The rumors have been rampant: Indignant protestors mad concerning the characters actor Hattie McDaniel performed, tossed her Oscar into the Potomac River throughout uprisings within the 60s. The plaque was misplaced in a basement at Howard College many years in the past. However the actuality is for years, nobody has recognized precisely what occurred to the Academy Award McDaniel bequeathed to the college upon her demise in 1952. However on Sunday, the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences lastly determined to exchange the lacking Oscar for McDaniel’s 1940 Greatest Supporting Actress award.
The Oscar — for McDaniel’s efficiency as “Mammy” within the 1939 epic “Gone With the Wind” — was the primary awarded to a Black actor. For years, members of the family, followers and fellow actors have urged the Movie Academy to exchange the Oscar. Their request fell on deaf ears – till now.
Actress and Howard graduate Phylicia Rashad, the dean of the college’s Chadwick A. Boseman Faculty of Nice Arts was a pupil when the Oscar was proudly on show at Howard. Talking earlier than a packed viewers at Howard’s Cramton Auditorium Sunday, she recalled how heartbroken she was to be taught that within the late 60s or 70s, the Oscar mysteriously vanished.
“For a younger aspiring artist, a pupil, a would-be actress, having the ability to see that each day was an affirmation,” stated Rashad, who’s greatest recognized for her position as Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Present.”
Rashad — who accepted the alternative Oscar together with Howard President Ben Vinson III and Kevin John Goff, McDaniel’s great-grandnephew — known as the occasion not solely a celebration of McDaniel’s life however an indication of “the ability of intention.”
“It was Hattie McDaniel’s intention that her Oscar ought to be positioned right here at Howard College within the Faculty of Nice Arts in perpetuity,” Rashad stated.
Jacqueline Stewart, director and president of the Academy Museum of Movement Footage, stated McDaniel’s profession unfold effectively past her most iconic movie position.
This system included clips of McDaniel’s performances in “Gone With the Wind” and several other different movies, alongside together with her acceptance speech on the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony.
The youngest of 13 youngsters born to folks who had been enslaved, the actress labored each onstage and in movies; was one of many first Black ladies to sing on the radio in america; and finally was celebrated with two stars on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame and a U.S. Postal Service stamp.
McDaniel herself known as her Oscar win “one of many happiest moments of my life,” in her acceptance speech.
“It has made me really feel very, very humble and I shall at all times maintain it as a beacon for something I could possibly do sooner or later,” she continued. “I sincerely hope I shall at all times be a credit score to my race and to the movement image business. My coronary heart is just too full to inform you simply how I really feel.”
The second, nevertheless, was freighted with a blended bag of feelings for each the actress and different Black People. As McDaniel needed to get particular permission to even attend the ceremony because the resort internet hosting the awards had a strict ‘No Coloreds’ coverage. Even as soon as she was allowed in, McDaniel and her escort have been pressured to sit down on the very again of the room, and never on the desk together with her Gone With the Wind co-stars.
The second, nevertheless, introduced on blended feelings for each the actress and different Black People. McDaniel needed to get particular permission to even attend the ceremony because the resort internet hosting the awards had a strict ‘No Coloreds’ coverage. Even as soon as she was allowed in, McDaniel and her escort have been pressured to sit down on the very again of the room, and never on the desk together with her “Gone With the Wind” co-stars.
Black newspapers and political figures criticized McDaniel’s on-screen position for embracing a racial stereotype. The NAACP launched an all-out assault on McDaniel, that haunted her for years. Others attacked the movie for presenting a romanticized image of the antebellum South. The Black newspaper the Chicago Defender blasted the movie as a “weapon of terror towards Black America.” Blacks weren’t the one ones blasting McDaniel’s roles. Whites hated the sassiness of her characters. For McDaniel, discovering her place in Hollywood was a continuing wrestle. Nonetheless, she persevered. And that fortitude was remembered on Sunday evening.
Members of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority have been additionally in attendance, to pay homage to McDaniels, who was a founding member of the sorority’s Los Angeles chapter in 1939.
Defender Managing Editor ReShonda Tate, who’s releasing a historic fiction guide on Jan. 30, 2024 concerning the lifetime of Hattie McDaniel known as The Queen of Sugar Hill, attended the occasion. Go to www.ReshondaTate.com for extra info and to pre-order the guide.
