Sharyll Burroughs

Guest

Valerie C. Woods, is a writer/producer in television and film as well as a publisher, editor, and author. In 2022 she was a writer/co-executive producer on Season 1 of the Disney+ Emmy winning series, The Crossover. She also worked in the same capacity for the limited series The Big Cigar, now streaming on Apple TV+. Woods is currently developing, through her MCV Productions banner, a limited series based on Wrapped in Rainbows – The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, the award-winning biography written by Valerie Boyd.

PRODUCERS: Amy and Nancy Harrington, Vikki Mee

EDITORS: Amy and Nancy Harrington 

Music: Airtone - reNovation 

Transcript

<MUSIC>

(Prelude) Valerie C. Woods: Would they have preferred that she trade sexual favors like many white actresses did for studio bosses to get roles?

(Intro.) Sharyll Burroughs: This is The Hattie Project. I'm Sharyll Burroughs. 

My guest is Valerie C. Woods, a writer, producer in television and film, as well as a publisher, editor, and author. In 2022, she was a writer, co-executive producer on season one of the Disney Plus Emmy winning series, “The Crossover.” She also worked in the same capacity for the limited series, “The Big Cigar,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

In her 25 plus years as a member of WGAW, Valerie has written one hour drama series for CBS, Lifetime, Netflix, OWN, and Showtime. Her writer-producer credits include “Sweet Magnolias,” “Clean Sugar,” and “Any Day Now.” Her “Family is Family,” episode for “Any Day Now” was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. 

Woods is currently developing through her MCV Productions banner, three projects. A limited series based on Valerie Boyd's award-winning biography, “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston.” An episodic TV series adapted from Rebecca Weatherspoon's romance trilogies, “A Cowboy to Remember” and “The Cowboys of California.” And lastly, a screenplay adaptation of “Homecoming,” the historical Christmas romance written by NAACP award winning author Beverly Jenkins. 

Woods is a screenwriting mentor at the University of Georgia's Low Residency MFA in Narrative Media Writing.

Sharyll Burroughs: I thought it would be interesting to begin our conversation about Hattie McDaniel at the pinnacle of her career as a successful black actress in Hollywood. For instance, in 1937, she was cast in 14 films. Her salary for some of those films was $150 a day, which in 2024 is equivalent to a little over $3,200 a day.

But when describing Hattie's era, the era of racial segregation, which was legal in America, words like suffering, injustice, and struggle are used. But the past few years I've noticed that the term black excellence has become popular, not only within African American culture, but within culture at large, as if it's something contemporary and new, rather than it having any historical relevance.

So, I'd really love to hear your opinion about black excellence, just in general, and how you view Hattie McDaniel within that context. 

Valerie C. Woods: Well, actually, I believe black excellence has been something that has been in the culture since emancipation. It is something that I think freedmen and women wanted to excel and prove themselves.

And it's something that we've been striving for years, and it changes with each era what constitutes black excellence. I think in really early days it was being educated, and to some extent that's still the case. Getting degrees and excelling in, uh, university or law or doctors, things like that.

But, um, I think now it's more like how much money do you have? How are you using that money? How well you dress? But, you know, we've been, I think, culturally dressing well and, uh, having nice things has always been something that we strive for. So black excellence is not anything new. It's something that, um, because of the way African Americans, especially, are viewed in this country.

We're all striving for that. And I also think Hattie McDaniel was someone who did the best that she could with what she had. And in the time period that she was living in. I mean, when we talk about, I mean, like you said earlier, it is, um, segregation, racial segregation was legal. So, everything in the country was racialized.

And so how do you, I'll go back to that quote from Toni Morrison, the whole purpose of racism is a distraction. It's, oh, someone says you don't. You don't know literature. Oh, I'm going to prove it by writing something wonderful, just like your European writers. Um, or you say, I don't have a history. Let me prove my history. Um, so it's always this trying to prove and prove.

