Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood

by Jill Watts Narrated by Bahni Turpin

Overview

From an accomplished historian comes an uncompromising look at the pervasive racism in Hollywood, as seen through the life and times of actress Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel is best known for her performance as Mammy, the sassy foil to Scarlett O'Hara in the movie classic Gone with the Wind. Her powerful performance won her an Oscar® and bolstered the hopes of black Hollywood that the entertainment industry was finally ready to write more multidimensional, fully-realized roles for blacks.
But despite this victory, and pleas by organizations such as the NAACP and SAG, roles for blacks continued to denigrate the African American experience. So Hattie McDaniel continued to play servants. “I'd rather play a maid then be a maid,” Hattie McDaniel answered her critics, but her flip response belied a woman who was emotionally conflicted. Here, in an exhaustively detailed and incisive text by a talented historian, is the story of a valiant woman who defied the racism of her time.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

In her imperfect yet fascinating biography, Watts (Mae West) unveils the largely tragic tale of Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Academy Award. Born in 1893, the youngest daughter of freed slaves, McDaniel sang and danced to help provide for her poverty-stricken family. Her early career as a comedian and singer garnered raves. She landed in Hollywood, appearing as an extra in scores of early 1930s films. Soon speaking roles in films like Stella Dallas led to her Oscar-winning performance as Mammy in the 1939 epic Gone with the Wind. This achievement marked the pinnacle of McDaniel's career-and heralded its collapse. Despite the complexity of her portrayal, McDaniel became typecast as the affable, disgruntled or tippling domestic. Although she'd educated herself , dressed elegantly and became involved in a range of political and social issues, McDaniel was hampered by studios that presented her as an eye-rolling, dialect-speaking Jemima. Watts's strength lies in her explication of the political and social conflicts in which McDaniel was embroiled. Yet her illumination of the complex actress herself is weak; she only comes alive in the book's final chapters. Nevertheless, Watts has crafted a compelling, disturbing history of blacks in early Hollywood. Photos. Agent, Victoria Sanders. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Watts (history & film studies, California State Univ.) previously considered the conjunction of race and white Hollywood in Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (2001). Her biography of Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952) underscores the tragedy of this transitional performer who was the first African American to win an Academy Award for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Though a multitalented stage, screen, television, and radio star, McDaniel was locked into playing stereotypical comic maid roles. Watts notes, however, that McDaniel accepted those roles, which gave her a lucrative salary and allowed her to maintain a wealthy lifestyle. Through personal correspondences, studio memos, and other primary documents, Watts suggests that McDaniel's career must be reexamined for its subversion of stereotypical "mammy" roles. Watts's book is more detailed than Carlton Jackson's Hattie: The Life of Hattie McDaniel and would best be read in conjunction with Donald Bogle's Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood. Recommended for all film and black studies collections.-Anthony J. Adam, Prairie View A&M Univ. Lib., TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Through research and interviews with friends of McDaniel, Watts explores the actress's life and career. Though she worked in a variety of venues, including television and radio, she was arguably best known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. When McDaniel signed the contract, in 1939, to play the part, she said, "This is a chance to glorify Negro womanhood-." The first black actress to win an Academy Award, she said in her acceptance speech, "I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race and the motion picture industry." For a time, she hoped that the award would mean more opportunities for her and a wider range of roles for black performers in general. That did not happen. Forced into continuing to play the role of the faithful servant, she was criticized by many members of the black community, including the press, for perpetuating negative stereotypes. The choice, as she saw it, often came down to accepting the parts she was offered and trying to give them worth or leaving the entertainment industry. Watts presents a fascinating and well-written study of a complex woman who strived for recognition as an actress and yet too many times was denied the opportunity to use her talents.-Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

From the Publisher

A provocative biography.” — Edward Rothstein, The New York Times on Mae West: An Icon in Black and White

“Fascinating. . .A compelling, disturbing history of blacks in early Hollwyood.” — Publishers Weekly

Edward Rothstein

A provocative biography.

OCTOBER 2021 - AudioFile

California State University professor Jill Watts’s newest effort offers a highly politically and socially focused examination of actor Hattie McDaniel’s life and career. McDaniel is best known for her Oscar-winning role in the iconic film GONE WITH THE WIND. Bahni Turpin’s heartfelt, evocative narration is remarkable as she tries her best to provide some enthusiasm and lightness of spirit to a relatively dry historical treatise, which listeners may find too professorial. On the other hand, the audiobook enlightens listeners with respect to the prejudices that worked against Black actors in the early era of Hollywood’s major studios and McDaniel’s assertive efforts to help broaden the scope of potential roles for them. Despite some frustrating aspects, overall, this is an illuminating biography of a noteworthy individual. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177205366
Publisher:	Oasis Audio
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	747,189

Read an Excerpt

Hattie McDaniel

Black Ambition, White Hollywood

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By Jill Watts

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2005 Jill Watts
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060514906

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Chapter One

Your Father Worethe Blue . . .

Your father wore the blue, greatest sign of free men history speaks of; wore it like a man and a soldier.

