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Biopic About Oscar-Winning Actress Hattie McDaniel in the Works

McDaniel: Wikimedia Commons

History-making actress Hattie McDaniel is getting the biopic treatment. McDaniel — the first African-American person to win an Oscar — will be the subject of a film from producers Alysia Allen and Aaron Magnani, Variety reports. The project will be based on Jill Watts’ book “Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood.” Allen previously acquired the rights to the biography. No director or screenwriter is attached yet.

McDaniel is probably best known for portraying Mammy, Scarlett O’Hara’s no-nonsense surrogate mother, slave, and eventual servant in “Gone With the Wind.” She received the best supporting actress Academy Award for her performance in 1940. The child of freed slaves, McDaniel also performed in vaudeville acts and on the radio. She starred in the series “Beulah” and films “Judge Priest,” The Mad Miss Manton,” and “The Great Lie.” Although she was a prolific performer, many of her 96 screen appearances went uncredited.

The Oscar winner’s story was previously explored in the Emmy-winning 2001 TV documentary “Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel.”

“This was … really a bittersweet victory,” Watts said of McDaniel’s Oscar win in an interview with NPR. “She had hoped for a breakthrough role and she told the press that she anticipated one coming, but it wasn’t forthcoming at all. And then on top of it, it traps her kind of in between white Hollywood and then the African-American community. She’s constantly kind of battling that, looking for a balance, to continue to serve the community but at the same time to serve her ambitions, which is to succeed in white Hollywood, and the cost is tremendous. It’s a tremendous personal price she has to pay.”


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