Hattie McDaniel
At the edge of a neatly clipped lawn surrounding a man-made pond in Hollywood’s most famous cemetery, framed by the neoclassical columns of a Grecian temple replica, stands a roughly four-foot cylindrical cenotaph. Its inscription reads:
To honor her last wish
Hattie McDaniel
1895–1952
Renowned Performer
Academy Award
1939
Gone With the Wind
“Aunt Hattie, you are a credit to your craft, your race, and to your family.” -Edgar Goff
Dedication October 26, 1999
The cenotaph honors the first African American to win an Academy Award and a well-loved figure in mid-century Hollywood. What it fails to mention is the darker side of her story and the hypocrisy of the film industry and, more broadly, the nation.
The story of entertainers publicly lauded for their talents but privately shunned for their ethnicity is a sadly common one. While celebrated as a “credit to her race,” prevailing segregation laws prevented Hattie McDaniel from receiving the same honors as white actors. She and the other black actors in Gone With the Wind could not attend the film’s Atlanta premiere, and, when attending the Academy Awards ceremony at the whites-only Cocoanut Grove, she was seated separately from the rest of her castmates — at a small table, in the back, from which she rose to accept her award. The cognitive dissonance must have been overwhelming to anyone in the room.
At the same time, some voices in the black media criticized her for accepting roles that perpetuated negative stereotypes and portrayed African Americans as content in demeaning, subordinate positions. Hattie struck back at her critics, defending her work and pointing to ways in which she helped push against white Hollywood’s discomfort. In a 1947 essay published in The Hollywood Reporter, McDaniel wrote:
“Many of those loudest in their condemnation are newcomers who do not remember the days when no Negro player was given a dressing room, when there were no hairdressers on the sets for Negro actresses, when no studio hired a Negro wardrobe girl. I have seen many changes in the film city and the trend has been one of increasing gain.”
McDaniel “persuaded directors to omit dialect” in multiple films and, despite its frequent use in the Margaret Mitchell novel, the n-word is omitted from the film version of Gone With the Wind in part due to McDaniel’s refusal to say it. She frequently countered the accusations about playing maid roles with “I’d rather play a maid than be one,” and saw herself and other black actors as groundbreakers and role models for youth. While she did play at least 74 maid roles throughout her career, some of her portrayals strayed far from the subservient stereotypes. In one scene in The Mad Miss Manton, McDaniel’s maid character douses Henry Fonda with a pitcher of water, leading studio executives to raise concerns about the film’s viability in Southern movie houses. In Hattie’s view, “her articulate speech, regal carriage, and beautiful clothes off screen reflected her own awareness that “I’m a fine black Mammy [on the screen], but I’m Hattie McDaniel in my house.”” She believed the public was sophisticated enough to see that. While she certainly wasn’t blind to the racism prevalent in the industry, she wrote, “I have never gotten over my crush on Hollywood.” Her indomitable spirit shone through to the end, when, nearing her death from cancer at age 57, she threw a “deathbed party.” (Author note: a woman after my own heart!)
Despite her accomplishments, racism followed her even in death. Although she requested burial at Hollywood Memorial Park, segregation laws at the time of her death in 1952 prevented this, and her body was interred in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery a few miles south, her gardenia-laden hearse followed by thousands of mourners. (Angelus Rosedale has its own interesting history and will be covered in the next piece.)
Only in 1999 does the cenotaph bearing Hattie’s name finally get installed at Hollywood Forever (formerly Hollywood Memorial Park). It does not mention the fact that her body is elsewhere. It does not mention that for almost half a century, she was entirely exiled from this pantheon of Hollywood greats. Somewhat disingenuously, it reads “to honor her last wish.”
Sources
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hattie-mcdaniel-defies-critics-1947-774493
http://streamline.filmstruck.com/2010/02/17/hattie-mcdaniels-path-to-her-oscar/
http://www.westadamsheritage.org/angelus
http://ew.com/movies/2018/02/22/hattie-mcdaniel-first-black-oscar-winner-legacy/
https://www.biography.com/people/hattie-mcdaniel-38433
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/oscars-first-black-winner-accepted-774335
