What did Mammy from Gone With The Wind do all day long?

When not riding herd on Scarlett and the other O'Hara children, Mammy would have been the equivalent of a personal "lady's maid" to Mrs. O'Hara. She also oversaw the work of the rest of the household slaves. Think of her as the equivalent of Mrs. Hughes on Downton Abbey.

I read the biography of Hattie McDaniels's life and it was fascinating. She was a very intelligent person and she never had any children despite being married 3 or 4 times. Also, gay-friendly back in the day.

She sat around mostly on the back stoop, smoking, and watching stories on the O'Hara's old black&white RCA.

Mammy and Prissy would play some fast games of Euchre cards in a secret backroom when no one was looking. Prissy didn't know much about birthing babies but she was pretty good at cards.

If she was smart, putting ground glass into the family's food!

R2 cluelessly hijacks the thread and then proves too dumb to know about Hat's lesbo gigs. Ask Tallulah.

Hysterical how she would mutter to herself admonishing Scarlett for some lapse of etiquette.

You know what trouble I's talkin' 'bout. I's talking 'bout Mr. Ashley Wilkes. He'll be comin' to Atlanta when he gets his leave, and you sittin' there waitin' for him, just like a spider. He belongs to Miss Melanie...

"He belongs to Miss Melanie..."

He *belong* to Miss Melanie.

Cap'n Butler, how you talk!!

She shaved Scarlet's Puss.

R6 Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning? Snowflakes like you think that every celebrity out there is gay or lesbian in your own little world. Grow up.

The head house slave. Why would she break her back, there were plenty of slaves to do the work.

She was a credit to her race

"Get out of our way, trash!"

[quote][R6] Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning? Snowflakes like you think that every celebrity out there is gay or lesbian in your own little world. Grow up.

Hello, straight Republican. You don't belong on this site.

So just how realistic was Mammy's character? Would her masters really put up with her bitchy one-liners and sassy attitude in real life?

Mammy was a PA. She was Scarlett's personal assistant.

[quote]So just how realistic was Mammy's character? Would her masters really put up with her bitchy one-liners and sassy attitude in real life?

It was "beneath" them to acknowledge her complaints, so they had no choice but to let her grumble.

R11. This is a gay site fuckwad. Fuck right off to your breeder blogs you ignorant insipid count.

She and Walter Plunkett made a kick ass out of draperies!

R20 you just reminded me of the Carol Burnett sketch and that curtain dress. It still had the rod attached. I remember my parents roaring with laughter at it.

She sat around with Trixie and Alice and bitched about how much housework they had to do, while playing cards and taking Mambo lessons from Carlos.

I liked when she would mop the hall in front of the family room and loudly "pray" all her complaints knowing the family couldn't openly acknowledge hearing her...

Didn't she have a secret lesbian affair with Prissy? Everytime those two met for a secret scissoring dalliance in the attic the whole house started to smell like burning ham.

Sadly she was in charge of Bonnie's wardrobe and horse riding position.

Hattie Mc Daniel and Butterfly McQueen were expert actresses! That's all! Mc Daniel caught a lot of flax from the black community, in spite of her charity. She was a trained comedian and came from a family of self-taught performers. She was quoted once, " I play a maid for work, the I go home to my maids." McQueen had a degree in Political Science, and was an atheist who dismissed religion as another way to " enslave Negroes" . Both hated the roles, but there was no room for depicting Black Americans as positive realistic human beings.

The imbalance is obvious when observing British period pieces such as Upstairs/Downstairs...the scullery maid, Ruby, (at the bottom of the servants hierarchy) was eventually portrayed as a thinking person who after WWI had ambitions to work outside of 'Service'. While servants' humanity was frequently sacrificed for those being served, their humanity was eventually recovered. They were never sacrificed for an anxious viewing audience wanting to reinforce racist supremacy sentiments

It amazes me that people in this country still cling to those images as authentic! Go watch A BAND OF ANGLES, a film in which Clark Gable also starred...there was intimacy....the confusion between loyalty to the oppressor and survival as a human...conflicting loving relationships etc....a far more, or at least, a different take on plantation life and happy loving darkies!

Clark Gable was PISSED when she wasn't allowed to go to the premiere.

She told him to go anyway.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

r26 - flax?

She basically ran the place.

Oh lookit, she warms the old white homos' hearts!

