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Was watching a video of Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar Acceptance speech from 1940. Wooo. She thanks them for their kindness and promises to always be a credit to her race.
This was at a ceremony she was almost literally not allowed to attend; the hotel where it was being held had a strict no-Negroes policy.
Some studio ppl made some calls and the hotel compromised: she could come, but she had to sit in a corner and not with her white co-stars.
Some studio ppl made some calls and the hotel compromised: she could come, but she had to sit in a corner and not with her white co-stars.
Which is fitting, i guess: Gone With The Wind is four hours of Lost Cause propaganda — or maybe the fact that it was tedious and racist af was some kinda subversive meta commentary on America???
(a historian once told me that GWTW was directly responsible for the democratizing of the Confederate flag that we see today. before then, it was mostly part of the iconography of Klan members +ardent segregationists; after, it became a symbol of traditionalism + “rebellion.”)
So, uh, thanks for that Hollywood.