So, it's, um, even in my upbringing, it's like you want to be the best that you can be. And what I find to be interesting is what is your personal best as opposed to proving something to an outside world and basically proving it not only to a mainstream world, um, but also within your own community. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Well, it's interesting that you say that because the way that I think about black excellence is in terms of, yes, people sort of base their success on making a lot of money and then they go and buy a lot of things and those things portray or convey, oh, look at me, I'm this, this and this. But I also think of money sort of as the great emancipator, because what money does is allows independence. The idea of personal agency and independence within the African American community is not talked about very much.

Because it's sort of the idea that by copying white people, then we've made it. But what independence allows is just for you to make your own decisions on your own, based on what's happening in your own life. So, in terms of, you know, what Hattie did, yeah, she had all the trappings. She had a big house, you know, nice car, fine clothes. Uh, she gave fabulous parties where the king of Hollywood attended, Clark Gable attended. So that made all the other white people in Hollywood feel like they had to be at Hattie's house too, which I find hysterical. But anyway, she used her money to support her extended family. She did philanthropic work.

I mean, she really was very generous with what she had, but it was all because of her black excellence. Was all due to her innate gift as a performer. As I said in the prior episode, her father was a visionary and he encouraged all of his children to go into show business. So, it's not surprising that she had this ambition and confidence to go to Hollywood.

Um, and when she got there, she specialized in comedic roles. But unfortunately, the only roles that she could book were servants, maids, cooks, mammies, um, which were all perceived to be racial stereotypes. Her black excellence is being conveyed through her gifts; however she's being constrained by the outside world into these roles that were perceived as stereotypes.

Do you think her characterizations were really stereotypes? 

Valerie C. Woods: I think her characterizations were what the studios were willing to portray. And to this day, it's true. What are the studios willing to portray? Um, the people with the money who are making the movies. I mean, it is show business. And what are the people who are making the movies?

Um, going to present, um, were they stereotypes, were they stereotypes or archetypes or, you know, it's, um, when you think about, um, the movies are, that were made during that golden age of movies, wealthy white people had servants, and those wealthy white people had black servants, for the most part. And so, that was a reality and I don't think you can really talk about she chose to play those roles. The question is what other roles were there? What was being offered? Did she have the wherewithal to make her own movies? But then the question is making a movie is only a small part of the film business. You gotta market your movie.

You gotta distribute your movie. You have to find an audience for your movie. And yes, there were many movies that were made. In fact, um, uh, Norman Studios in Oklahoma, they were making race movies as they called them. But in Hollywood, I think they were producing a brand and a product and not just for black actors.

When you look at the men, the roles that men played, white men heroes and the women, you know, um, they were branded as well. There was a product they wanted to sell America and this was their product and it was across the board. And the thing is, you know, the argument about we're moving away from, you know, these antebellum movies and slavery and stuff like that.

And this was in 1939. We have those same conversations in 2024 in the 21st century. And so how much has changed. It's really a, um, we have a troubled history of portraying our history. And what is acceptable and what do people want to see and what will they purchase tickets to see or watch on the streaming services or a network. And who is it that's bringing in the money? I mean they did studies to show that studios are willingly losing money by not producing content for black audiences.

The studies show how these. How product that have themes of black culture make money, but they toss it away and say, “Oh, no, that's just, um, that's an exception,” or “It won't play overseas, unless it's an action movie.” And it has been proven again and again, that that's a myth, but it still hasn't changed. So.

What power she had to make a living in the movies, you got to think of the time period that she lived in the reality of the world in America at that time, and either you worked or you didn't. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Well, she did the best with what she could do in terms of the roles themselves. For people who aren't really familiar with what a stereotype is I'll just try to explain within the context of the African American experience.