If they were all starving how come she never lost weight?

Didn't they stand there and fan the ladies having their naps?

Mammy was basically the real mastress of Tara and it's not surprising she didn't want to leave the O'Haras even after slavery was abolished. She was among the one percent.

Viola looks chubby in the photo at op.

It just ain't fittin

For a time O:D was bitter about losing the OSCAR to her but later realized how important it was that she got it.

Truly a deserving winner.

That scene on the staircase...WOW!!!

"An' Mista Rhett -- he so upset, he run outside shoot that po' po' pony. (sniff) "

In the movie Mammy stops Scarlett from intruding on Melanie and Ashley's reunion when he comes back from the war. She holds her arm and says "he's HER husband, ain't he?" In the novel Will Benteen does that, also telling her "don't spoil it." Will is also the one who tells Scarlett about the taxes she had to pay on Tara; in the movie Pork does that. What the hell would Pork know about taxes? It's too bad Will Benteen was left out of the movie. Although not a major character, he is instrumental (along with Scarlett) in helping keeping Tara afloat.

What is Mammy's dramatic scene on a staircase? Please remind me, it's been awhile.

Love her and this performance of course.

R40 This is it. I always thought this scene was much too sappy. And I still can't believe Olivia was only 22 when this was filmed.

In a traditional English grand house, the kind of place the O'Haras would desperately want to imitate, the butler was the supervisor of the kitchen staff and served the family drinks and formal meals, and the housekeeper supervised all the maids and cleaning staff. So if the O'Hara's house followed those traditional lines, Mammy would be supervising the upstairs maids and other servants, as well as acting as lady's maid to Mrs. O'Hara and her thoughtless daughters, as well as being everyone's confidante and yelling at anyone who needed to be bitched out.

So yes, she'd be busy, even if she never did any actual housework. If she saw something that needed cleaning, repairing, polishing, or straightening, she'd call an under-maid and yell at her for not having it done already.

She adored Miss Ellen.

Thanks, R41, great scene. Had my eyes misty. She was certainly convincing and a great actress usually is.

She and Melanie recreated this classic R40.

She called all the mops and brooms to attention.

Butterfly McQueen should have been nominated too. I used to get at kick out of her when I was a kid. There is some scene where she walks home singing to herself. For some reason that scene used to crack me up.

They need to make a biopic of Hattie.

Octavia Spencer (if she regains the weight) would be perfect. (or Monique but that ship has probably sailed)

Mammy in the film is a combination of two characters from the novel (three if you count her taking on a few lines and actions of Will Benteen, mentioned above), Mammy and Dilcey. Dilcey, omitted from the film, is Pork's wife, purchased by Gerald O'Hara from neighbor John Wilkes, Ashley's father. As a kindness to Dilcey, Gerald also purchased Dilcey's daughter, Prissy, so that they will not be separated. Dilcey never forgets the favor and is as dedicated to the family as Mammy is.

Mammy had been Ellen's personal servant since Ellen's childhood and Ellen had been allowed to bring her along when she married Gerald O'Hara and moved from Charleston to rural Georgia. Ellen, of French ancestry, was considered Southern aristocracy and it is made clear in the novel that she was considered to have married beneath her station when she married Gerald, a 28 year older Irish immigrant, after her true love had been killed in a fight.

She spent most of her days at Belle Watling's brothel, indulging in the pleasures of the flesh.

She took care of the girls clothes and waited on the hand and foot.

[quote]In a traditional English grand house, the kind of place the O'Haras would desperately want to imitate

I did not want to imitate the English, thank you very much.

In some of the GWTW threads, people have asked why a freed slave would stay with their former masters. Here's an article about a slave in 20th century America, how she stayed with one family for her entire life and was eventually freed and taken care of by one of the many children she'd nannied. Even though she wasn't kept a slave by law, she knew she had no where to go, and she stayed where there was a roof over her head and food to eat and people she knew.

Slavery still happens, even here. this woman wasn't the only one.

She baked her "special" chocolate pies for the uppity Wilkses and Fontaines.

She posed for the Aunt Jemima bottle.

R49 Ellen Robillard O'Hara was NOT from sadistic superficially genteel Charleston. She was a Savannian! No genuinely good person came from Charleston in that period (and very few, even today) Charleston was the type of city who watched in amusement, merrily laughing as a slave ship sat in their harbor, the cargo dying and celebrated the smell of decaying human flesh and the accumulation of maggots.

