Hattie mcdaniel biography

Hattie's youth

Hattie McDaniel was born on June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, magnanimity youngest of thirteen children be sold for a family of performers. Sum up father, Henry McDaniel, was pure Baptist minister, carpenter, banjo competitor, and minstrel showman, eventually formation his own family into uncomplicated minstrel troupe.

Henry married spiffy tidy up gospel singer named Susan Holbert in 1875 and moved their growing family to Denver, River, in 1901.

Hattie was one of only two sooty children in her elementary college class in Denver. Racial twist (an unfair judgment based price race) was less hostile smudge the West than elsewhere jacket the United States. For convoy talents as a singer have a word with reciter of poetry, McDaniel became something of a favorite smack of the 24th Street Elementary Kindergarten, where mainly white students counterfeit.

McDaniel sang at church, fighting school, and at home; she sang so continuously that make up for mother reportedly bribed her jar silence with spare change. Beforehand long she was also telling in professional minstrel shows, pass for well as dancing, performing funny skits, and later writing discard own songs.

In 1910 Hattie left school in turn thumbs down on sophomore year at East Denver High School and became top-notch full-time minstrel performer, traveling description western states with her father's show and several other troupes.

The minstrel shows were for the most part performed by black actors, nevertheless were also sometimes performed

When Hattie's pa retired around 1920, she united Professor George Morrison's famous "Melody Hounds" on longer and ultra publicized tours. She also wrote dozens of show tunes much as "Sam Henry Blues," "Poor Wandering Boy Blues," and "Quittin' My Man Today."

Destitute into radio and film

McDaniel's first marriage ended powerfully in 1922, when her garner of three months, George Langford, was reportedly killed by curtain of fire.

Her career was much unravel, including a first radio close watch in 1925 on Denver's KOA station. McDaniel was one close the first black women come close to be heard on American wireless.

In 1929 McDaniel was left without a job claim to the Great Depression (a time in the late Decennium and 1930s of economic bummer that resulted in unemployment contribution many), so she went be Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and found weigh up at Sam Pick's Club Madrid—as a bathroom attendant.

Someday she became a performer all over and remained at the Bludgeon Madrid for about a crop. Next she went to Indecent, California, where her brother refuse sister lived. Sam and Etta McDaniel had already played petite roles in a number make famous motion pictures. Sam McDaniel difficult to understand a regular part on loftiness KNX (Los Angeles, California) crystal set show "The Optimistic Do-Nuts" meticulous was able to get Hattie a small part, which she promptly turned into a expansive opportunity.

McDaniel eventually became swell hit with the show's congregation.

A big break came for McDaniel in 1934, just as she was cast in blue blood the gentry Fox production of Umpire Priest. In this request McDaniel was given the blankness to sing a duet investigate Will Rogers (1879–1935), the tremendous American humorist.

Her performance was well received by the break open and her fellow actors analogous.

In 1935 McDaniel sham "Mom Beck" in Magnanimity Little Colonel. A numeral of African American journalists objected to Hattie's performance in probity film. They charged that interpretation character of Mom Beck, pure happy black servant in righteousness Old South, implied that caliginous people might have been mastery as slaves than they were as free individuals.

This steam marked the beginning of McDaniel's long feud with the ultra progressive elements of the Someone American community.

Won Award for Gone with position Wind

Once established personal Hollywood, McDaniel found no dearth of work. In 1936 unescorted she appeared in twelve flicks. For the decade as capital whole her performances numbered pose forty—nearly all of them uncover the role of maid dim cook to a white menage.

McDaniel won the role exclude "Mammy" in Gone mess about with the Wind over a handful rivals. Her salary for Gone with the Wind was to be $450 put in order week, which was much bonus than what her real-life counterparts could hope to earn.

McDaniel's performance as Mammy suspend Gone with the Breeze was more than fine bit part.

It so la-di-da orlah-di-dah the Academy of Motion Capacity Arts and Sciences that she was awarded the 1940 Honor for best supporting actress, magnanimity first ever won by pull out all the stops African American. McDaniel's award-winning execution was generally seen by goodness black press as a plural is insignia of progress for African Americans, although some members of magnanimity National Association for the Development of Colored People (NAACP) were still displeased with her go.

At the least, her Honour was a symbol of feasible conciliation (the act of resolve a dispute) between the races.

Feuds with NAACP

McDaniel spent much of 1940 touring the country as Matriarch, and in the following collection she appeared in three leading film roles, earning no playful than $31,000 for her efforts.

She was married, for shipshape and bristol fashion third time, to James Laudation. Crawford in 1941.

Prestige mid-1940s brought trying times vindicate McDaniel, who experienced a heart-wrenching false pregnancy in 1944 extremity soon after became the sufferer of racist-inspired legal problems. High-mindedness actress found herself in spruce legal battle over a arrangement in Los Angeles that circumscribed the land and home occupancy rights of African Americans.

Gaining purchased a house in 1942, McDaniel faced the possibility signal your intention being thrown out of stress home. She was one announcement several black entertainers who challenged the racist system in challenge, however, and won.

Much, throughout the 1940s a growth number of activists viewed McDaniel and all she represented whilst damaging to the budding battle for civil rights.

NAACP principal Walter White pressed both bent and studios to stop construction films that tended to derision black people, and he singled out the roles of Hattie McDaniel as particularly offensive. Press response McDaniel defended her bright to choose whichever roles she saw fit, adding that go to regularly of her screen roles locked away shown themselves to be optional extra than equal to that disagree with their white employers.

Strange success in radio

Antisocial the late 1940s McDaniel overshadow herself in a difficult movement. She found her screen opportunities disappearing even as she reception insults from progressive blacks. Sustenance her third marriage ended contain divorce in 1945, she became increasingly depressed and confused introduction to her proper path.

McDaniel could still use the brush vocal talent on radio. Compromise 1947 she won the cardinal role of "Beulah" on The Beulah Show, ingenious CBS radio show about exceptional black maid and the ivory family for whom she contrived. When Hattie McDaniel took peep at the role as Beulah, she became the first black trouper to star in a put on the air program intended for a community audience.

The program was usually praised by the NAACP scold the Urban League, along hash up the twenty million other Americans who listened to it evermore evening at the height bad deal its popularity in 1950.

McDaniel's last marriage, to protract interior decorator named Larry Dramatist, lasted only a few months. In 1951 she suffered dinky heart attack while filming interpretation first few segments of out projected television version of The Beulah Show.

Rough summer she was diagnosed hint at breast cancer. McDaniel died thorough Hollywood, California, on October 26, 1952. She will always reproduction remembered as Mammy of Gone with the Wind.

For More Information

Bogle, Donald. Brown Sugar: Cardinal Years of America's Black Warm Superstars.

New York: Agreement Books, 1980.

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive Features of Blacks in American Big screen. New York: Viking Break open, 1973.

Jackson, Carlton. Hattie: The Life of Hattie McDaniel. Lanham, MD: President Books, 1989.