So, any characterization, whether it's a speech pattern, whether it's the way the person looks, um, anything that demeans that human being or the culture is considered a stereotype. So, the roles that Hattie played, the maids, the servants, the mammies, there was a speech affectation, and the only way I can explain it is Pidgin English, where the grammar wasn't correct, the enunciation and pronunciation was not correct.

She did her best to try to subvert what her character was actually doing, what her character was actually representing. So, for instance one employer has said something and the maid rolls her eyes, or she's a little bit sassy, you know, and whether the director caught it or not was the issue, but if she could get away with it, black audiences usually understood what she was doing because a maid in real life could get fired for doing that with a white employer. When people think of stereotypes, they think that they're mocking the human being. They're not mocking the human being. It's mocking the perception, the characterization and I'll give you a modern example, Quentin Tarantino's movie, Django Unchained. Sam Jackson played a character named Steven who was the Uncle Tom, or the characterization the Uncle Tom. He worked in the big house. So, he was an enslaved man who was owned by the Leonardo DiCaprio character, the plantation owner named Calvin Candy. Stephen ran that plantation, and when Candy was away, Stephen was the one that was in charge. His character subverted the stereotype of the Uncle Tom by flipping it on its head.

And saying, no, this character is going to have almost as much power as the Plantation Lord. That's subversion. Hattie tried to do the same thing. I like that you brought up the Toni Morrison quote. I'm going to read the whole quote because it's lengthy, but I'm going to read the first lines. “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.

It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being.” Hattie's reason for being was to excel at her craft, to have her artistry appreciated. She had a reputation for campaigning for roles. She would ingratiate herself to racist studio bosses by bringing them baked goods as a sort of lesser version of a Mammy character. People in the African American community did not like it one bit.

Valerie C. Woods: Would they have preferred she trade sexual favors like many white actresses did? For studio bosses to get roles. I mean, the casting couch is alive and well, and it was like flourishing. At that time, every actor campaigned for a role. You did what would get you the role? And, um, you know, Hedy Lamar had a quote about actresses, and it's like, you know, in the business there's an agent, a writer, a producer, and a, and somebody else, a director, and you need to, uh, have sex with each of them in that order.

So it's, um, Hollywood is notorious for that. I find her campaigning to be smart. It's something that all actors did, male and female. And they did them in different ways. And she knew what was expected. She knew what the roles were. She knew she wasn't going to play a lawyer. Or a doctor or any professional person because that just did not happen.

It's not that black people didn't have those positions, but nobody in Hollywood was making movies about them. And so what, what else was she supposed to do? 

Sharyll Burroughs: Well, who are we to judge just, you know, on any level, you know. 

Valerie C. Woods: Exactly. I mean, I, you know, I was working on a TV show and an actor auditioned for me, and then he sent me a pizza and, um, with the Marvin the Martian toy.

It's like, this is, that was, That's what actors do. It's, and when you say racist studio bosses, I think the thing is America was racist. So why would studio bosses be any different? It's, you know, to frame, you know, the, when we talk about, um, you know, And I mentioned this before, you know, Zora Neale Hurston had a similar thing about, well, the best quote is the title of a collection of her stories, hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick.

These were the cards you were dealt. This is the world you're living in and there's something you want to accomplish. Now how are you gonna do it? You know that what you wanna do is worthy and you know what the guardrails are, who are guarding the doors of opportunity. So how do you get through the door and you find a way outta no way, as is a cultural aphorism. 

And so, you know. I don't know what I would have been like in 1939, trying to make it in Hollywood. I probably would change professions and be a teacher maybe. Um, but if you feel like you can make a change, and she did, she brought something to her roles that got her that Oscar nomination. And, um, she put, and I don't think it was because she portrayed, um, I don't think she was a stereotype because she brought humanity to that character and just like Sam Jackson and Django's, he ran that plantation next to the, you know, second in command, she brought a humanity to this character that surpassed. I mean, she was nominated for this role alongside Olivia de Havilland, and she was the winner because of the humanity she brought to that role.