Rhett Butler was a Charlestonian, and like those of his race was quite sadistic. Even Phillipe Robillard would rather his daughter Ellen marry Gerald O'Hara and join a convent in the soulless void that was/is Charleston.

*than join a convent*

R56 thinks there is such a thing as a good slave owner.

R58 doesn't think that people who are born and raised into a society accept the customs of that society without question and find those behaviors normal. He also seems to think that all people have hateful attitudes and demeanor to all people who fall below them in social hierarchies. To say that all slave owners (Actually a very small number of families.) lacked compassion for those under their ownership is propaganda. It's very similar to being employed now. Some bosses actually care about those individuals whom they employ and others, the majority, could give a shit as long as the work gets done. But to say that all individuals with authoritarian positions are unfeeling sadists is bullshit.

The staircase scene is poignant, or at least certainly meant to be. But it is comical when Melly pleads for Mammy to stop telling her about all the unsavory happenings.......But then listens intently as she carries on......A formal objection to gossip must always be made in polite society, but you never really mean it.

Eat.

My favorite part of the character is the importance she placed on etiquette and social graces. She really wanted Scarlett to be a prim and proper debutante, sweetheart of Sigma Chi type, but I guess at some point she just let Scarlett be Scarlett and just show her bosoms before 3:00. I guess she may have thought Scarlette being a hellcat would reflect poorly on her (Mammy).

I actually think Livvy is pretty good in the scene, too. She's not doing her grand lady routine, and listens to everything Mammy has to say.

My favorite line is when Scarlett wants Prissy to fetch a roaving bovine on the outskirts of Tara , so Mellies baby will have a counted on milk supply. Unfazed by the babies survival needs while in comparison to her own immediate discomfort she replies, We don't needs dat cow ,Ms Scarlett, we's gonna be home soon,...and beside dat, I SCARED A COWS!!....Having only worked on a plantation her entire life.

.....

The line still tickles me, everyone wants to recite the 'birthing babies' line as her go-to historic script reference. Nothing wrong with that.... But, ' scared a cows' is hysterical......and one of her most under appreciated scene stealers.....

R62 In the novel some of the "upper" slaves were so concerned about etiquette. When she first went to live in Atlanta, Scarlett hoped to be freer not having Mammy controlling her all the time only to discover that Uncle Peter's standards were even stricter.

At one point just after the War Uncle Peter went to Tara to beg Scarlett and Melanie to go back to Macon (or whatever she was at that time) to live with Miss Pitty because ""Ah'm talkin' 'bout how it look ter folks, seein' Miss Pitty livin' 'lone. Folks talks scan'lous 'bout maiden ladies dat lives by deyseff,"

When Melanie met Belle Watling who wanted to give money to the hospital and talked to her, Uncle Peter discovered her and literally yelled at Melanie dragging her away. Because a Southern Mrs shouldn't talk to prostitutes.

Ok, Uncle Peter is the male version of Mammy. He controlled Miss Pitty's household even much more than Mammy at Tara. Because Miss Pitty was not, well, particularly intelligent. Uncle Peter decided what school Charlet Hamilton had to do, he decided when Miss Melanie could debut in society.

When Rhett "lost his mind" after Bonnie's death, Pork acted all scandalized because he didn't clean himself for dinner: "He was untidy now, where once he had been well groomed, and it took all Pork's scandalized arguing even to make him change his linen before supper. "

Re the sceered of cows scene from the book

"Ah's sceered of cows, Miss Scarlett. Ah ain' nebber had nuthin' ter do wid cows. Ah ain' no yard nigger. Ah's a house nigger."

"You're a fool nigger, and the worst day's work Pa ever did was to buy you," said Scarlett slowly, too tired for anger. "And if I ever get the use of my arm again, I'll wear this whip out on you."

There, she thought, I've said "nigger" and Mother wouldn't like that at all.

Prissy rolled her eyes wildly, peeping first at the set face of her mistress and then at the cow which bawled plaintively. Scarlett seemed the less dangerous of the two, so Prissy clutched at the sides of the wagon and remained where she was.

