Movies:
She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Bombshell (1933)
Imitation of Life (1934)
Made For Each Other (1939)
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Hattie McDaniel
Birth: June 10, 1895, Wichita, Kansas
Death: October 26, 1952
While Louise Beavers played the sweet, beaming maid, Hattie McDaniels was the strong-willed and often cantankerous queen of the mammies. She was also the first African American to win an Academy Award.
Hattie began her career as a singer, in church as a child and on the road with a tent show as a teenager. In the 1920's she became one of the first (possibly the first) African American women to sing on the radio. By the early thirties she was in Hollywood, working as an extra. She soon graduated to small speaking parts.
Hattie always played a maid, but her characters tended to be strong women with a mind of their own. In Alice Adams (1935) she steals the movie in her single scene as a surly, gum-snapping maid. She totally avoids the grinning stereotype and it would not be the only time in her career that she would.
After dozens more movies, Hattie won a substantial role in Gone With the Wind (1939). This is the part that she is best remembered for, and deservedly so. As Mammy, she had a depth that African Americans had rarely been allowed to show before. She earned her Academy Award for this role. Though she received the biggest ovation the night of the awards ceremony, she was still forced to sit in the back of the auditorium.
Hattie always said that she would rather play a maid than be one, but even that option was limited after Gone With the Wind. The mammy stereotype was becoming dated and ironically, the disappearance of this negative image also put a lot of African American movie actors out of work. Though Hattie continued to work throughout the forties, she was not as prolific as she had been in the thirties.
She originated the lead role of Beulah on the radio and then brought it to television in 1950. She died of breast cancer two years later. Hattie had ended her fourth marriage that same year.
Movies:
Alice Adams (1935)
Show Boat (1936)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
The Great Lie (1941)
Butterfly McQueen
Birth: January 7, 1911, Tampa, Florida
Death: December 22, 1995, Augusta, Georgia
Hattie McDaniel wasn't the only African American actress to make an impact in Gone With the Wind (1939). Playing a character that was practically opposite the strong-willed Mammy, Butterfly McQueen won immediate fame for her portrayal of the servant girl Prissy. Her high-pitched voice and frantic, but perfectly controlled, comic performance are a welcome relief in some of the most tension-filled scenes in the movie.
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