Oscar Profile #118: Hattie McDaniel

Born June 10, 1892 in Wichita, Kansas to former slaves, Hattie McDaniel was the youngest of thirteen children. In 1900 the family moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, then to Denver. After graduating Denver East High School, Hattie joined brother Otis’ minstrel show, which folded shortly after his death in 1916. Beginning in 1920 she sang with the Melody Hounds and by the end of the decade had recorded many of her songs.

Following brother Sam and sister Etta to Hollywood, she became successful on radio as Hi-Hat Hattie, a maid who often forgot her place. She supplemented by her radio income by working as a maid in real life.

Movie roles began to come her way in 1932. She earned laughs as Mae West’s maid in 1933’s I’m No Angel and gained fans with her first major role in 1934’s Judge Priest with Will Rogers. Her outspoken maid in 1935’s Alice Adams with Katharine Hepburn received strong critical notice as did her portrayal of Queenie in the acclaimed 1936 version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat.

Her feisty maid in 1937’s The Mad Miss Manton in support of Barbara Stanwyck led to her being cast in greatest role, that of Mammy in Gone With the Wind, for which she became the first African-American performer to win an Oscar.

Despite the Oscar, her post-Gone With the Wind roles, with few exception, did not improve in quality. She actually had a few good ones, all of them as maids, albeit maids with greater presence than many of her past incarnations.

In 1941’s The Great Lie she manages to steal scenes from Bette Davis and Mary Astor at their fiery best, with Astor winning an Oscar for her performance.

In 1942’s In This Our Life she played the part of a maid whose s son is falsely accused of a crime committed by Bette Davis at her nastiest.

In 1944’s Since You Went Away she plays a selfless maid who continues to work for Claudette Colbert even when the wartime housewife is unable to pay her salary.

In 1946’s The Song of the South she played a happy house slave, a situation that has helped to get the film a black eye in these more politically correct times.

From 1947-1951 she starred in radio’s The Beulah Show. The show began a TV run as Beulah starring Ethel Waters in 1950, but when Waters left the show after its first year, McDaniel came on board. Illness caused her to drop out after a short stint in the role. She was replaced by Louise Beavers who ironically died ten years to the day after McDaniel who passed away on October 26, 1952 at the age of 60.

Hattie McDaniel was married four times. Her first husband died young and her subsequent marriages all ended in divorce. Her desire to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied her by the cemetery which would not accept blacks. In 1999, the cemetery, now called the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, offered to reinter her, but the family did not want her remains disturbed. Instead, they built a cenotaph on the cemetery lawn overlooking a lake. It has become one of Hollywood’s most popular tourist attractions.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

SHOW BOAT (1936), directed by James Whale

The second of three film versions to date of the beloved Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical featured a wonderful cast, all but one of the principals having performed their roles in stage versions prior to portraying them in the film. The exception was Helen Westley, a last minute replacement for Edna May Oliver as Parthy Ann.

Irene Dunne as Magnolia; Allan Jones as Gaylord Ravenal; Helen Morgan as Julie; Paul Robeson as Joe and Charles Winninger as Cap’n Andy are all superb, as is Hattie McDaniel as Joe’s wife, Queenie. She kicks up her heels with the best of them as she, Robeson and Dunne bring down the house with their reprise of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”, first sung in the film by Morgan.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), directed by Victor Fleming

From her admonitions to Vivien Leigh’s Scarlet O’Hara to joking around with Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler, McDaniel’s Mammy is the heart of the epic Civil War drama.

Racism of the day prevented her from being invited to the film’s premiere in Atlanta. Incensed, Gable threatened to boycott the premiere until he was talked into going by McDaniel. Gable, who remained her friend to the end, could always be called upon in later years to show up at McDaniel’s annual house parties.

Her legendary performance made her the first of six African-American actresses to win an Oscar. It took fifty-one years to get to the second: Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost.

IN THIS OUR LIFE (1942), directed by John Huston

McDaniel figures in an interesting subplot that is more interesting than the main storyline in the film that marked Huston’s debut as a director.

The film is about two sisters – one good (Olivia de Havilland) and one bad, very bad (Bette Davis) as well as their family including Charles Coburn, Billie Burke and Henry Travers. When Davis causes a fatal accident the blame falls on Ernest Anderson, the educated chauffer son of maid McDaniel.

Anderson and McDaniel at her anguished best easily steal the film from Davis and company.

SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944), directed by John Cromwell

David O. Selznick’s World War II epic was his attempt at recreating the grandeur of Gone With the Wind. He succeeds in scope, if not complexity.

Claudette Colbert is an upper middle-class housewife with impressionable teenaged daughters, played by Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple. Joseph Cotton is around as a friend of the family. Robert Walker is a sensitive soldier who has an affair with Jones. Monty Woolley is Walker’s cantankerous grandfather who rents a room in Colbert’s house and McDaniel, less feisty than usual, is the family maid who stays to help Colbert even when the lady can no longer afford to pay her a salary.

SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946), directed by Harve Foster, Richard Jackson

The one film Disney will probably never release in the U.S. is really a nice family film. If they could only somehow change the black characters in the film from happy pre-Civil War slaves to happy post-Civil War servants, the film at long last might earn back some of the acclaim it had received during its initial release.

The problems with the presentation do not detract from the performances of the cast from James Baskett as Uncle Remus and the voice of Br’er Fox to Bobby Driscoll as the impressionable boy or any of the other cast members including McDaniel who plays a house slave as opposed to a housekeeper or maid.