She didn't play Mammy for laughs. She didn't play her for, uh, comic relief. She was part and parcel of that time period, and she was a human being. 

Sharyll Burroughs: The character that you're referring to is 

Valerie C. Woods: Mammy in “Gone with the Wind.” 

Sharyll Burroughs: And she was. cast in 1939, and it was a role she desperately, desperately wanted. There are lots of people who have no idea what “Gone with the Wind” was about, so I'll give a little capsulized explanation.

Mammy was an enslaved woman owned by Gerald and Ellen O'Hara, who owned a Georgia plantation called Tara. Mammy was a maid but had been a nanny to the O'Hara's three daughters, Sue Ellen, Corrine, and the film's protagonist, Scarlett, played by Vivian Lee. Mammy was a supporting character. Hattie was paid $450 a week. Olivia de Havilland, also a supporting character, portrayed Melanie Wilkes. She was paid $1,000 per week, but she was on loan from Warner Brothers. In your experience as a producer how are these types of decisions made? 

Valerie C. Woods: Well, of course, you have your budget. And how much did they have to play Vivian Lee and Clark Gable?

It's on a scale. Um, and you pay. Um, based on people's last quote, what they made in the last movie they had, but also whose name is going to bring people to the theater and the search for Scarlett O'Hara was, like friendships were lost because they didn't get cast as, as, as Scarlett. Vivian Leigh's British, you know, and it's like, wait, how did she get to be Scarlett? Um, and it's, um, those decisions are made. How long, how big a role they're supporting roles. I'm thinking of, um, “Shakespeare in Love.”

They're supporting roles that win Oscars who are only on screen for six minutes. Okay. Um, but, um, Judi Dench, I think one. Um, I think it was Judi Dench. What do I know? But, um, I think if you have Hattie McDaniel, 1939 and Olivia de Havilland, who has more screen time? 

Sharyll Burroughs: Olivia had more screen time.

Valerie C. Woods: Right. And who has more impact on the main plot?Olivia de Havilland's character was the opposite of Scarlett, right? They were, you know, head to head. Mammy's character was critical and necessary and accurate to the time period, but she didn't have as much screen time. And again, who's bringing the audience to the theater? Mainstream is going to go see an Olivia de Havilland movie.

Is mainstream going to come and see a Hattie McDaniel movie? All depends. No, I don't think so. You know, who's, who is going to do it? She did have a reputation that, um, people loved as the servant and the maid and the nanny or the mammy. Um, and was lovable and people, you know, responded to to that. But I don't know what that $450 a week looks like in today's money. 

Sharyll Burroughs: It's $9,000 in today's money. 

Valerie C. Woods: That's a pretty sizable salary to have. Was it racist? I don't think so. But we lived in a racist society. I mean, of course, that's going to play a part in it. So you do what you, um, I don't, here's the thing. And this is something that I think we need to look at. And I'm going to bring up, uh, you know, Mr. Perry. Mr. Tyler Perry gets a lot of bad press from a lot of um, the community, black community. But he gets equal praise from other sections of the black community because, of course, we're not a monolith.

He, um, he has an audience base who love the stories he's telling because they recognize themselves. And we can't pretend that the people in his shows don't exist. He's become a multi-million billionaire because people are flocking to his movies, his plays, and all those things because they love them. 

