Show Notes/Transcript
Ep.01
Hattie!
Guest
Hattie McDaniel Narration
Verneice Turner is an award winning actor, dancer, singer, and poet. She has appeared in Off-Broadway productions as well as numerous plays in the Buffalo, Western New York region. She most recently served as interim director at the Paul Robeson Theatre at the African American Cultural Center of Buffalo, NY.
Hattie McDaniel archival document courtesy of Vikki Mee
Part 2 Narration
Podcast host Sharyll Burroughs is an artist, dialogue facilitator, and consultant who explores the language of identity.
Bio
Transcript: S. Burroughs
PRODUCERS: Amy and Nancy Harrington, Vikki Mee
EDITORS: Amy and Nancy Harrington
Music: Airtone - reNovation
Transcript
<MUSIC>
Verneice Turner: When I read the book “Gone with the Wind,” I was fascinated by the role of Mammy. And like everyone in a position to give it professional consideration, I naturally felt I could create in it something distinctive and unique. My desire for the part wasn't entirely inspired by selfishness, however, as during 1938, I had my share of good roles.
Yet, “Gone with the Wind” seems more than any other picture to challenge an actor's capabilities and latent dramatic power. I visualize myself loving Miss Ellen, worrying over the willful Scarlett, respecting Gerald O'Hara, pinching and scolding the irrepressible Prissy, in short, sticking my finger in every pie cooked on Tara Plantation.
Now that I am working in the picture, I find there is something more than just working at my profession in doing the part of Mammy in “Gone with the Wind.” This is an opportunity to glorify negro womanhood. Not the modern, streamlined type of negro woman who attends teas and concerts in furs and silks. But the type of negro of the period that gave us Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Charity Still. The brave, efficient type of womanhood, which building a race mothered Booker T. Washington, George Carver, Robert Moulton, and Mary McLeod Bethune.
I knew that Mammy, in the Civil War picture, would have to wear a handkerchief on her head to depict her people in slavery. But this would only serve to emphasize the improved status of our race today. Important negro movements, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were not financed by our social register people. They were started and kept alive by dollars dropped from the gnarled hands of the common laborer, the washerwoman, and the cook.
I saw in the mammy of the O'Hara household the type of womanhood which has built our race, paid for our elaborate houses of worship, and sustained our business, charitable, and improvement organizations. This is the type that is responsible for the outstanding success of such children as Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes.
I am proud that I am a negro woman because members of that class have given so much. Bending their backs over wash tubs, they have smiled encouragement to daughters who wanted an artistic career. Hobbling about kitchens, they have inspired their children to become doctors of philosophy and law. This is the human side of the picture.
I think every negro who is fortunate enough to have large earnings can and should help his people build homes for the tubercular patients and contribute to the maintenance of unfortunate negro boys and girls. So many people have assured me they could see no one else as Mammy in “Gone with the Wind,” that I am very grateful to Mr. David Selznick and his staff for choosing me in the part. I trust I shall be able to live the part of Mammy on the screen vividly and warmly. And I hope the characterization leaves as warm a spot in the hearts of those who see it as I have in mine. For the mammies I know in real life.
Sharyll Burroughs: What you just heard are excerpts from a statement supposedly written by African American actress Hattie McDaniel. We know the first page of the two-page document typed by the secretary of the film's producer, David O. Selznick, is titled, “By Hattie McDaniel,” but lacks McDaniel's signature and a date. I really, really want to believe the eloquent and heartfelt statement did indeed come from Hattie. However, we'll never know for certain.
There are nonetheless many other things we know about Hattie McDaniel. We know her parents, Susan and Henry, had been born into slavery. And we know Henry joined the Tennessee 12th U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment to fight for the Union in the Civil War. We know the family settled in Wichita, Kansas, where Hattie, the last of ten children, was born on June 10, 1893. The McDaniels then moved to Denver, Colorado, where, although very poor, were, according to biographer Jill Watts, tight knit and creative. Hattie's preternatural acting and comedic gifts were undeniable. She declared, “I knew I could sing and dance. I was doing it so much that my mother would give me a nickel to sometimes stop. I always wanted to be before the public. I'm always acting. I guess it's the ham in me.”
I'm sure her father was fully aware of Hattie's gifts. I believe Henry McDaniel was a visionary. To keep his children out of tobacco and cotton fields, out of factories, out of white people's houses and kitchens, he encouraged them to go into show business. I believe he could see possibilities in spite of a racist society. As a formerly enslaved man and civil war veteran, he certainly wasn't deluded about the world he lived in. I'm sure he realized show business wasn't a panacea for or a shield against racism, but it did offer his children a sliver of opportunity to achieve the impossible: Financial prosperity, independence, some modicum of freedom and agency over their lives. And I believe every single fiber of Hattie's being embodied her father's vision.
She didn't waste any time. She threw herself into anything related to acting, from slapstick comedy to reciting Shakespeare. At the age of 21, Hattie and her sister, Etta, and please keep in mind, we're talking about the early 20th century here. Hattie and Etta formed an all-female minstrel show, the McDaniel Sisters Company, entertaining Black audiences with unconventional routines that mocked and subverted White minstrelsy. And we know that one of Hattie's most popular characters, a screwball, hilarious mammy, foreshadowed what was to come. The sisters eventually parted ways and for the next 20 years, Hattie showcased her talents wherever she could. To make ends meet, she occasionally took on domestic work, but she never, never lost sight of her dreams.
