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Hattie McDaniel's Groundbreaking Academy Award — Long Missing — Will Be Replaced With Statuette
Entertainers and friends posing together. From left to right are, Mrs. Eddie Green, comedian and radio personality Eddie Green, actress Louise Beavers, an unidentified man, actress Hattie McDaniel, and an unidentified woman.
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Los Angeles Public Library/Shades of LA collection
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says it will replace the lost Academy Award won in 1940 by Hattie McDaniel in the classic film Gone With the Wind. She won Best Performance in a Supporting Role, making McDaniel the first Black actor to win an Academy Award.
A historic and bittersweet win
McDaniel's performance as the enslaved servant "Mammy" took her to a segregated Academy Awards, the 12th ceremony, where she and her guest were seated away from the film's other nominees.
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Our Academy Museum podcast explored the double-edged experience of Hattie McDaniel on the night she became the first Black Oscar winner for Gone with the Wind.
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The backstory
McDaniel received a plaque, not the famous Oscar, for her win — which is what all supporting actor winners got at the time. She bequeathed her Academy Award to Howard University in Washington, D.C., upon her death in 1952. But it went missing in the late 1960s.
Why it matters
Jacqueline Stewart, director and president of The Academy Museum, called McDaniel "a groundbreaking artist who changed the course of cinema and impacted generations of performers who followed her."
What's next
Now the Academy says it will replace it — not with a plaque but a gold Oscar statuette. It'll be presented at a ceremony at Howard University's Ira Aldridge Theater on Sunday.
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