Um, I think that in that time period, Hattie McDaniel knew what was, um, knew where she fit in and could display her talents. Get compensated for that and use that money in a way that benefited her family, benefited her community. And, you know, we, we got to mention the quote, I could play a maid and get $700 or I could work as a maid and get paid $7. What do you want me to do? And she brought as much dignity as she could to that role. I was listening. Uh, there's an author, Rashonda, uh, Tate Billingsley, Rashonda Tate, who wrote a novel about Hannah McDaniel, “The Queen of Sugar Hill,” and she talked about in an interview. She was talking with her, I'm not sure if it's her mother, her grandmother. Um, hate, uh, she hated “Gone with the Wind” and her elder was like, what is it that you hate so much? It's like, well, she's playing this maid and it's, it's, it's, it's demeaning. And her elder looked at her and said, “I am a maid. Do you think I'm demeaning?” And the author said that was a wake up call for her because there are black women who are maids in white families and they support their families. They sent those kids to college on a maid salary, provided for them, gave them a home being a maid. And, and you talk about, um, Hattie's father wanting them to go into entertainment because he didn't want them to be maids and butlers. And the way to avoid that is to be an entertainer.

Sharyll Burroughs: So thinking about “Gone with the Wind.” The premiere was in 1939 in the segregated city of Atlanta, Georgia. And because it was held in a segregated city, Hattie was not allowed to attend, and she was also excluded from the movie program. Clark Gable, who played the lead role of Rhett Butler, was her very, very good friend, and threatened not to go to the premiere, but she talked him out of it. Why do you think she did that?  

Valerie C. Woods: I don't know. Um, the movie was a, was a blockbuster,and it was, let me give an example, a contemporary example. There was a recent, couple of years ago, uh, limited series on Netflix, on Madam C. J. Walker, and it was adapted from a biography written by um, A'Lelia, um, who was a relative of, a descendant of Madam C. J. Walker. She had given some notes on it, and there was, uh, the premiere, and a couple of weeks it was getting all of the the press. And people had worked hard on it, and she didn't really make any comment on it, until a few weeks later, when she wrote an essay. And the reason she held back was because she knew that a lot of people worked very hard and did a lot of good work. And she didn't want to muddy the water, um, during the premiere. Anything that, um, would indicate she didn't appreciate the work that so many people did. However, she was not pleased with it. And she made it clear in this essay, why and why she withheld her comments until several weeks later, because it is a business. And what the success of that movie, and I believe she said it herself, is that she hoped it would be a step forward. And if Clark Gable didn't attend and said why he didn't attend, what would that have done, not only to the progress of the movie, but to her career?

Clark probably would have been okay. You know, I mean, he'd done some, I mean, the history of Clark Gable is filled with scandal, uh, that was not really known to the public at the time, but he would have been okay. But what would that have, um, done to her career and her prospects. And also, you know, and the whole thing about the award ceremony when she was nominated. Oh, but she was at a segregated hotel. Oh, she had isolated seating. You know, she was, it's like, but she was in the room. The first black person to be in the room, and it's that is no small thing. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Well let's talk about that. Let's, let's go back a little bit right before the Oscar ceremony, because I want to bring up something about the performance.

She and Olivia de Havilland had one scene together. Clark Gable's character, Rhett Butler, is grieving. He's locked himself in a room with the body of his young daughter who died in an accident. A distraught and tearful mammy asks Melanie to speak with him because the child needs to be buried. Here's what Hattie McDaniel's biographer, Jill Watts, said about Hattie's work in the scene.

“It was the first time since “Imitation of Life,” now “Imitation of Life” was another movie about the African American experience that was, you know, completely different. But anyway, it was the first time since “Imitation of Life” that an African American actress had been permitted to show any range of real dramatic emotion on the screen.

And like you said, Hattie showed Mammy's full humanity. She just was amazing. That's what clinched her Oscar nomination. And as you said, the ceremony was segregated. It was held in 1940 in Los Angeles at the Coconut Grove, which was a club within the Ambassador Hotel. Visualize a banquet room with lots of round tables with white tablecloths and there are groups of people seated at these tables.

They are all white Hollywood. Hattie and her escort, as you said, are seated off to the side, isolated from her peers. But as you said, she was in the room and that means a lot. I'm sure it wasn't easy for her that evening. 

