What We Don't Know
About Mammy

by Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic

Talk about Hattie McDaniel and independent Black films! Click here.

As children of the post-civil rights era, exposed to big screen images a lot more diverse than those presented to earlier generations, perhaps it is easy for us to dismiss the predicament of pioneer Black actors who played roles of mammies, coons and buffoons. I have to admit, until I saw "Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel,"(premiering on AMC this month) I'd always viewed McDaniel as a sort of pitiful character who loved the actor's payroll too much to opt for dignity.

Even her famous quote, "I'd rather make $700 a week playing a maid than earn $7 a day being a maid," while bona fide Black girl reasoning, still sounded to me like an old-school version of the new excuse for lameness: well, the brotha or sista is getting paid. I dismissed her receipt of an Academy Award for the role of Mammy in "Gone with the Wind," as just another example of Whites rewarding a Black for being a good nig.

But this one-hour show, directed and co-produced by Madison Davis Lacy and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, widens the perspective on McDaniel and the times she lived in. Most of all, it provides a snapshot of the cultural environment in the first half of the last century, the particular choices she faced and how she tried to make the best out of what she was given to create a more sophisticated image of African Americans in film.

O.K. I can hear you scoffing at the term "sophistication" but this show reminded me that there are gradations to the role of mammy. Using "Gone With the Wind," the pinnacle of McDaniel's career, as an example, the program shows us how McDaniel raised the level of the character from a dumb, subservient big mama to that of a smart, opinionated woman who took very seriously the running of these White folk's household. She could warn Scarlet that a lady shouldn't eat like pig in public and she could try adjust Scarlet's dress so she wouldn't go out in public looking like some antebellum hoochie mama. McDaniel had the word nigger removed from the script and refused to make references to "de Lawd" in her dialogue. At the end of her career, playing the role of a maid on the radio show "Beulah," she insisted on complete control over the script. Before she took the Beulah role, it had been played by a White man.

"Beyond Tara" also reveals the ways in which McDaniel's hands were tied because of her Hollywood contract, which not only kept her typecast as a maid but also forbade her to lose weight. Finally, it explores the idea of success. What McDaniel thought was achievement as a creative artist was not necessarily appreciated by many in the African American community who, especially after World War II, were insisting on more uplifting images—despite their artistic interpretation—than those of Black maids and slaves.

Esther Iverem's reviews can also be found on the lifestyle and movies pages of BET.com

-- September 10, 2001

© Copyright 2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.