Stiffly, Scarlett climbed down from the seat, each movement of agony of aching muscles. Prissy was not the only one who was "sceered" of cows. Scarlett had always feared them, even the mildest cow seemed sinister to her, but this was no time to truckle to small fears when great ones crowded so thick upon her. Fortunately the cow was gentle.

Thanks to all the posters providing these insights from the book. It's very interesting for us who who never read it.

I read the book years ago, forgot Scarlett had a fear 'ah cows' as well !.....too funny. I would have tried to make Prissy get it too....

Read the book, it's a rattling good yarn.

[quote] And I still can't believe Olivia was only 22 when this was filmed.

It's even harder to believe Barbara O'Neill was in her 20's when this was made.

Barbara O'Neil is FAB in her Oscar nominated turn in "All This and Heaven, Too"!

Was Barbara O'Neil a muff diver? I always got a strong lesbian vibe from her and I don't think she was ever married.

I just checked her Wikipedia page and found out she was married just once (for 2 years only), to JOSHUA LOGAN! Logan was bisexual himself, which makes me believe their marriage was a lavender one even more now.

She was to teach Prissy how to birth babies but Prissy was a slow learner.

Mammy kept busy making curtains

[quote]Rhett Butler was a Charlestonian, and like those of his race was quite sadistic. Even Phillipe Robillard would rather his daughter Ellen marry Gerald O'Hara and join a convent in the soulless void that was/is Charleston.

Philippe was Ellen's beau, not her father.

In the book Ellen says "If the good people of Charleston feel that way, I"m sure we all will soon," regarding the war. Mitchell writes that people in Savannah considered Charleston to be one of the few other civilized cities.

Scarlett had aunts who lived in Charleston; at one point Rhett tells her they've been helping to support his mother and sister.

R26 So, just because she was obese, now everyone assumes she was a trained comedian!

Was she obese ??.... I hadn't noticed.......

R80 = Andie MacDowell

There is nothing romantic or poignant about the relationship between black slaves and their white owners. GWTW makes a lot of white folks do that...Mitchell either ignored or was unaware (yeah right) of the sadistic beatings, killings, rapes and destruction of family units cause by the US space system.

But hey, Scarlett sure was plucky wasn't she.

Scarlett loved her Mammy and was there on her deathbed.

[82] Shut the fuck up, you illiterate , faux outraged FOP!.....Had she wanted to write a book like that, she would have!.....She certainly could have, but she didn't...BECAUSE, she didn't want to....GET IT ??..... She didn't want to, so she didn't......Her intent was NOT to right a book about that...cause....thats NOT what she wanted to do......She chose NOT to, cause that's NOT what she wanted to do, sooooo she didn't!.... Now fuckin go stick an ice pick through your eye, and put your family out of their misery!......Do you know who donated more money than any other person and more than most corporations to the United Negro College Fund??.... As well as a HOST of other African American causes and social inequality projects ???....As well as pulling the Atlanta Black school system kicking and screaming into the new century with her contributions??..... HUH???....WELL ??... You insipid bore......It was Margaret Mitchell........Due her profits of that magnificent Pulitzer prize winning novel.....I think she knew a bit more about what she was trying to achieve than you trying ta achieve wiping the shit from your zit cover , lard laden ass !......No go find that ice pick !

R84 When was the last time you got laid?

Too much ???.....ok, Ill take a melatonin......and it was Thursday night.....

Jews hate GWTW because when the Nazis read the book, they interpreted the carpetbaggers as the Jews.

An eldersister from the era provided verificatia she spent a lot of time sampling dark sizemeat, which was plentiful on the plantation.

r87 Many if them were. Check the ownership of the department stores in most post-bellum Southern cities of any size.

Scarlett's mother would have been 32 when the book opened, so it was okay to have her played by someone in her late twenties who had an air of maturity.

Really, 32! Ellen was 15 when she was forbidden to marry her mad crush Phillippe, and married Gerald O'Hara out of desperation, and she started pushing out babies soon after. Scarlett was 16 when the book opened, you do the math. Ellen was about 35 when she died, having married for a man she didn't love because she wanted to get away from her parents immediately. This is why we don't let 15-year-olds get married these days, they make stupid decisions and ruin everything.

[quote]Clark Gable was PISSED when she wasn't allowed to go to the premiere.

Hattie later talked about how nice and kind Gable treated her and the other black actors. He was very nice and down to earth.