Valerie C. Woods: Well, I'd like to say something about living in that time. Not that I was living in that time. However, isn't this still the time of white only colored water fountains? The military wasn't even integrated yet. That didn't happen until World War II. At the end of the war, Truman, I think, finally integrated the armed forces, not that black people didn't go and fight. But they were separated. You grew up at a time where being isolated was the norm.

Doesn't mean it was right, but it was the norm. And any time I think you were able to get past that was a victory. And it was a victory for her to even be nominated. Um, when you look at what other, you know, when Sidney Poitier was nominated for “Lily's in the Field,” it was great because he was a, a great character. I love that movie, you know, because my father worked construction as well, and he dressed like that character. So. I think of that character as my dad. But, um, and he, he won his Oscar for that, but then, you know, the next time Denzel won for being a crooked cop you know. What did Halle Berry, she won, but was her character anything that you would say was black excellence? Um, she won the Oscar for it though, which is great. 

Um, And so this is the country we live in. It's a country that's based on isolation and racism and segregation. To this day, I think that to even ask if it's racist, of course it was, and it was the norm. And so, how did she feel, knowing what kind of world she grew up in? I have a feeling that she had hope that she was in a position where change was happening.Because she was the first and hopefully that things would get better. 

Sharyll Burroughs: Here's what I wonder, and here's what I think about just in general all the time. The tendency to fixate on the most negative thing when you have a situation with lots of different layers, there's lots of different things going on. There's lots of different contradictory things going on. So, for example, what I call Hattie’s sad photo, the photo taken of her after the ceremony. She's standing in the room alone. And she has a very forlorn look on her face. This photo that was taken 85 years ago is still circulating. She was so deserved of that award, she earned it. It, it was a wonderful thing. But that photo wipes out all of that. Oh poor Hattie, the indignities that she had suffered that evening. After the ceremony, still within the hotel, she was asked to go up and stand on the mezzanine. Below were hundreds of people, some of her peers had come to applaud her. And then the next morning, her win was on the front page of many of the national newspapers. Later that month, she threw herself a party to celebrate. During the party, she received a telegram with the names of 5, 000 fans. So, in looking at this, I guess I'm just trying to make the case of, you just never know what's really going on in a person's life. There's much, much more to what our eyes and ears are telling us. The tendency is to fixate on racism and make racism the problem. I'm not saying it's not a problem. But it's not always the primary story. 

Valerie C. Woods: I completely agree with you. Capturing a moment of any number of things could have been going through her mind when they took that photo. Um, or when that photo was taken. Because it probably wasn't the only photo in that moment. And so, I could imagine I've seen photos of myself Oh, you look so upset, you look so this and that, and I'm like Oh, I was tired. I wanted to go home. You know, it was or it was, you know, um, yeah, I had just, you know, dropped some or it was, or who knows what someone had said to her just before they that picture was taken, or what, you know, there were protests from the NAACP, both at the premiere and, and during this time as well.

So it's. Well yeah, damned if you do, damned if you don't, you know, she, who knows? I was just about to say that she was tired, or, you know, she wanted to, you know, you know that, you know, the ambassador hotel said she couldn't stay there, you know, um, there's no telling what happened in the moment. That that photo was taken, or even what the photographer said to her, if anything at all.

So, to use that as, oh, she was sad and upset at the ceremony, it's like, Mmm, she might have ate something she didn't like, or something, you never know. But, you can take any image and create your own story. And, uh, if it fits whatever narrative you want to tell. And it's really, um, you know, when I think about the controversy.

You know, especially the one aimed at the, aimed by, uh, created by the NAACP. You know, my thinking is why vilify the performer and not the creators of the culture?

Toni Morrison Quote:

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Sources

Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, Jill Watts

The Icon and the Outcast: Hattie McDaniel’s Epic Double Life, Vanity Fair, Hadley Hall Meares, 2021

Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel – Whoopi Goldberg produced documentary, 2001 

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

hattiemcdaniel.com

Wikipedia

Expand your mind:
The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel, Reshonda Tate