So begins the movie “Gone with the Wind” one of the most celebrated and controversial films in the history of Hollywood. For me, it speaks to the mindset of Hollywood in 1939, the year this film was released. The story tries to make us believe that the South was better when slavery was enforced, that President Lincoln was practically a traitor for signing the Emancipation Proclamation and that blacks were, and would always be, inferior to whites, something “Yankees” could never understand. Though the film has a recurring theme of this way of life being honorable and right because it was rooted in the love of the land, “Gone With The Wind” is simply a romanticism of crimes against humanity.

Unlike many Hollywood productions, the issues surrounding this film extended beyond the studio and the big screen. Born on June 10, 1895 to former slaves, Hattie McDaniel’s memorable role of Mammy became the subject of much controversy. Starting out as a blues singer, she is one of the first black women to perform on American radio, had about 40 performances in the 1930s, performing in 12 films during the year 1936 alone, most of these as the maid or cook for white families. McDaniel was cast in “Beulah” where she was the first black person to star in a radio program geared toward the general audience. During her career, McDaniel worked with Marlene Dietrich in “Blonde Venus” in 1932 and with Katherine Hepburn in “Alice Adams” in 1935. But by the time she died of breast cancer on October 26, 1952 at the age of 57, she would be most infamously remembered for her on screen performance in “Gone With The Wind,” and for her off screen defense of this performance.

The racial climate of the studio was discriminatory, at best, during the project’s production. MGM had ‘whites only’ and ‘blacks only’ signs on the bathrooms during the shooting, until a group of black performers threatened a work slowdown. Individual cars were sent for the white performers while the black actors, including McDaniel, had to carpool to the studio in one limo. It is said that that the studio heads viewed the higher salaries of some of the black performers as justifiable because “they were playing slaves” which “gone with the wind cast “

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