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Hattie McDonald
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Hattie McDaniel: Headliner
A manipulative woman and a roguish man conduct a turbulent romance during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods. - IMDb
Hattie McDaniel: Quote
Hattie McDaniel: Pro Gallery
Hattie McDaniel plays the role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, the maternal figure-- now a stereotype and negative trope --of Black women in the Deep South raising white children for the family's they worked for. Stephanie Thompson writes about Mammy in her article, The Thorny Problem of Mammy, "Gone with the Wind is not a realistic portrayal of the slaves’ experience during or after the American Civil War. Nor did Margaret Mitchell intend for it to be."
If viewed from the lens of vacuity, a term introduced by James Baldwin in his book Notes of a Native Son, Mammy is an unbelievably inauthentic character which is unsurprising given Hollywood's past (and current) relationship with Black people. Compared to the movie Carmen Jones, a badly-sung, brightly technicolored opera, Gone with the Wind finds itself struggling with similar critiques about their vacuity, and "...The fact that one is watching a Negro cast interpreting Carmen is used to justify their remarkable vacuity, their complete improbability, their total divorce from anything suggestive of the realities of Negro life."
Hattie McDaniel: Text
(00:17:26) Mammy, is helping dress Scarlet O'Hara for the engagement party she is about to attend. Scarlett is pining over her crush, who is about to marry someone else, and Mammy attempts to talk sense into her head that she is not the object of Ashley's affection.
Hattie McDaniel: Image
"I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry."
Following her win in 1939, Hattie McDaniel continued to star in a multitude of roles in which she is a domestic worker, including Song of the South, The Male Animal, and In This Our Life. Facing tons of criticism, mostly from members of the Black community and especially Walter White, McDaniel allegedly said she would rather play the role of a domestic worker and be paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars, than to actually be a domestic worker and be paid less than $10 a week.
Hattie McDaniel: HTML Embed
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