Roscoe Conkling Simmons to Hattie McDaniel,
January 5, 1945

In early spring 1915, the McDaniel family of Denver, Colorado, received a questionnaire from the United States Department of Interior. A survey of veterans, it was addressed to Henry McDaniel, a former Civil War soldier who had served in Tennessee's Twelfth United States Colored Infantry. In failing health and with a limited education, he called upon his youngest daughter, Hattie, to help fill out the form. As her father spoke, Hattie McDaniel carefully inscribed the story of her family, detailing the events of her father's life before, during, and after the Civil War. Indeed, that war had impacted both the nation and Henry McDaniel. He had returned from battle so badly injured that it would shape the rest of his life and, later, the lives of his wife and children. In many ways, although she was born almost thirty years after the conflict was over, Hattie McDaniel was a child of the Civil War. Her father's war wounds were a daily reminder of his fight for his country and against slavery and racism. On that spring day in 1915, many, many miles away from Hollywood, the town that would make her famous, Hattie McDaniel sat with her father, listening as he told her about his past and her history.¹

Born into slavery in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Henry McDaniel was never certain of his birth date. He thought it was in October, probably the fifteenth, and guessed that since he was able to work a plow alone by 1847, he must have been born about 1838. He seemed to have no memories of his mother or father. But he clearly recalled growing up with his older sister and younger brother on the plantation of Robert Duerson. Although Duerson was not among the largest slave-owners, he came from an old Virginia planter family that had held slaves for several generations. In 1840, when Henry McDaniel was still a toddler, Duerson had thirteen slaves, seven working his fields exclusively. As was Southern practice, only the very old and the youngest, in this case Henry and his newborn brother, were exempt from labor.²

By the time he was five, Henry McDaniel was put to work weeding fields and caring for Duerson's livestock. From the beginning, life was hard for Henry McDaniel. Slavery in the United States had first sprung on Virginia soil, and by the 1800s, the cruel institution was well entrenched. Slaves were defined as property and subject to the demands and whims of their masters. Denied all rights, including that to marry, to hold property, to possess firearms, to vote, and, in many places, to learn to read and write, those enslaved had no protection under the law. At some point, most families were broken up by sale. The labor demanded by masters was grinding; workdays lasted from dawn to dusk. Punishments for even the most minor infractions were often whippings, some so brutal that they resulted in death.³

Yet those in bondage resisted slavery in a variety of ways -- including working slow, pretending to be ill, running away, and maintaining separate and often secret cultural and religious practices. In some cases, slaves resorted to violence in attempts to win their freedom. In 1831, only a few years before Henry McDaniel was born, enslaved preacher Nat Turner led a group of fellow bond servants from Virginia's Southampton County in one of the nation's bloodiest slave uprisings. Although Turner's revolt failed and he was executed, white Virginians became obsessively fearful of further slave rebellions. Subsequently, the state tightened its already oppressive slave codes, stepping up the policing of the black population and suppressing the religious practices of the enslaved. But the slave community continued to worship despite these restrictive circumstances. Faith was a cornerstone of those in bondage, and their private religious lives stood as an activist rejection of white domination and the institution of slavery. By many accounts, as an adult, Henry McDaniel was a deeply religious man; his spirituality no doubt evolved during his formative years.⁴

Still, the daily existence of American slaves like Henry McDaniel was bleak. Planters maximized their profit by providing minimal food, clothes, and shelter. Most slaves lived cramped together in either cheaply constructed slave cabins or barns and outbuildings. Provisions were meager; the staples of the slave diet were corn meal and pork fat. Clothing was either hand-me-downs or made from a cheap burlap-like material called slave cloth. Although many masters provided shoes, they were poorly made and fit so badly that even in the winter, many slaves refused to wear them. Medical care was virtually nonexistent. Cut off from his parents, Henry McDaniel's early childhood was one of both hard work and hardship.⁵

About the age of nine, Henry McDaniel faced one of the worst of slavery's horrors. In 1847, Duerson sold him, with his eleven-year-old sister and six-year-old brother, to Sim Eddings, a slave trader from Lincoln County, Tennessee. Although the international slave trade had been outlawed, the domestic trafficking of bondspersons flourished. The cotton economy produced a ravenous demand for labor in the Deep South, and the price of slaves, especially young males, skyrocketed. Eddings was a well-known trader with a thriving business. He transported Henry McDaniel and his siblings to his marketplace in Fayetteville, Tennessee, where he put them up for sale. In autumn 1847, John McDaniel, a farmer who lived near the town of Boonshill in Lincoln County, Tennessee, bought all three. Henry McDaniel was certain it was the fall of 1847; he clearly recalled John McDaniel's flamboyant younger brother Coleman "C. A." McDaniel returning home from fighting in the War with Mexico. Although Henry McDaniel and his siblings escaped separation and being sold into the Deep South, their lives hardly improved. Henry McDaniel was immediately put to work husking corn. Throughout the winter, he chopped firewood and, the following spring, plowed John McDaniel's fields for planting.⁶

Continues...

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Excerpted from Hattie McDaniel by Jill Watts Copyright © 2005 by Jill Watts.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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