Hattie McDaniel: “Milwaukee was my Springboard to Hollywood."

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Photo courtesy MGM Studios

Hattie McDaniel and Clark Gable

Hattie McDaniel and Clark Gable

More than 80 years after the premiere of Gone With the Wind, Hattie McDaniel’s performance as a pre-Civil War slave is considered equal to Clark Gable’s portrayal of war profiteer Rhett Butler. The actress, comedienne and singer was 46 years old when cast as Mammy, Scarlett O’Hara’s sharp-tongued servant. The character’s backstory is that she was owned by Scarlett's grandmother and later raised her mother, Ellen O'Hara. McDaniel auditioned for the role but was told First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had asked that her own maid be given the part. Hollywood heavyweights Clark Gable and Bing Crosby intervened on McDaniel’s behalf.

Unfortunately, the racism and segregation she experienced all her life raised its ugly head once again when she was barred from attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta. McDaniel was also denied entrance to a cast and crew celebration at the nearby Georgian Terrace hotel. 

At the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in 1940, she was allowed into the Ambassador hotel’s Cocoanut Grove room but seated at a segregated table far away from her fellow actors, and she was not permitted to attend the celebrations afterwards. 

The youngest of 13 children, McDaniel was born in 1893 to formerly enslaved parents in Wichita, Kansas. Her mother, Susan Holbert, was a gospel singer, and her father, Henry McDaniel, was a Union soldier in the Civil War. The family existed in a state of poverty and the McDaniel children earned money singing and dancing in local shows. Within a few years they were traveling with different vaudeville, carnival and minstrel shows, where Hattie often performed in whiteface. She and her sister Etta started the McDaniel Sisters all-female minstrel show in May 1917.

Making Records

From 1920 to 1925, Hattie appeared with Professor George Morrison's Melody Hounds, a Black regional touring ensemble. From 1926 to 1929, she recorded 16 blues sides for Paramount Records in Grafton, Wisconsin.

In Chicago McDaniel joined the cast of a touring production of Show Boat. After a 15-week run in Chicago, the ensemble moved to Milwaukee’s Davidson Theatre. But in February 1930, the engagement was losing money and the Black supporting cast members were let go. Out of a job, McDaniel moved to a tiny apartment on N. Seventh Street. The 1930 Wright's Directory of Milwaukee listed her occupation as “actress.”

"I landed in Milwaukee broke," McDaniel recalled in 1947. "When I heard they needed a maid at Club Madrid, I took the job.” By the time she was 10, McDaniel had learned housekeeping, cooking and caring for babies. When her theatrical career hit an occasional snag, she was never too proud to return to domestic work. The notorious Club Madrid roadhouse was owned by Sam Pick, a legendary Prohibition-era gangster who survived two assassination attempts during his decades as a nightclub impresario.

As the ladies’ room attendant, McDaniel helped a woman who had too much to drink. She called a cab, paid the fare with her own money and sent the woman home. McDaniel was paid $1 a night and sometimes earned that much in tips. But she wanted to be back in show business and when Pick was hiring performers for the club, McDaniel asked to audition. That night Pick let her sing “St. Louis Blues” and several other numbers with the band. After her performance, patrons literally showered the stage with quarters and half-dollars that added up to more than $90. Pick put McDaniel into shows with Black singers, dancers and musicians for the next two years.

Breaking into Film

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Public Domain

Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel

In 1932, McDaniel left Club Madrid and found work in Los Angeles as a singer and an uncredited extra in movies. Her first studio contract was for Judge Priest in which she sang a duet with vaudeville actor Will Rogers. A year later she appeared as a maid with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, and Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in China Seas. 

After receiving her Academy Award, McDaniel was attacked by both whites and blacks for her films. Her portrayal of Mammy alarmed whites in the South who complained she had been too “familiar” with her white owners. Some members of the Black community sharply criticized her for playing characters that furthered Hollywood stereotypes of Blacks as lazy, dim-witted or violent. “I get $700 a week playing maids,” McDaniel fired back. “You want me to make $7 a week being one?” Not surprisingly, none of the A-list actors who had befriended her stepped up to help. The studio presidents warned them of angry whites boycotting their films, and temporarily halting their careers. 

Worse, the Milwaukee newspapers continued to describe Black women as negresses, duskies, ebonies or coloreds. They were large, huge, and plump with affable or boisterous personalities. Hattie herself was referred to as being “culled.” Faint praise for the first Black woman in the country to sing on the radio. 

In June 1940, Bruno Rahn, president of the Milwaukee Gas Light company, received a letter that said, “Gentlemen, I left Milwaukee because I was trying to get into the movies and didn’t take care of my obligations. Trusting this will prove my sincerity and honesty, enclosed please find a money order for $2.87.” It turned out McDaniel had overpaid by $1.11, and it was returned with congratulations from the company.

McDaniel played a servant in 74 films during her career, and appeared with Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Jack Benny, Olivia DeHavilland, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Ginger Rogers among others. She made 300 films between 1932 and 1949 and received onscreen credits for 83.

In 1952, Hattie McDaniel died of breast cancer at age 59. Her wish to be buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery was denied because the graveyard was reserved for whites only. Instead, she was buried in Rosedale, the first Los Angeles cemetery to accept all races and creeds.