Oscars were not prime time for actress McDaniel

 

 

PULLMAN, Wash. – In the heart of both Oscar season and Black History Month, consider this: Seventy-three years ago, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award for her performance as the capable, doting Mammy in “Gone with the Wind.” To accept the award, she had to walk to the stage from a segregated table.

McDaniel’s unlikely trek to the podium demonstrated progress and also a lack of progress, said David Leonard, author of the book, “Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema (Praeger Publishing, 2006), and chair of Washington State University’s Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies.

 

The U.S. Post Office issued a stamp in McDaniel’s honor in 2006.

“Hattie faced the challenge of navigating different worlds,” he said. “Hollywood – and more specifically the academy – recognized her talent in acting. But at the same time, it devalued her talent by making her sit at a separate table and also by casting her in roles limited to servants who took care of white people.”

 

Adding to the insult by whites was criticism by blacks. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People singled out McDaniel for not speaking out against roles that perpetuated the subservient African American stereotype.

 

To which McDaniel famously replied: “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”

 

Sadly, that was pretty much the extent of her career prospects in the 1930s and ‘40s, said Leonard, when black women typically worked as low-paid maids and cooks for households of well-to-do whites.

 

“The constraints Hattie faced in Hollywood mirrored the constraints that she, a woman of color, faced in society. Pretty much the only roles made available to her were those of servants,” he said. “While some might argue that these portrayals were based on the reality of that time, the stereotype became so entrenched that black humanity got

Hattie McDaniel with Vivien Leigh in “Gone with the Wind,” which swept the Academy Awards in 1940. (Photo from Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

washed out.”

 

McDaniel, who acted in dozens more movies besides “Gone with the Wind,” shared the stage with Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and other film legends. Her father was a musician and former slave who steered his children toward show business, according to the 2001 documentary, “Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel,” narrated by Whoopi Goldberg.  McDaniel worked as a real maid until she was offered a film part playing one, it says.

 

After her nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal as Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy, a “no blacks” rule at an Atlanta, Ga. venue kept her from attending the film’s extravagant premiere. And then, on Oscar night in 1940, a tucked-away table at Los Angeles’ Coconut Grove kept her apart from the biggest movie stars of the time.

Accepting the award at the podium, she told the audience and newsreel cameras, “I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race.”

The door may have squeaked open, but only a crack. It would be 50 more years before the next black woman received an Oscar – Goldberg for her role as a psychic in “Ghost.”

 

“What the Oscar didn’t win Hattie and other blacks that night was equality,” said Leonard.
 
Today, with prominent African American stars such as Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Danny Glover and Will Smith, things in Tinsel Town have changed, he said. Yet, change in the film industry lags, especially compared to blacks’ opportunities in music and sports.

 

“Hollywood still has a tendency to equate blackness with have-nots, criminals and domestic help,” Leonard said. “The day they are depicted not as symbols but as blacks being themselves, we can look back at Hattie on Oscar night and say, ‘OK, it took a long time, but we finally got there.’”