Hattie McDaniel, First African American Woman to Win an Oscar

If you're a fan of "Gone With the Wind" then you probably know who Hattie McDaniel is. She played "Mammy" in the historically-based blockbuster film. Chances are, though, you may not know much about Miss Hattie herself.

Born to former slaves in 1895, McDaniel was the youngest of thirteen children. Two of her siblings, Sam and Etta, were also actors.

It was only natural that Hattie would begin her career by singing. Her mother sang religious music and her father also had a minstrel show. She got a break while living in Denver on station KOA singing with the Melony Hounds, a touring black ensemble. In the mid 1920's, McDaniel recorded many of her own songs on Okeh Records and Paramount Records.

McDaniel worked as a washroom attendant and waitress at Club Madrid in Milwaukee when the stock market crashed. Even then, McDaniel persuaded the owner to allow her to perform onstage and she became a regular performer there.

But it wasn't until McDaniel moved to Los Angeles to join brother Sam and sister Etta that her career began to really take off. Sam worked at radio station KNX and got his sister a spot on the program "The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour." Her role was that of a bossy maid named 'Hi-Hat Hattie,' a role which seemed to have set a precedent for her career.

Many of the roles McDaniel played were maids. In movies such as "The Golden West" (1932), "I'm no Angel" (1933), starring Mae West, and "The Little Colonel" (1935), with Shirley Temple, McDaniel played the sassy, oftentimes opinionated, plump black maid.

Sadly, McDaniel's portrayal of the family servant or maid offended both blacks and whites. Blacks decried her portrayal of servitude as a symbolic reminder of their slave past. Whites were offended by the fact that the maids McDaniel portrayed had their own minds, were outspoken and, at times, appeared disrespectful to their employers.

But McDaniel herself stated, "I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7."[1]

By the time McDaniel portrayed Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" she had accrued some degree of clout in Hollywood. Enough clout, in fact, that she made some changes to the script, removing the word "nigger" and Mammy's references to "De Lawd."

Unfortunately, that clout did not carry over to the racial-ridden southern city of Atlanta, Georgia. "Gone With the Wind" premiered at the Loew's Grand Theatre on Peachtree Street on Friday, December 15, 1939. Had McDaniel attended the premiere in Atlanta, she would have been required to stay in an all-black hotel and sit in the blacks only section of the theatre, instead of sitting with her peers.

As it was, all the black actors from the movie were barred from attended the premiere and were excluded from the souvenir program.

Clark Gable himself threatened to boycott the Atlanta Premiere because McDaniel was not allowed to attend. But McDaniel talked him into going.

McDaniel did attend the premiere in Hollywood on December 28, 1939. Director David O. Selznick himself insisted that McDaniel be prominently featured in the program for the Hollywood premiere and for all other premieres outside the southern part of the United States.

McDaniel was the first African American woman to be nominated for an Oscar, as well as the first to win the Academy Award.

Her acceptance speech can be viewed on YouTube.
"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 me for one of their 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."[2]

McDaniel's personal life was hardly less tumultuous than her film career. She had married George Langford in 1922 but he died soon afterward. Her father died that same year. She then married Howard Hickman in 1938 and they divorced the same year. Three years later she married James Lloyd Crawford. Allegedly, soon after, McDaniel informed columnist Hedda Hopper that she was pregnant. But the pregnancy turned out to be false.

McDaniel suffered depression after the false pregnancy and divorced Crawford in 1945. Four years later, in 1949, McDaniel married Larry Williams and divorced him a year later. Williams had tried to create dissension among McDaniel's peers and interfere with her career.

McDaniel died from breast cancer at the age of 57. Her Oscar was kept at Howard University in Washington, D.C. but disappeared in the 1960's.

McDaniel had only $10,000 left when she died, divided between a few relatives and friends. Medical costs had all but wiped out her estate. It was reported that she left one cent to Larry Williams, her last husband.

McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One star is for her contributions to radio, located at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard. The other is for her contributions to the film industry, located at 1719 Vine Street. She was posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975. McDaniels was commemorated on a United States Postal stamp on January 29, 2006.

In the November 11, 2009 edition of The Hollywood Reporter, actress Mo'nique stated, "I own the rights to Hattie McDaniels' life story, and I can't wait to tell that story, because that woman was absolutely amazing. She had to stand up to the adversity of black and white (society) at a time when we really weren't accepted. Mr. Lee Daniels is going to direct it, of course, and I'm going to be Miss Hattie McDaniels. I really hope I can do that woman justice."[3]

[1] Pop Matters
[2] Wikipedia
[3] The Hollywood Reporter 11/11/2009