African American Actresses: Maids and Mammies
Louise Beavers
Birth: March 8, 1902, Cincinnati, Ohio
Death: October 26, 1962, Hollywood, California
For three decades, starting in the late twenties, Louise Beavers played a maid in dozens of movies. She usually played the same sweet-tempered woman, but within the limitations of her roles, she still earned the praise of movie critics.
Louise started out working as a dressing room attendant. She had her first contact with Hollywood when she was a maid for silent movie actress Leatrice Joy. Her first stage performances were in minstrel shows. It was with that performing group that she was discovered and cast in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927).
From that year on, Louise worked steadily in the movies, though at first she still occasionally had to be a maid to make ends meet. To fit the stereotype of the large mammy, she had to overeat, and even then she often had to pad her clothing to look appropriately round.
In 1934, Louise won a lead role in Imitation of Life. In this groundbreaking movie, she was the first African American woman whose problems where treated as seriously as her white co-star's were. Though stereotypes and a soap opera plot tend to weaken its impact today, it is still inspiring to see her center stage.
Despite critical praise for Imitation of Life, Louise was not offered more starring roles. Still, she is a bright spot in many of her small parts. She's wonderfully sly as Jean Harlow's maid in Bombshell(1933) and she makes a gently wise speech to Carole Lombard in Made for Each Other (1939). She also had a more dignified role as Jackie Robinson's mother in The Jackie Robinson Story.
Louise then appeared on the fifties television show Beulah, where she played a good-hearted maid. However, she declined to continue with the show after appearing for a year. She finished the decade with a handful of television and movie performances.
Louise made her last movie The Facts of Life in 1960. She died of a heart attack two years later. She left behind her husband Leroy Moore, they had no children.
Movies:
She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Bombshell (1933)
Imitation of Life (1934)
Made For Each Other (1939)
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Hattie McDaniel
Birth: June 10, 1895, Wichita, Kansas
Death: October 26, 1952
While Louise Beavers played the sweet, beaming maid, Hattie McDaniels was the strong-willed and often cantankerous queen of the mammies. She was also the first African American to win an Academy Award.
Hattie began her career as a singer, in church as a child and on the road with a tent show as a teenager. In the 1920's she became one of the first (possibly the first) African American women to sing on the radio. By the early thirties she was in Hollywood, working as an extra. She soon graduated to small speaking parts.
Hattie always played a maid, but her characters tended to be strong women with a mind of their own. In Alice Adams (1935) she steals the movie in her single scene as a surly, gum-snapping maid. She totally avoids the grinning stereotype and it would not be the only time in her career that she would.
After dozens more movies, Hattie won a substantial role in Gone With the Wind (1939). This is the part that she is best remembered for, and deservedly so. As Mammy, she had a depth that African Americans had rarely been allowed to show before. She earned her Academy Award for this role. Though she received the biggest ovation the night of the awards ceremony, she was still forced to sit in the back of the auditorium.
Hattie always said that she would rather play a maid than be one, but even that option was limited after Gone With the Wind. The mammy stereotype was becoming dated and ironically, the disappearance of this negative image also put a lot of African American movie actors out of work. Though Hattie continued to work throughout the forties, she was not as prolific as she had been in the thirties.
She originated the lead role of Beulah on the radio and then brought it to television in 1950. She died of breast cancer two years later. Hattie had ended her fourth marriage that same year.
Movies:
Alice Adams (1935)
Show Boat (1936)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
The Great Lie (1941)
Butterfly McQueen
Birth: January 7, 1911, Tampa, Florida
Death: December 22, 1995, Augusta, Georgia
Hattie McDaniel wasn't the only African American actress to make an impact in Gone With the Wind (1939). Playing a character that was practically opposite the strong-willed Mammy, Butterfly McQueen won immediate fame for her portrayal of the servant girl Prissy. Her high-pitched voice and frantic, but perfectly controlled, comic performance are a welcome relief in some of the most tension-filled scenes in the movie.
After her movie debut in Gone With the Wind, Butterfly only appeared in a few more roles. By the late forties, she had essentially retired. In the seventies and eighties she made a few more movies and television shows, but overall, she never had much of a chance to make an impact on the screen.
When she couldn't make it in Hollywood, Butterfly moved to New York and struggled to make ends meet with a series of menial jobs. She then returned to Broadway in 1968 for Curley McDimple. Her success in that production led to her own show called McQueen and Friends. She was also highly acclaimed in her role as an elevator operator in Three Men on a Horse. Butterfly also returned to school, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York College in 1975.
After essentially fading from public view, Butterfly was in the news again when she sued Greyhound Buslines in 1980. While standing in a bus station to eat a snack, she had been accosted by a guard who thought she was a pickpocket. She was thrown onto a bench and several of her ribs were injured. After a four-year court battle, she was awarded $60,000.
Butterfly spent the remainder of her life in New York and Georgia. She was a community volunteer in both places, devoting herself entirely to helping others. She died in 1995 after being badly burned while attempting to light a kerosene heater. The communities she served mourned the loss of this generous woman.
Movies:
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Articles in this Topic
