(mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story

Written by Joan Ross Sorkin, and starring Capathia Jenkins, (mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story is a play with music that reveals a side of Hattie McDaniel’s life that few people knew. Hattie achieved stardom by becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award, but she paid a high price for fame. By playing a succession of maids and cooks, most notably Mammy in Gone With the Wind, she became the target of an unrelenting campaign against “Mammyism” led by Walter White of the NAACP, who thought her roles were shameful and degrading to their race. Despite her own efforts to bring dignity and humanity to her roles, within seven years of winning her Oscar her film career was virtually destroyed.

The play is set in 1952 at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodlands Hills, California, where Hattie is battling breast cancer. In her weakened state of mind, she imagines that Walter White has come to visit her and possibly reconcile their differences. For the first time, Hattie directly confronts her most vocal critic to prove to him that she was in fact a credit to her race. In recounting her miraculous life story as the daughter of a slave who became a world-renowned movie star, Hattie proudly illuminates a life that was too often misunderstood.

(mis)Understanding Mammy is presented as part of the Emerging Artists Theatre’s TripleThreat Festival.

Tickets may also be purchased in person on the day of the performance at Theatre 5, 311 West 43rd Street, 5th Floor.

There is NO late seating for this production.