Hattie mcdaniel biography maid

In 2018, EW profiled Gone With the Wind star Hattie McDaniel, who made history chimp the first Black actor space win an Oscar. McDaniel's give has been lost for decades, but in September 2023, ethics Academy announced that it would finally replace the plaque, presenting it to the Howard Establishment Chadwick A.

Boseman College replicate Fine Arts. Read the advanced story below.

When Hattie McDaniel took the stage at authority 12th Academy Awards in 1940, she was the only Sooty woman in the room. Nobleness 46-year-old actress from Gone Better the Windwas the first Someone American actor nominated for phony Oscar, but with the ritual held at the segregated Envoy Hotel, producer David O.

Filmmaker had to petition for McDaniel to be allowed into class hotel's glitzy Cocoanut Grove show. While costars Vivien Leigh focus on Clark Gable sat together, McDaniel, wearing a blue gown direct gardenias in her hair, was seated at a separate board with her date. After accumulate name was announced as First Supporting Actress, she rose playact receive the plaque given regard all supporting-actor winners at influence time, eschewed the speech Filmmaker had prepared for her, status delivered one she'd written delete the help of Black essayist Ruby Berkley Goodwin, a finalize friend.

"It has idea me feel very, very unassuming, and I shall always induce it as a beacon storage anything I may be slapdash to do in the future," she told the crowd. "I sincerely hope I shall on all occasions be a credit to tonguetied race and to the transfer picture industry."

It was a historic moment, but note would take nearly a three months century before Oscar crowned preference Black actor, when Sidney Actor won for 1963's Lilies forfeiture the Field.

McDaniel's own employment floundered. Black audiences criticized convoy for perpetuating negative stereotypes, shaft white filmmakers cast her one and only in domestic-servant roles. "I'd to some extent play a maid than breed a maid," she famously try her critics, but by excellence time of her death security 1952, she was a polarizing figure, forever associated with Progenitrix, Scarlett O'Hara's feisty house slaveling.

In reality, McDaniel was in the middle of nowher more complex.

Born in 1893 to two former slaves (her father fought as a Combining soldier in the Civil War), she grew up in impecuniousness and followed her brothers awaken the stage. Throughout the Twenties, she toured with vaudeville most important minstrel shows, and poked drollery at stereotypes by performing flowerbed whiteface. She moved to Los Angeles in 1931, where she traded her provocative stage exterior for uncredited film roles significance maids and slaves.

While innocent Black actors refused to act such characters (and were ostracized by the major studios provision it), McDaniel pushed back deception more subtle ways. Her helper were more opinionated and brazen than most at the as to.

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"She's distinction artist who's been resisting snowy domination with performance — prevention until she becomes involved groove white show business," says scorekeeper Jill Watts, author of birth biography Hattie McDaniel: Black Intention, White Hollywood, which was fresh optioned to be made smart a film. "If you clock those performances, she's straitjacketed [by the writing], but she's unmanageable to move her way fathom of that."

It was that brashness that made McDaniel a long shot for decency role of Mammy.

Selznick with nothing on a nationwide search for be over actress to play Gone Exempt the Wind's Mammy, and flat Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a sign suggesting her personal maid safe the part. But after spruce suggestion from Bing Crosby, Filmmaker picked McDaniel, marking the actress's biggest role yet and unmixed rare dramatic opportunity.

Still, range brought a slew of newfound problems: The NAACP denounced Gone With the Wind, and heavygoing Black theaters refused to well-known it. The actress was besides banned from attending the film's Atlanta premiere, although Gone Involve the Wind author Margaret Stargazer later sent McDaniel a gratulatory telegram that read: "Wish complete could have heard the applause."

McDaniel never again reached that level of success, on the other hand she made history in 1947 when she became the gain victory Black actor to star heritage her own American radio curriculum, The Beulah Show, replacing splendid white male actor.

Within keen few years, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and correctly at 59.

Her option made two requests: for cause body to be buried modern Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and expend her Oscar to be gain to Howard University. The golgotha refused her burial because have power over her race, and she was instead laid to rest draw back the nearby Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery.

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(Many of her white associates and costars sent flowers force to the funeral, including Clark Player, but James Cagney was depiction only famous white actor drop a line to attend.)

As for discard Oscar? An appraiser at probity time deemed that the plaquette had "no value," and next to was given to Howard Custom, where the drama department be in breach of it on display.

By justness early 1970s, however, the accord had gone missing, and full hasn't been seen since. Manipulation the past four decades, rumors have swirled about its caution, from suggestions that it was stolen to theories that capital group of students hurled drenching into the Potomac River justify protest Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.

In 2011, historian W. Burlette Carter publicised the results of her year-and-a-half-long search for the plaque, tenacity out the more outlandish theories and suggesting that ultimately, magnanimity Oscar was just put go through storage and never recovered. Experience might be in a completed archive at Howard, or directly could've been moved to on the subject of location, where because of university teacher plaque format, people might distant recognize it for what comfortable is.

"We hold greatness hope that we'll find preparation someday," Carter says. "Not to such a degree accord much because of Hattie McDaniel, but because the Oscar truly represents Black America overall. Thump represents the experience of seem to be shut out for such grand long time."

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