Hattie McDaniel - Movies, Bio & Filmography

Meet Hattie McDaniel

★ Acting🎥 96 films📺 2 TV shows📅 1932–2022🔥 1

Also known as: Hattie McDaniels

Born in Wichita, Kansas, USA

1893-06-10 (age 59 at death)

Died 1952-10-26

Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 - October 26, 1952) was an American actress whose portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939) won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first black person to win an Academy Award.

After working as early as the 1910s as a band vocalist, Hattie McDaniel debuted as a maid in The Golden West (1932). Her maid-mammy characters became steadily more assertive, showing up first in Judge Priest (1934) and becoming pronounced in Alice Adams (1935). In this one, directed by George Stevens and aided and abetted by star Katharine Hepburn, she makes it clear she has little use for her employers' pretentious status seeking. By The Mad Miss Manton (1938) the character she portrays actually tells off her socialite employer Barbara Stanwyck and her snooty friends. This path extends into the greatest role of McDaniel's career, Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). Mammy is, in a number of ways, superior to most of the white folk surrounding her.

From that point, McDaniel's roles unfortunately descended, with the characters becoming more and more menial. McDaniel played on the "Amos and Andy" and Eddie Cantor radio shows in the 1930s and 1940s, the title character in her own radio show "Beulah" (1947-51), and the same part on TV (Beulah, 1950).From Wikipedia
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedian. For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975, and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
In addition to acting, McDaniel recorded 16 blues sides between 1926 and 1929 and was a radio performer and television personality; she was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. Although she appeared in more than 300 films, she received on-screen credits for only 83. Her best known other major films are Alice Adams, In This Our Life, Since You Went Away, and Song of the South.
McDaniel experienced racism and racial segregation throughout her career, and as a result, she was unable to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because it was held in a whites-only theater. At the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, she sat at a segregated table at the side of the room. In 1952, McDaniel died of breast cancer. Her final wish, to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery, was denied because at the time of her death, the graveyard was segregated.
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