On the 80th anniversary of the premiere of 'Gone with the Wind,' we remember the most shocking and sad story that surrounded that classic.
She starred in one of the most famous movies in cinema history, Gone with the Wind, but was banned from attending the premiere; she became the first black actress to win an Oscar, but she couldn't sit at the same table as her co-stars; she was relegated to servant roles by whites and shunned by blacks, who did not understand that she conformed to the stereotype Hollywood had reduced her race to. She died without a dollar and her Oscar was blown away by the wind, but she was always true to herself, and her best phrase was not written by any screenwriter, but by herself: "I'd rather play a maid for 700 dollars than be one for 7". Her name was Hattie McDaniel and her lights and shadows will forever be linked to the history of cinema.
"In her will, she asked for two things: to be buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and for her Oscar to be given to Howard University. And after her death, he received the umpteenth slap from her: the cemetery did not accept blacks, no matter how famous they were".
Hattie McDaniel (Kansas, USA, 1893; Los Angeles, USA, 1952) was the youngest of the 13 children of a couple of freed slaves who had landed in Kansas fleeing the most extreme poverty. More fond of following the rhythm of the gospel that her mother played in church than of books, she soon took the stage to help with the very poor family finances. She wasn't sure what her future would be, but she did know that she didn't want to follow the path of servitude to which women of her race seemed doomed. She preferred to form, together with two of her brothers, a vaudeville group in which her comic vision soon stood out. "She was radical in many ways," wrote her biographer Jill Watts, in Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood. “She acted with her face painted white, something that no other woman did then,” Watts summed up.
When the crash of the 29th took everything away, it also ended her show and she ended up in Milwaukee. "I landed there broken," she wrote in 1947 in The Hollywood Reporter. "Someone told me that Sam Pick's Suburban Inn was looking for a ladies' room attendant. I ran out and got the job. One night, when all the performers had left, the manager asked for a volunteer to come up on stage. , I asked the musicians for a song and I started to sing. I didn't work in the bathrooms again. For two years I starred in the local show."
Breaking out in show business at the dawn of the 1930s and ending up in Hollywood was a logical sequence, and that's where he headed. But the Hollywood where McDaniel found himself was not a field of roses for blacks. The Hays Code—a studio self-regulatory system to restore Hollywood's good image after the barrage of scandals of the 1920s—prohibited interracial romances and barred blacks from violent roles.
"Twelve years after the industry created awards to reward itself, a black woman took the stage for the first time and it was not to clean it".
Black actors filled irrelevant and often uncredited roles: they were chauffeurs, waiters, mob, and especially servants. Hattie had fled the service in real life, but she couldn't on screen. It didn't take long for her to stand out. In 1934, director John Ford caught sight of her and encouraged her edgy and sarcastic style. She appeared in dozens of movies with some of Hollywood's hottest stars and by squeezing every minute on screen she became one of the most familiar faces in the country. She was fulfilling an unlikely dream for the daughter of a slave.
Gone with the Wind producer David O. Selznick cast McDaniel in the role of Mammy even though she did not embody the values a self-sacrificing maid was supposed to be: she was sarcastic, haughty, and the only one who dared to stop the indomitable Scarlett (played by Vivien Leigh). Of course, she was framed within that cliché of a servant who has no life outside of her master.
On December 15, 1939, about 300,000 people flocked to Atlanta for the film's premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre. For three days the city was decked out to celebrate the greatest event in its history. Limousines were paraded down Main Street, receptions were held, thousands of Confederate flags were flown, and there was a costume ball. Hattie McDaniel did not receive an invite. Jim Crow law, which required the segregation of blacks in public places, was still in force in the South. There were still 16 years to go before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus a few kilometers from there.
Despite the disdain with which she was treated, McDaniel played her perfectly on and off the screen. "I loved Mammy," she declared when speaking to the press about her character. "I think I got it because my own grandmother worked on a plantation similar to Tara," she added.
