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HATTIE "Mammy" MCDANIEL 1895-1952 Gone with the Wind Autograph PSA / DNA # 82021881 Rarest of the rare GWTW signed autograph.

First African American to sing on the Radio and First to win an Academy Award (Best supporting actress for her portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in Gone with the Wind) Very rare and difficult autograph if you are trying to put together the GWTW autograph cast set. An unknown male actor has signed the reverse.

Hattie was born June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas , to former slaves and Civil War soldier Henry McDaniel and Susan Holbert. Judge Priest (1934), directed by John Ford and starring Will Rogers , was the first film in which she would receive a major role. She had a leading part in the film and demonstrated her singing talent, including a duet with Rogers. McDaniel and Rogers became friends during filming. McDaniel had prominent roles in 1935 with her classic performance as a slovenly maid in RKO Pictures ' Alice Adams , and a delightfully comic part as Jean Harlow 's maid/traveling companion in MGM 's China Seas , the latter her first film with Clark Gable . She had a featured role as Queenie in Universal Pictures ' 1936 version of Show Boat starring Irene Dunne , and sang a verse of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man with Helen Morgan , Paul Robeson , and the African-American chorus. Later in the film she and Robeson sang I Still Suits Me , a song written especially by Kern and Hammerstein for the film. After Show Boat she had major roles in MGM's Saratoga (1937), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, The Shopworn Angel (1938) with Margaret Sullavan , and The Mad Miss Manton (1938), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda . The competition in Gone with the Wind (1939) to play Mammy had been almost as stiff as that for Scarlett O'Hara . Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to film producer David O. Selznick to ask that her own maid, Elizabeth McDuffie, be given the part. [10] McDaniel did not think she would be chosen, because she was known for being a comic actress. Clark Gable recommended the role go to McDaniel, and when she went to her audition dressed in an authentic maid's uniform, Selznick knew he had found Mammy. Gable was delighted to be working again with McDaniel. It was her role as the sassy servant who repeatedly scolds her mistress, Scarlett O'Hara ( Vivien Leigh ), and scoffs at Rhett Butler ( Clark Gable ), that won McDaniel the 1940 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress , making her the first African American to win an Oscar. She was also the first African American ever to be nominated. "I loved Mammy," McDaniel said. "I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara ". [16] Her role in Gone with the Wind had scared her Southern audience and in the South, t were complaints that in the film she had been too familiar with her white employer. McDaniel died at age 57, in the hospital on the grounds of the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills , on October 26, 1952.

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