escort and they were perfectly comfortable. In those days, it was still a delicate situation.

AP: Her win was historic. Did your feelings eventually change about losing to her?

De Havilland: Two weeks later, still brooding about the fact that there was no God, I woke up one morning and thought, "That's absolutely wonderful that Hattie got the award!" Hattie deserved it and she got it . . . I thought I'd much rather live in a world where a black actress who gave a marvellous performance got the award instead of me. I'd rather live in that kind of world.

When the date of the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind approached, Hattie informed director Victor Fleming that she was unable to attend due to illness; in actuality, she did not want to attend because of the racism that pervaded Southern society at that time, for fear of increasing racial hostilities. When Gable heard that McDaniel did not want to attend because of the racial issue, he threatened to boycott the premiere unless McDaniel was able to attend; he later relented when McDaniel convinced him to go.

Louella Parsons, an American gossip columnist, wrote about Oscar night of 1940: "Hattie McDaniel earned that gold "Oscar", by her fine performance of "Mammy" in Gone With the Wind. If you had seen her face when she walked up to the platform and took the gold trophy, you would have had the choke in your voice that all of us had when Hattie, hair trimmed with gardenias, face alight, and dress up to the queen's taste, accepted the honor in one of the finest speeches ever given on the Academy floor. She put her heart right into those words and expressed not only for herself, but for every member of her race, the gratitude she felt that she had been given recognition by the Academy. Fay Bainter, with voice trembling, introduced Hattie and spoke of the happiness she felt in bestowing upon the beaming actress Hollywood's greatest honor. Her proudest possession is the red silk petticoat that David Selznick gave her when she finished Gone With the Wind".

Hattie McDaniel's Acceptance Speech delivered on January 29, 1940 at the 12th Annual Academy Awards:

"Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting for one of the awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you."

In 1942's In This Our Life she had a dramatic role as a housewife whose son is framed in a hit-and-run accident. The following year, McDaniel was in Thank Your Lucky Stars. In 1943, Time (magazine) wrote about McDaniel, "Hattie McDaniel, whose bubbling, blaring good humor more than redeems the roaring bad taste of a Harlem number called "Ice Cold Katie" [musical number by Dinah Shore].

As the 1940s progressed, the servant roles McDaniel and other African-American performers had so frequently played were subjected to increasingly strong criticism by groups such as the NAACP. She made her last film in 1949 but was still quite active in her final years on radio and television, becoming the first major African-American radio star with her comedy series Beulah. She starred in the television version, taking over for Ethel Waters after the first season. She became ill during the show's run and was replaced by Louise Beavers.

Scarlett Fever (1939-1961)

Time Magazine, 1961: "Gable never in later movies topped his performance as Rhett Butler, the man of iron with a heart of caramel. Vivien Leigh, though she seldom shows the tigerish vitality that Author Mitchell wrote into her Scarlett O'Hara, nevertheless makes a fascinating, green-eyed bitch-kitty. And Hattie McDaniel, as Scarlett's hammy old mammy, just about waddles off with the show."

Off-camera

Victory on Sugar Hill, Time Magazine, December 17, 1945:

Their story was as old as it was ugly. In 1938, Negroes, willing and able to pay $15,000 and up for West Adams, Los Angeles, California, Heights property, had begun moving into the old colonial mansions. Many were movie folk—Actresses Louise Beavers, Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters, etc. They improved their holdings, kept their well-defined ways, quickly won more than tolerance from most of their white neighbors. But some whites, refusing to be comforted, had drawn up a racial restriction covenant among themselves. For seven years they had tried to sell it to the other whites, but failed. Then they went to court. Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke decided to visit the disputed ground—popularly known as "Sugar Hill." Next morning, Judge Clarke threw the case out of court. His reason: "It is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Judges have been avoiding the real issue too long." Said Hattie McDaniel, of West Adams Heights: "Words cannot express my appreciation."

In the book Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, by Donald Bogle, it's referenced that in 1945, McDaniel happily informed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper that she was pregnant. McDaniel began buying baby clothes and setting up a nursery. Her plans were shattered when the doctor informed her she had a false pregnancy; McDaniel fell into a depression.

Divorced, 1945: By Hattie McDaniel, from her third husband, James Lloyd Crawford, 49, real estate salesman; after four and a half years of marriage, no children; in Hollywood. She said he was jealous of her career, once threatened to kill her.

Divorced, 1950. By Hattie McDaniel, from fourth husband Larry Williams, fiftyish, interior decorator; married in Yuma, Arizona, June 11, 1949, after she testified that their five months together had been marred by "arguing and fussing." Ms. McDaniel broke down in tears when she testified that her husband tried to create dissension among the cast of her radio show and otherwise interfered with her work. "I haven't got over it yet," she said. "I got so I couldn't sleep. I couldn't concentrate on my lines."

McDaniel was also a member of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of four African-American Greek letter sororities in the United States. Hattie was active in raising money for the troops during World War II.

Death

McDaniel died at age 60, in the hospital on the grounds of the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills on October 26, 1952. She was survived by a brother, Sam "Deacon" McDaniel, a film actor. Her estate amounted to less than ten thousand dollars. Thousands of mourners turned out to remember her life and accomplishments. It was her wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, along with her fellow movie stars, Mel Blanc, Rudolph Valentino, and others. The owner, Jules 'Jack' Roth, refused to allow her to be interred there, because they did not take blacks.

