Hattie McDaniel’s Life ‘Beyond Tara’

Hattie McDaniel was the first African American performer to win an Oscar, as best supporting actress in 1939 for her performance as the O’Hara family’s beloved Mammy in “Gone With the Wind.” Nevertheless, some civil rights activists objected to the role and demanded that the actress move beyond stereotypical roles of maids.

McDaniel’s controversial career--she made more than 70 films--is examined in the documentary “Beyond Tara, The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel,” showing tonight on AMC.

Hosted and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the second black actress to receive an Oscar, the hourlong program examines McDaniel’s stardom, her civil rights activism and her death in 1952, along with her exclusion from the Hollywood Forever cemetery because of her race.

Madison D. Lacy, the executive producer of the documentary, recently talked about McDaniel and her life.

Question: Did AMC approach you about doing this documentary?

Answer: I didn’t have it in my mind to do a film like this. This is AMC’s idea. And essentially, although she wouldn’t want any credit for it, it was Whoopi’s notion. Whoopi suggested to AMC they might want to do this documentary based on some of the coverage that was given on Hattie’s memorial [at Hollywood Forever in 1999]. AMC asked me if I would do the film for them and I said yes.

Q: Did you have negative feelings toward McDaniel before you started the documentary?

A: No, not at all. I understand, having grown up in the South, the complexity of life for black folk in those times. Hattie understood the times she was coursing through and, as we try to say in the film, she did the best she could. What we try to do is to show that she was not someone who just fell into the movies and got lucky. I think she was deserving of everything she got.

Q: She was a tremendous comedian.

A: She was a comic genius. What you saw in the film were only a few examples of it. We strung out all of the films we could find of Hattie and all the parts she played and there are some things that absolutely break you up. You see that though she is confined to this particular role, she took the lemons and made lemonade out of it. She deserved to be in Los Angeles and be in the movies because she had a pedigree in entertainment that was just as rich as anybody else who was there in the ‘30s.

Q: I didn’t know she had been such a big vaudeville star.

A: She was a legitimate star. She was a singer. She was a dancer. The imagery we picked to accompany [that portion of the documentary] was not minstrelsy at all. We searched hard for just the right pieces of footage to show you what the traveling vaudeville black folk were doing in those days. She had a pedigree when she got to Los Angeles. She was very talented.

Q: Did the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People personally attack her because she was such a big star?

A: She was the most visible target. And in retrospect, it was not such a bad idea. It was the politics of the time. From what we have been able to gather, the NAACP had to frame [its protest] in the way they did in order to get the attention of people in Los Angeles. It was a two-pronged thing: Attack the most visible target of all and push an image like Lena Horne, who would lend a better presence on the screen. Framing it that way, it placed Hattie right square in the middle of it. She didn’t want to be there, but they felt that was the only way to get some attention and action from Hollywood producers.

Q: Yet McDaniel thought she was actually helping African Americans.

A: She worked not only for herself, but she thought she was working for future generations. She hoped that folks would come along and understand what she had to go through. She was hurt by the way she was being treated and the roles she couldn’t get and how the NAACP was pushing the image of Lena Horne over her. But the reality was that she knew Lena Horne hardly had any place decent to stay in Los Angeles. So guess who Lena Horne stayed with? She stayed with Hattie McDaniel. There were a lot of other stars who spent time in Hattie’s house passing through town. She opened her doors to young people.

Q: Did she film only one episode of the TV series “Beulah” before she was diagnosed with breast cancer?

A: It was rumored there was another [episode] but we couldn’t find it. Ethel Waters took over and hated the job. It lasted [on TV] for a while, but “Beulah” was only as popular as Hattie had made it in the radio days.

Hattie had been out of work for a couple of years [before “Beulah”]. When this came along, we tried to make it clear she understood that change was happening [for African Americans]. Here it is after the war and black folks in the armed forces have been integrated, and some of the early civil rights were beginning to happen. Hattie was extraordinarily aware of what was happening in the world. She knew she had a bit of an opportunity to exercise some power [with “Beulah”]. You listen to the early “Beulah” where a white guy plays Beulah until Hattie takes it over, and it is like night and day.

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“Beyond Tara, The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel” can be seen at 7 tonight on AMC.