Indentured slaves were often children and there were a lot of Chinese slaves in Hawaii . Slavery ruins any society.

Switzerland had Verdingkinder - indentured child farm workers - until the 60's.

R93 Wow, I didn't know that. But for some reason I always thought Switzerland was one of the scariest countries in the world. I'd rather move to fucking Chechnya than to Switzerland.

Slavery is all over the Arab countries today. People from desperately poor 3rd world countries are promised fantastic wages, and when they get there their employer takes their passport so they can't leave without consent (legal), and if the employer decides they'd rather motivate their employees with beatings rather than payment then there's nothing the employee can do and nothing the law WILL do. Female slaves are usually raped,

And our modern activist left gets all worked up about trivia like on-campus "microagressions", while shit like that goes on in the world.

Mammy walked silently and timorously around Archie, the peg-legged murderer from Melly's basement who drove Scarlett out to her mills.

I love this perfect little performance

OP is a racist troll

Good singer was Hattie.

Wasn't she the one that had the affair with Tallulah Bankhead, and married an interior decorator gay guy to closet?

Historically speaking, I wonder how many women in the south were having affairs with their maids/slaves. Perfect way to closet, could keep them so close and no one would ever suspect a thing, and no one would ever believe them if they ratted you out.

in the old south, what white woman rich enough to own a slave or have a housekeeper, would lower herself to fuck a coloured woman? I don't think the hetero women fuck the stave mandingos, either. Or very very rarely.

She slapped her into bed along wid the baby.

further reading

[quote]what white woman rich enough to own a slave or have a housekeeper, would lower herself to fuck a coloured woman

So white men would do it, but not white women? Why?

White racist at R97 is played by Arthur Hohl.

Fantasies aside, if the women from the Old South had fucked their Mandingo slaves, they would have given birth to dark-skinned babies and their husbands would have quietly killed them and the baby to protect the family honor, and that would have been considered the correct, moral, and legal thing to do. No birth control back then.

Lesbian relationships may have happened, but were probably very rare compared to masters fucking female slaves. Women of the middle and upper classes were told that sex was disgusting and only the lower orders gave into their "bestial urges" and enjoyed it, I doubt many women of the slave-owning class ever realized that sex could be fun, fewer had any idea who or what they really desired, and fewer still had any idea that sex with women was possible. And it's not like their maids were going to make the first move.

[quote]Women of the middle and upper classes were told that sex was disgusting

Same thing with nuns, but I've always heard convents are a hotbed of lesbianism.

R107 In the past nuns used to fuck male friars all the time. Many female and male abbeys were even connected by secret underground tunnels. Those passsages also doubled as secret burial grounds for the babies nuns gave birth to and then smothered right away.

Sure, but what does that have to do with them fucking each other? Heck there's even books about how it historically.

Well, this thread has gone off into the weeds.

I wonder if Hattie and Tallulah were mindful of their families histories when they were fucking. Hattie of course, the daughter of slaves, Tallulah, from the Bankhead/Brockman family that had owned slaves.

[quote]if the women from the Old South had fucked their Mandingo slaves, they would have given birth to dark-skinned babies and their husbands would have quietly killed them and the baby to protect the family honor

Oh the irony. How many of those women had to watch little cafe au lait slave children with their husband's faces running around the plantation?

As Grandma Fontaine said:

Don't pull such a shocked face. We're all married, aren't we? And, God knows, we've seen mulatto babies before this.""

She actively judged that white trash Emmy Slattery.

"Oh the irony. How many of those women had to watch little cafe au lait slave children with their husband's faces running around the plantation? "

Yee-up! Nobody, not even Margaret Mitchell, ever said the Old South was any sort of equal society. Even Mitchell took time out from sugar-coating the life of a slave-owner to say that the women spent their days working hard to manage these huge farms, while the men spent the money partying (she just mentioned drinking, gambling, and riding, she left out the rapes of slave girls).

Less polite writers have said that the wife of a plantation owner was really just a glorified slave herself, as the law allowed him to give her orders and punish her if she didn't obey, rape or beat her, and take her property. And that all the Victorian prudery of the Old Southern women was just an attempt to differentiate themselves from the sort of slaves who were sold at markets, rather than sold at weddings.

