News

Inside the decades-old mystery of Hattie McDaniel’s missing Oscar

McDaniel married Howard Hickman on January 19, 1911, in Denver, Colorado. He died on March 3, 1915. She married her second husband, George Langford, in 1922. He died of a gunshot wound a little while after they were married.

She married James Lloyd Crawford, a real estate salesman, on March 21, 1941, in Tucson, Arizona. In his book Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle describes McDaniel as happily confiding to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in 1945 that she was pregnant. McDaniel began buying π‘π‘Žπ‘π‘¦ clothes and set up a nursery in her house. Her plans were shattered when she suffered a false pregnancy and fell into a depression. She never had any 𝘀𝘩π˜ͺ𝘭π˜₯ren. She divorced Crawford in 1945, after four and a half years of marriage. Crawford had been jealous of her career success, she said.

She married Larry Williams, an interior decorator, on June 11, 1949, in Yuma, Arizona, but divorced him in 1950 after testifying that their five months together had been marred by “arguing and fussing”. McDaniel broke down in tears when she testified that her husband tried to provoke dissension in the cast of her radio show and otherwise interfered with her work. “I haven’t gotten over it yet”, she said. “I got so I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t concentrate on my lines”.

Related Posts

Alice Dunnigan Left Her Mark as the First Black Female White House Reporter

The daughter of a Kentucky sharecropper, Alice Allison Dunnigan endured poverty, segregation and π“ˆβ„―π“ism as she fought to fulfill her dream of becoming a journalist. She went on…

Maggie L. Walker: First African American Woman to Found a Bank in the United States

Maggie Lena Mitchell was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 on July 15, 1864, the daughter of Elizabeth Draper and William Mitchell. Both of her parents were 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 into slavery in Virginia. Her…

Mary Elizabeth Mahoney – First African-American Nurse

Mahoney became the first Black woman to graduate from a nursing program and the first to earn a professional nursing license. She was one of 42 students admitted…

Mary Jane Patterson – First African – American Woman to Receive B.A. degree

Born in Raleigh, NC, Patterson was the oldest of Henry and Emeline Patterson’s seven 𝘀𝘩π˜ͺ𝘭π˜₯ren. By 1856 the family had settled in Oberlin, Ohio, which had a large…

Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet

Phillis Wheatley Peters was 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 in West Africa in 1753. At the age of eight, she was kidnapped, enslaved in New England, and sold to John Wheatley of…

LL Cool J’s 4 Kids: Najee, Italia, Samaria and Nina

LL Cool J wanted his 𝘀𝘩π˜ͺ𝘭π˜₯ren to have a humble upbringing Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic LL Cool JΒ does it all as a renowned rapper and doting dad. The hip-hop legend…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *