Black Academy Award Winners(I):Hattie McDaniel in Gone With The Wind

I did not know what to expect when I started watching Gone with the Wind. Racial epitaphs and slurs were engraved in my mind and I waited to hear them so I would not be too surprised when I heard them. The film is set on a cotton plantation called Tara in the year of 1861. Not too much is going on, oh yeah, the Civil War is about to begin. The movie is centered on the beautiful Scarlett O’Hara, the oldest of three daughters and a southern belle through and through. She has the tell tale problem of being lusted after by every eligible bachelor except the one that her heart longs for, Ashley Wilkes who is destined to marry her cousin.

While Scarlett is at a family reunion at the family farm, Twelve Oaks, where Ashley and Starlet’s cousin are also in attendance. Scarlett cant resist and corner’s Ashley where she confesses her love for him. Ashley brushes her off and is slapped by Scarlett as she says to him “Sir you are no gentleman”, all this being over heard by a rough and tough Rhett Butler, who has been disowned by his family.

Disrupted by the outbreak of war, the incident between Scarlett and Ashley is over looked. As the men rush off to enlist, Charles, whom she was girlishly flirting with at the reunion, asks Scarlett for her hand in marriage. For some reason she concedes only to widowed very soon afterwards.

Scarlett goes to Atlanta and shocks the city’s elite when she accepts Rhett’s dance proposal while she was still in mourning. Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, suspects the real reason why Scarlett is there and it is not to cheer up. McDaniel went on to become the fist African American to be presented an Academy Award for acting. Here is where Rhett proposed that he would win Scarlett over.

On her journey back home, she finds Twelve Oaks burned out and deserted due to the War. To her surprise she finds Tara still standing. With Tara pillaged by Union troops, and the fields untended, this is where Scarlett vows that she will do anything for the survival of her family by saying one of the most repeated lines in movie history, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

Parents out of the picture, Scarlett pulls her self up by the bootstraps and send the able bodied members of her family out to pick cotton. She show her brassiness when she takes on a Union soldier when he tries to rob her. With the Confederacy defeated, Ashley returns and confesses his love for Scarlett but tells her that he can not leave his wife, and Scar let’s cousin, Melanie.
Starlet’s father is killed and she is left to care for the family, and realizes she cannot pay the taxes on Tara. She knows that Rhett is in Atlanta. Believing he is rich, she has Mammy make an elaborate gown for her from her mother’s drapes. But upon her visit, Rhett tells her he is poor and that her attempt to get his money made her look foolish. However, as she departs, she encounters her sister’s fiancé, the middle-aged Frank Kennedy, who now owns a successful general store.

The next thing you know, Scarlett is Mrs. Frank Kennedy. She uses her wiles as a southern belle to be a head strong business woman, running her husband’s mill. She uses that wile to get Ashley to come and work for them and not the bank he was going to work at.

Just after Scar let’s husband passes away, Rhett takes his chance and asks for her hand in marriage. Though shocked, she accepts his proposal. Soon a daughter is born and Rhett tries his best to win the heart of Atlanta elite for the sake of his daughter. All the while, she is still in love with Ashley.

Starlet’s reputation is once again soiled as the town gossips over hear her talking with Ashley about the days of old. Rhett asks for a divorce, but not before Scarlett tells him that she is pregnant. The pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage after a nasty fall down the steps.
In the wake of their daughter’s in a tragic riding accident, Scarlett is asked by Melanie to look after her husband Ashley, who always knew that she had a thing for him. She also asks Scarlett to be kind to Rhett. Rhett decides to leave because Bonnie, their daughter was the only thing that was holding them together. Not that she is gone; there is no reason why he should stay. Scarlett begs Rhett to stay.

In the final scene, hope lights Scarlett's face and she emphatically states, "Tara! Home. I'll go home, and I'll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!"