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African American Actresses: Maids and Mammies

© K Cruver

The African American women who played the mammies and maids in early Hollywood had a tough choice. Menial work was hard, but was it really worth escaping to play the same role on the screen and encourage the stereotype? Louise Beavers, Hattie McDaniel, and Butterfly McQueen were the most famous movie maids and mammies of their time. All three were clever, strong, and determined to fight prejudice. Their fine performances, in the flimsiest of roles, set the groundwork for the women who followed them.

Louise Beavers
Birth: March 8, 1902, Cincinnati, Ohio
Death: October 26, 1962, Hollywood, California

For three decades, starting in the late twenties, Louise Beavers played a maid in dozens of movies. She usually played the same sweet-tempered woman, but within the limitations of her roles, she still earned the praise of movie critics.

Louise started out working as a dressing room attendant. She had her first contact with Hollywood when she was a maid for silent movie actress Leatrice Joy. Her first stage performances were in minstrel shows. It was with that performing group that she was discovered and cast in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927).

From that year on, Louise worked steadily in the movies, though at first she still occasionally had to be a maid to make ends meet. To fit the stereotype of the large mammy, she had to overeat, and even then she often had to pad her clothing to look appropriately round.

In 1934, Louise won a lead role in Imitation of Life. In this groundbreaking movie, she was the first African American woman whose problems where treated as seriously as her white co-star's were. Though stereotypes and a soap opera plot tend to weaken its impact today, it is still inspiring to see her center stage.

Despite critical praise for Imitation of Life, Louise was not offered more starring roles. Still, she is a bright spot in many of her small parts. She's wonderfully sly as Jean Harlow's maid in Bombshell(1933) and she makes a gently wise speech to Carole Lombard in Made for Each Other (1939). She also had a more dignified role as Jackie Robinson's mother in The Jackie Robinson Story.

Louise then appeared on the fifties television show Beulah, where she played a good-hearted maid. However, she declined to continue with the show after appearing for a year. She finished the decade with a handful of television and movie performances.

Louise made her last movie The Facts of Life in 1960. She died of a heart attack two years later. She left behind her husband Leroy Moore, they had no children.

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