Hattie McDaniel’s Long-Lost Oscar Restored
No one knows exactly when and how the Oscar went missing, but it hasn’t been seen in 50 plus years…
Hattie McDaniel was the first black person to be nominated for–and win–an Academy Award. Upon her death in 1952, she bequeathed her Best Supporting Actress Academy Award (for her role in Gone With the Wind) to Howard University. The award was displayed at the university’s drama department until sometime in the late 1960s, when it quietly disappeared. Like the 2018 recovery of the stolen ruby slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, perhaps one day the mystery will be solved. Until then, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is gifting Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts with a replacement of the long-lost award.
Actor Hattie Mc Daniel c. 1940 with her original Academy Award plaque for Actress in a Supporting Role for Gone with the Wind (1939). Photo by Bettmann / Getty Images.
The 1 October Washington, D.C. ceremony ‘Hattie’s Come Home!’ will celebrate the life and legacy of McDaniel, her historic Oscar win, and reunite her Academy Award with Howard University–as originally intended. The event will include opening remarks by Tony Award-winning actor Phylicia Rashad, dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University, as well as feature performances from current students. “When I was a student in the College of Fine Arts at Howard University, in what was then called the Department of Drama, I would often sit and gaze in wonder at the Academy Award that had been presented to Ms. Hattie McDaniel, which she had gifted to the College of Fine Arts,” said Rashad. “I am overjoyed that this Academy Award is returning to what is now the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. This immense piece of history will be back in the College of Fine Arts for our students to draw inspiration from. Ms. Hattie is coming home!”
Reproduction of the original plaque of Hattie McDaniels Academy Award for Actress in a Supporting Role for Gone with the Wind (1939). ©Academy Museum Foundation, Photo by: Owen Kolasinski
There will also be an excerpt from Boulevard of Bold Dreams by LaDarrion Williams, a play about the night in 1940 that Hattie McDaniel made Oscars history and was recognized amidst the inequality of Hollywood. The 12th Academy Awards were held at the segregated Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, where McDaniel and her guest were seated separately from the film’s other nominees. As was customary for all supporting performance winners from 1936 to 1942, McDaniel received a plaque rather than a full sized statuette.
Representatives of the Academy and the Academy Museum will attend the ceremony, including Jacqueline Stewart, the Academy Museum’s director and president. “Hattie McDaniel was a groundbreaking artist who changed the course of cinema and impacted generations of performers who followed her,” said Stewart and Academy CEO Bill Kramer. In addition to presenting the plaque to Howard University, Stewart will also host a moderated conversation about McDaniel’s career in a panel that includes McDaniel’s great-grandnephew, filmmaker and actor Kevin John Goff, who oversees McDaniel’s estate.
Goff shared with Film Review, "Over the years I have worked diligently to make sure that the legacy of my great-grandaunt, Academy Award-winning actress Hattie McDaniel is nurtured and greatly respected. The reissue of Aunt Hattie's Oscar has definitely been long overdue. The mission to preserve and accurately share her accomplishments and impact on the world of entertainment was originally my father's quest, the late Edgar J. Goff, Jr. I took the baton from my father with the goal of making sure that Hattie's contributions to film, television, vaudeville, songwriting/singing/musicianship, and civil rights would not be forgotten. The reissue of her Oscar is one of the necessary steps in making sure that her legacy as well as the legacies of her performing siblings and parents remain intact for the foreseeable future."
A performer on stage, radio and screen, McDaniel appeared in some 300 films throughout her career. It would be 51 years before another Black woman would win an acting Oscar.
Watch the ‘Hattie's Come Home!’ ceremony: https://vimeo.com/event/3742785
To learn more about Hattie visit: https://hattiemcdaniel.com/