"One night, when all the artists had left, the manager asked for a volunteer to come up on stage, I asked the musicians for a song and I began to sing. I never worked in the toilets again. For two years I starred in the local show".
Hattie McDaniel, in 'The Hollywood Reporter in 1947
Opinion in the black community was divided upon release and the film was called by some a "horror weapon against black America" and an insult to black audiences. Demonstrations were held in various cities. Not everyone turned against McDaniel's performance: Critics ranked her on a par with Vivien Leigh, and the Los Angeles Times wrote that her work was "Academy Award-worthy," as recorded in the book Backwards and in Heels. : The Past, Present, And Future Of Women Working In Film.
When Fay Bainter read her name on Oscar night on February 29, 1940, 12 years after her creation, a black woman was taking the stage for the first time, and it wasn't to clean it. The daughter of two former slaves, decked out in a turquoise dress and wearing two white gardenias for a headdress, gave her speech in a cracking voice: “Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, members of the film industry, and guests of honor: this is one of the happiest moments of my life and I want to thank each one of you who participated in selecting me for one of your awards for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I will always hold it as a beacon for whatever I may do in the future. I sincerely hope to always be a credit to my race and to the film industry. My heart is too full to tell you how I feel, and I can thank you and God bless you."
She was the only black woman in the room and the first African American to attend the Academy Awards as a guest, not a servant. Selznick had to ask for special permission to be in the compound, at a small table in the back, away from the stars. He couldn't even pose with the rest of the film crew: California was also a segregated state.
The magnitude of her triumph would take years to reveal itself. Until almost a quarter of a century later the actor Sidney Poitier collected his statuette for Lilies of the Valley, no other black performer was honored again and eighty years later, only seven black actresses have taken home the award: Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry, Viola Davis, Lupita, Jennifer Hudson, Octavia Spencer, and Monique. Precisely the latter took the stage with an appearance inspired by McDaniel's and mentioned her in her speech: "I want to thank Hattie McDaniel for enduring everything she had to endure so that I did not have to."
The actress was not going against the current only within the industry. Her affective life was also unusual. Despite her four short-lived marriages, the gossip of the movie mecca
included her in what was called "sewing circles," a name for Hollywood legends such as Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck, and Marlene Dietrich. According to biographer Kenneth Anger, Hattie was the lover of Tallulah Bankhead, famous for going through the bed of half the actresses in Hollywood and for having been one of her favorites to play Scarlet. None of that transcended the general public. The industry made too much money, and no one was willing to let its stars defy prevailing morality.
The success of Gone with the Wind made McDaniel wildly popular, but it also pigeonholed her. After the Second World War, new airs began to be breathed, but she continued to cling to the role of a maid and was part of the cast of today's much-maligned Song of the South, a stain that Disney continues to try to erase from her history.
At the end of her career, she returned to radio and had one of those small triumphs that again her peers did not want to see: she took the role of Beulah, again a stereotypical maid, but she had taken the part of a white man. It was the first time that an African-American woman had starred in a radio show and had earned a thousand dollars a week for it. It was a short-lived success, as shortly after signing the contract she was found to have a tumor on her chest. She died on October 26, 1952, at the age of 57.
In her will, she asked for two things: to be buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and for her Oscar to be given to Howard University. And after her death he received the umpteenth slap from her: the cemetery did not accept blacks no matter how famous they were. She was buried in the Angelus-Rosedale churchyard. Flowers were sent to her ceremony by many of the stars who worked with her, but only James Cagney attended in person.
Today no one knows what happened to her Academy Award. Some affirm that it was thrown into the Potomac River during the riots that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Others, with less sense of the epic, that it is simply lost in some basement, because due to its plaque shape –until 1944 the secondary actors did not receive a statuette– it is more difficult to identify.
Paradoxically, it is the most valuable thing she had of hers when she died: after a lifetime working for her, not a penny was left in her pocket. Much of her small fortune had gone into helping her less fortunate companions.
