Hattie McDaniel and the legacies of Gone With the Wind and Song of the South

5fish

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She was the first Black winner of the Oscar... Here is a story about her time in Hollywood...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/oscars-first-black-winner-accepted-7743

It's been 79 years since Hattie McDaniel won for 'Gone With the Wind,' accepting her award at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Four husbands, a friendship with Clark Gable and 74 maid roles later, she died, her body refused by a segregated cemetery, her statuette now missing, but with her descendants devoted to her memory.

It's a good read... click on the video...
 

5fish

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Story of her statue... wiki...

Whereabouts of the McDaniel Oscar[edit]
The whereabouts of McDaniel's Oscar are currently unknown.[58] In 1992, Jet magazine reported that Howard University could not find it and alleged that it had disappeared during protests in the 1960s.[59] In 1998, Howard University stated that it could find no written record of the Oscar having arrived at Howard.[60] In 2007, an article in The Huffington Post repeated rumors that the Oscar had been cast into the Potomac River by angry civil rights protesters in the 1960s.[61] The assertion reappeared in The Huffington Post under the same byline in 2009.

In 2010, Mo'Nique, the winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Precious, wearing a blue dress and gardenias in her hair, as McDaniel had at the ceremony in 1940, in her acceptance speech thanked McDaniel "for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to".[62] Her speech revived interest in the whereabouts of McDaniel's Oscar. In 2011, J. Freedom duLac reported in The Washington Post that the statuette had disappeared in the 1960s, although McDaniel had received a plaque rather than a statuette.[63]

In November 2011, W. B. Carter, of the George Washington University Law School, published the results of her year-and-a-half-long investigation into the Oscar's fate.[64] Carter rejected claims that students had stolen the Oscar (and thrown it in the Potomac River) as wild speculation or fabrication that traded on long-perpetuated stereotypes of blacks.[64] She questioned the sourcing of The Huffington Post stories. Instead, she argued that the Oscar was likely returned to Howard University's Channing Pollack Theater Collection between the spring of 1971 and the summer of 1973 or had possibly been boxed and stored in the drama department at that time.[64] The reason for its removal, she argued, was not civil rights unrest but rather efforts to make room for a new generation of black performers.[64] If neither the Oscar nor any paper trail of its ultimate destiny can be found at Howard today, she suggested, inadequate storage or record-keeping in a time of financial constraints and national turbulence may be blamed. She also suggested that a new generation of caretakers may have failed to realize the historic significance of the award.[64]

Her gave:

In 1999, Tyler Cassidy, the new owner of the Hollywood Cemetery (renamed the Hollywood Forever Cemetery), offered to have McDaniel re-interred there. Her family did not wish to disturb her remains and declined the offer. Instead, Hollywood Forever Cemetery built a large cenotaph on the lawn overlooking its lake. It is one of Hollywood's most popular tourist attractions.[53]



 

O' Be Joyful

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She was the first Black winner of the Oscar... Here is a story about her time in Hollywood...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/oscars-first-black-winner-accepted-7743

It's been 79 years since Hattie McDaniel won for 'Gone With the Wind,' accepting her award at the Ambassador's Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Four husbands, a friendship with Clark Gable and 74 maid roles later, she died, her body refused by a segregated cemetery, her statuette now missing, but with her descendants devoted to her memory.

It's a good read... click on the video...
She did the best she could, whom are we or others to judge?

 

O' Be Joyful

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Addendum: I meant no disrespect to the OP or the poster I quoted. I have always viewed Ms. McDaniel--after learning more about her, long ago-- as someone who made the most of what she had, as well as giving back.
 
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