In honor of TCM and their “Summer Under the Stars” series, we launch our companion series, Summer Madness. The series will spotlight the achievements and films of one Black actor, daily throughout the month of August.
Day 10
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedian. She is best known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first African-American to win an Academy Award.
In addition to acting in many films, McDaniel was a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star; she was the first black woman to sing on the radio in the U.S. She appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 80 or so. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to radio and one at 1719 Vine Street for acting in motion pictures. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp.
Her first film appearance was in The Golden West (1932), in which she played a maid. Her second was in the highly successful Mae West film I’m No Angel (1933), in which she played one of the black maids with whom West camped it up backstage. She received several other uncredited film roles in the early 1930s, often singing in choruses. She began to attract attention and landed larger film roles, which began to win her screen credits. Fox Film Corporation put her under contract to appear in The Little Colonel (1935), with Shirley Temple, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Lionel Barrymore.
Judge Priest (1934), directed by John Ford and starring Will Rogers, was the first film in which she played a major role. She had a leading part in the film and demonstrated her singing talent, including a duet with Rogers. McDaniel and Rogers became friends during filming. In 1935, McDaniel had prominent roles, as a slovenly maid in Alice Adams; a comic part as Jean Harlow’s maid and traveling companion in China Seas (McDaniels’ first film with Clark Gable); and as the maid Isabella in Murder by Television, with Béla Lugosi. She appeared in the 1938 film Vivacious Lady, starring James Stewart and Ginger Rogers.
McDaniel had a featured role as Queenie in the 1936 film Show Boat, starring Allan Jones and Irene Dunne, in which she sang a verse of Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man with Dunne, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and a black chorus. She and Robeson sang “I Still Suits Me”, written for the film by Kern and Hammerstein. After Show Boat, she had major roles in Saratoga (1937), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable; The Shopworn Angel (1938), with Margaret Sullavan; and The Mad Miss Manton (1938), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. She had a minor role in the Carole Lombard–Frederic March film Nothing Sacred (1937), in which she played the wife of a shoeshine man (Troy Brown) masquerading as a sultan.
In the 1942 film In This Our Life, starring Bette Davis and directed by John Huston, McDaniel once again played a domestic, but one who confronts racial issues when her son, a law student, is wrongly accused of manslaughter. The following year, McDaniel was in Thank Your Lucky Stars, with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. McDaniel continued to play maids during the war years, in The Male Animal (1942) and Since You Went Away (1944), but her feistiness was toned down to reflect the era’s somber news. She also played the maid in Song of the South.
She made her last film appearances in Mickey (1948) and Family Honeymoon (1949). She remained active on radio and television in her final years, becoming the first black American to star in her own radio show with the comedy series Beulah. After filming a handful of episodes, however, McDaniel learned she had breast cancer. By the spring of 1952, she was too ill to work and was replaced by Louise Beavers. McDaniel died of breast cancer at age 57 on October 26, 1952, in the hospital on the grounds of the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, California. #SummerMadness #McDaniel
Recommended films:
Judge Priest (’34)
Alice Adams (’35)
Stella Dallas (’37)
Gone With the Wind (’39)
Song of the South (’46)
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