Ms. McDaniel wrote: "I desire a white casket and a white shroud; white gardenias in my hair and in my hands, together with a white gardenia blanket and a pillow of red roses" I also wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery". She is interred in the Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles.

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US Postage Stamp 2006

In 1999, Tyler Cassity, the new owner of the Hollywood Cemetery, who had renamed it Hollywood Forever Cemetery; wanted to right the wrong and have Miss McDaniel interred in the cemetery. Her family did not want to disturb her remains after the passage of so much time, and declined the offer. Hollywood Forever then did the next best thing and built a large cenotaph memorial on the lawn overlooking the lake in honor of McDaniel. It is one of the most popular sites for visitors to the cemetery.

The "Oscar" that Hattie won was placed in the keeping of Howard University in Washington. The last will filed for probate disposing of less than $10,000 to a few relatives and friends. She left $1 to her former husband, Larry C. Williams.

Legacy and honors

Hattie has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one for her contributions to radio at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard, and one for motion pictures at 1719 Vine Street.

McDaniel was featured as the 29th inductee on the Black Heritage Series by the United States Postal Service. She is the first black Oscar winner honored with a stamp. The 39-cent stamp was released on January 29, 2006. This stamp features a very special image of Hattie McDaniel. It is a 1941 photograph of McDaniel in the dress she wore on February 29, 1940, when she received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Gone with the Wind.

The ceremony took place at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where the Hattie McDaniel collection includes photographs of McDaniel and other family members, as well as scripts and other documents. "She was a most special lady," McDaniel's "Gone with the Wind" co-star Ann Rutherford told AP Television News. Rutherford recalled how McDaniel thought some of her friends looked down on her for playing a maid "But (McDaniel) said, I'd rather play a maid than be a maid", Rutherford said.

Filmography

Features:

• Love Bound (1932)
• Impatient Maiden (1932)
• Are You Listening? (1932)
• The Washington Masquerade (1932)
• The Boiling Point (1932)
• Crooner (1932)
• Blonde Venus (1932)
• The Golden West (1932)
• Hypnotized (1932)
• Hello, Sister (1933)
• I'm No Angel (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)
• Babbitt (1934)
• Little Men (1934)
• The Little Colonel (1935)
• Transient Lady (1935)
• Traveling Saleslady (1935)
• China Seas (1935)
• Alice Adams (1935)
• Murder by Television (1935)
• Harmony Lane (1935)
• Music Is Magic (1935)
• Another Face (1935)
• We're Only Human (1935)
• Can This Be Dixie? (1936)
• Next Time We Love (1936)
• The First Baby (1936)
• The Singing Kid (1936)
• Gentle Julia (1935)
• Show Boat (1936)
• High Tension (1936)
• The Bride Walks Out (1936)
• Postal Inspector (1936)
• Star for a Night (1936)
• Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (1936)
• Libeled Lady (1936)
• Reunion (1936)
• Mississippi Moods (1937)
• Racing Lady (1937)
• Don't Tell the Wife (1937)
• The Crime Nobody Saw (1937)
• The Wildcatter (1937)

• Saratoga (1937)
• Stella Dallas (1937)
• Sky Racket (1937)
• Over the Goal (1937)
• Merry Go Round of 1938 (1937)
• Nothing Sacred (1937)
• 45 Fathers (1937)
• Quick Money (1937)
• True Confession (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 (1939)
• Gone with the Wind (1939)
• Maryland (1940)
• The Great Lie (1941)
• Affectionately Yours (1941)
• They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
• The Male Animal (1942)
• In This Our Life (1942)
• George Washington Slept Here (1942)
• Johnny Come Lately (1943)
• Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
• Since You Went Away (1944)
• Janie (1944)
• Three Is a Family (1944)
• Hi, Beautiful (1944)
• Janie Gets Married (1946)
• Margie (1946)
• Never Say Goodbye (1946)
• Song of the South (1946)
• The Flame (1947)
• Mickey (1948)
• Family Honeymoon (1949)
• The Big Wheel (1949)

Short Subjects:

• Mickey's Rescue (1934)
• Fate's Fathead (1934)
• The Chases of Pimple Street (1934)
• Anniversary Trouble (1935)
• Okay Toots! (1935)
• Wig-Wag (1935)
• The Four Star Boarder (1935)
• Arbor Day (1936)

Radio

The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour (1931)
Beulah (series) (1947-1952)

Sources

• Hopper, Hedda. Hattie Hates Nobody. Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1947.
• Jackson, Carlton. Hattie: The Life of Hattie McDaniel. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1990. ISBN 1568330049
• Mitchell, Lisa. More Than a Mammy. Hollywood Studio Magazine, April 1979.
• Salamon, Julie. The Courage to Rise Above Mammyness. New York Times, 6 August 2001.
• Watts, Jill. Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0060514906
• Young, Al. I’d Rather Play a Maid Than Be One. New York Times, 15 October 1989.
• Zeigler, Ronny. Hattie McDaniel: ‘(I’d)…rather play a maid.’ N.Y. Amsterdam News, 28 April 1979.
• Access Newspaper Archive - search for "Hattie McDaniel"

External link

Hattie McDaniel Photos
Hattie McDaniel at IMDb

See also

• List of African American firsts
• List of black Academy Award winners and nominees