We know that in 1929, she appeared in the chorus of the Florence Ziegfeld Company production of “Show Boat,” which disbanded not long after the stock market crashed that same year. During the Depression, she found work at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin nightclub, first as a washroom attendant, and then, after a moment of serendipity, took the stage as headliner for the next two years. But the club became a casualty of the Depression. Faced with very few options, Hattie took the biggest risk of her life thus far. In 1930, she boarded a bus to Hollywood, California. I believe she had no doubt she'd become a successful film actress. Not only did her wish come true, the reality proved beyond her wildest dreams. 300 acting roles, a luxurious lifestyle, including a 17-room mansion where she held dinner parties attended by Hollywood luminaries, including Clark Gable, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, and Esther Williams. In 1947, Hattie became the first Black actor to star in her own radio show, the comedy series, “Beulah,” and subsequently starred in a 1951 television version at a salary of $2,000 a week. Hattie completed six episodes before suffering a heart attack, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis which proved fatal. Hattie McDaniel died on October 25th, 1952, at the age of 57.
I think she would agree that the most significant role of her life, which soon became the most controversial of her career, was her portrayal of Mammy in the blockbuster movie, “Gone with the Wind.” We know this life changing event may not have happened if not for her brother, Sam. A successful actor in his own right, Sam asked his good friend, Bing Crosby, to mention Hattie to David Selznick who eventually offered her the role. The film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's romance novel premiered in 1939 to great acclaim, but now, 85 years later, is considered to be offensive. Mitchell's glorification of an idyllic antebellum South, built upon the backs of enslaved black bodies, is a relic from a white patriarchal past best forgotten. In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to receive an Academy Award for her humanizing depiction of an enslaved woman. She said, “In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book.”
Yet the character infuriated Walter White, the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, as well as members of the black community, who in turn vilified Hattie. White even went as far as to publicly call Hattie an Uncle Tom. Why? Well, she had a reputation for ingratiating herself to racist studio bosses. And because her career consisted of playing mammies, cooks, and maids, it seemed as though she willingly participated in the perpetuation of racial stereotypes. Many African Americans perceived her actions as shameful and a betrayal, making Hattie's legacy somewhat tarnished. In the era of Black Lives Matter and a black culture still fighting for economic and social equity, Hattie is a relic from a painful past that is difficult to forgive.
That said, it's complicated. Hattie lived during Jim Crow, an atrocious period in American history when racial discrimination was not only legal, but African Americans were treated as less than human. And Hollywood, run by morally dubious white men, distinguished itself by being racist and sexist. Therefore, the types of roles available to Hattie reflected real world circumstances not in her control. Acting was important to her. She was a master at the art of satire. Her characterizations weren't literal interpretations of maids, but parodies, smart and sassy black women who were often outspoken and occasionally even talked back to white employers. By subverting presumptions of black inferiority, Hattie, at least in her mind, elevated the humanity of her characters. And although she valued artistry, in the end, acting was simply a job, a way to earn considerably more money than a servant's wage. She believed her success inspired and opened doors for black performers, stating, “I'd rather make $700 a week playing a maid than earn $7 a day being a maid.”
How could she have foreseen that making such a choice would alienate her from her own culture to such an extent, Hattie was treated as the “other” within the African American community. So, what should she have done? Should she have rejected the roles offered to her, conformed to the demands of those upset with her, or given up acting altogether?
In my opinion, reassessing Hattie's legacy from a historical perspective is not helpful. People tend to rehash history rather than finding new ways to evolve and move forward. Another problem is that history is often experienced as if happening in the present moment. In other words, History exacerbates painful wounds, which ultimately keeps us stuck in the past.
So how do we talk about Hattie's life and career? There are numerous biographies that offer traditional examinations of Hattie's life, but if history is to serve a purpose, we need unorthodox explorations and methods such as embracing contradiction, which I think can teach us a great deal about our assumptions and beliefs.
What would Hattie's life look like through the contemporary lens of identity or personal empowerment? How might this approach provide a better understanding of not only Hattie's choices, but the complexity of those choices? We need more nuanced interpretations of her experiences as an African American woman who happened to be a multi-dimensional human being. We should take our cues from Henry McDaniel and be open to new possibilities regarding what his daughter's life and legacy truly means.
My name is Sharyll Burroughs, and I believe a human life consists of more than one truth. Which is why I conceived The Hattie Project, where female artists of color reassess Hattie's legacy from a manner she richly deserves: With curiosity, respect, and grace.
Sources
Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel - Whoopi Goldberg produced documentary, 2001
The Icon and the Outcast: Hattie McDaniel’s Epic Double Life, Vanity Fair, Hadley Hall Meares, 2021
Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, by Jill Watts, 2021
Walter’s Thing: The NAACP’S Hollywood Bureau of 1946 –– A Cautionary Tale, Thomas Cripps (2005)
Journal of Popular Film and Television - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/JPFT.33.2.116-125
Wikipedia
Expand your mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Still
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Russa_Moton
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-McLeod-Bethune
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Russa_Moton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland Hayes