Mammy

Hattie was born on June 10, 1895 in Wichita, Kansas, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a spiritual singer. At the age of 15 she won a medal in dramatic art, but later started her career as a band vocalist. She worked as a singer with Professor George Morrison's Orchestra in 1915, touring the country. She became the first African American to sing on network radio in the United States. In 1931, she went to Hollywood to seek a film career and began as an extra before capturing larger roles. When work was not available, she hired herself out as a domestic, a cook, or a washerwoman.

 "I had headlined on the Pantages and Orpheum circuits, but vaudeville was dead as last month's hit song. Milwaukee was really my springboard to Hollywood. I landed there broke. Somebody told me of a place as a maid in the ladies' room at Sam Pick's Suburban Inn. I rushed there and took the job. One night, after midnight, when all the entertainers has left, the manager called for volunteer talent from among the help. I asked the boys in the orchestra to strike up 'St. Louis Blues.' I started to sing 'I hate to see the evening sun go down'...I never had to go back to my maid's job. For two years I starred in the floor show."In 1932, Hi-hat Hattie (her nickname), made her movie debut in "The Golden West." She then appeared in a number of movies, including "Saratoga", where she sang with Clark Gable. Then she read Margaret Mitchell's novel and was fascinated by the role of Mammy: "I naturally felt I could create in it something distinctive and unique."

 David O. Selznick read that Elizabeth McDuffie, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's maid, was the star of the White House servants' amateur theater troupe. With Mrs. Roosevelt's permission, he tested McDuffie for the role of Mammy and reaped a harvest of national publicity. More seriously, he tested Hattie Noel and Louise Beavers for the role before he selected Hattie McDaniel.

Her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind brought her fame as well as unexpected criticism. She came under fire for continually accepting movie roles as a stereotypical domestic. But she pointed to the domestic work she had done during the lean years. Comparing the difference in salaries between working as a domestic and playing one, she says she much preferred the film work.

 When Gone With the Wind premiered in December of 1939, many of the stars were present for its unveiling. But none of the African American performers had been invited to join the party in still-segregated Atlanta. When Hattie's picture appeared on the back of a movie program, the Atlanta society had a fit, ordering that the programs be destroyed and new ones printed. Mammy's portrait was replaced eventually with Alicia Rhett as India Wilkes.

 But her recognition was yet to come. The Ambassador's Coconut Grove was decked out for the Twelfth Annual Academy Awards Presentation Dinner on February 29, 1940. Along with fellow cast member Olivia DeHavilland, Hi-hat-Hattie had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. By far the loudest ovation of the evening went to Hattie McDaniel as she won the Oscar, and became the first African American performer to win one. (It was also the last one for the next 25 years.) She gave her acceptance speech, ghostwritten by someone at the studio, and then broke down in tears of joyand left the stage. She had finally been  recognized for her superb portrayal of Mammy.

 After Gone With the Wind she appeared in such films as Since You Went Away, In This Our Life, and Walt Disney's Song of the South. She continued to make radio appearances and in 1951 entered the world of television with her character "Beulah." She starred in three episodes from TV's first sitcom to feature an African American in the title role before becoming ill and was replaced.

 Her career was stopped by cancer. Hattie McDaniel died on October 2, 1952. She was the first African American to be buried in Los Angeles' Rosedale Cemetery.

..........Mammy..........

 Scarlett heard Mammy's lumbering tread shaking the floor of the hall and she hastily untucked her foot and tried to rearrange her face in more placid lines. It would never do for Mammy to suspect that anything was wrong. mammy felt that she owned the O'Haras, body and soul, that their secrets were her secrets; and even a hint of a mystery was enough to set her upon the trail as relentlessly as a bloodhound. Scarlett knew from experience that, if Mammy's curiosity were not immediately satisfied, she would take up the matter with Ellen, and then Scarlett would be forced to reveal everything to her mother, or think up some plausible lie.
  Mammy emerged from the hall, a huge old women with the small, shrewd eyes of an elephant. She was shining black, pure African, devoted to her last drop of blood to the O'Haras, Ellen's mainstay, the despair of her three daughters, the terror of the other house servants. Mammy was black, but her code of conduct and her sense of pride were as high as or higher than that of her owners. She had been raised in the bedroom of Solange Robillard, Ellen O'Hara's mother, a dainty, cold, high-nosed Frenchwoman. She had been Ellen's mammy and had come with her from Savannah to the up-country when she married. Whom Mammy loved, she chastened. And, as her love for Scarlett and her pride in her were enormous, the chastening process was practically continuous.