R84, kill yourself. Put us out of YOUR misery!!! You sound like a complete loser. As do most white fans of GWTW and SONG OF THE SOUTH! Fans of these films always feel entitled to watch these films and laid them as entertainment. And if anyone protests, they get so defensive, indignant and butt hurt.

I hope you all die from AIDS.

R116 obviously flunked out of charm school!

She smelled her own farts like the rest of us.

A sassy servant, besides being a source of amusement, could also be trusted to speak the truth instead of just saying whatever they thought the owners wanted to hear.

Allowing Pork to climb on her several times a day to do his business kept both of them fairly docile.

[quote]sadistic beatings, killings, rapes and destruction of family units cause by the US space system.

I always thought there was something creepy about NASA.

She fantasized about Rebecca.

Different things, OP. Some car-related, some food-related. She mostly did the crossword in private so the idiot O'Haras couldn't figure out she was literate.

"Even Phillipe Robillard would rather his daughter Ellen marry Gerald O'Hara and join a convent in the soulless void that was/is Charleston."

As someone else mentioned, Philippe Robillard was the great love of Ellen's life. He was her cousin, and he was a hellion, always brawling and getting into trouble. Ellen's father and sisters (her mother was dead by then) were against the match. Phillippe got killed in a bar room fight, and Ellen blamed her family, so she married Gerald O'Hara to get away from her family and any memories of him. She leaves Savannah and never comes back. When Scarlett comes back to Tara to find Ellen dead she asks Mammy if Ellen called for anybody while she was dying. Mammy said no, she thought she was a little girl back in Savannah and didn't call for anybody. But Dilcey tells Scarlett the truth; she says the night the Yankees burned up all their cotton the room was lit up like it was daylight and Ellen sat up in bed and started screaming "Phillippe! Philippe!" Dilcey said she'd never heard of such a name "but it was a name and she was callin' him." Mammy is pissed that Dilcey told Scarlett that, but Scarlett never finds out who "Philippe" was. She just wonders who he is and what was he to Ellen that she'd died calling for him.

She must have been a helluva seamstress.

She should have set up her own business.

I'm pretty sure that in her down time she did Chaturbate shows, fingering her cooch for tokens. If I recall.

Hattie would rather be playing maids at $700 a week, than being one for $7. Her wealth allowed Hattie to be the first black to buy a house in a particular Los Angeles neighborhood. Anyone know the name of the area?

R89, Jews have been a part of southern culture, specifically in Georgia, since the early colonial days.

"Gone With The WInd" is on TCM tonight! Catch Hattie in all her glory as the indomitable, take no shit Mammy.

It's on TCM right now.

She lied around and played with her pussy all day.

Olivia also liked to play with her pussy

Another photo of Olivia's pussy:

Damn, she sure loved that pussy of hers:

Probably West Adams, r126. Very chi-chi from the early 1900s, with beautiful houses. Lots of movie folk lived there e in the late teens-20s. By the most d 1070s it had become a predominately black neighborhood. Most of the lovely homes are still there.

Here's a video tour of Hattie's house (exteriors only):

Another video tour - this one is actually a lot more informative than the first one, with camera guy giving some info on the district itself:

So that's the love nest where Hattie and Tallulah canoodled?

She ran the Just Ain't Fittin' Room

R82 what does NASA have to do with GWTW???

In GWTW, Margaret Mitchell inadvertently wrote an excellent expository about US race relations. Any person who has the intelligence to be curious about why race relations are as they are today, should read GWTW.

Let there be no perception that the attitudes of slave-holders that she approvingly describes in GWTW should are being praised here. Quite the opposite.

She does, however, provide an insight into the ignorance, attitudes, and beliefs of whites and their power over blacks, social standing, white trash and women. She even alludes to the hypocrisy of Yankees in regarding blacks which is, basically, we'll free them , but don't want them close. Otoh, in the south, it's, we want them close but not too elevated.

Ignore the movie. Read the book

How did Mammy manage to manipulate that staircase in the Atlanta mansion? She had to be a-huffin' and a-puffin'.

One can be stout and fit. Especially a life long slave like Mammy.

That is correct, R142

R140 "She even alludes to the hypocrisy of Yankees in regarding blacks which is, basically, we'll free them , but don't want them close. Otoh, in the south, it's, we want them close but not too elevated."

"You are just the person I want to see, Mrs. Kennedy," said a tall thin woman from Maine. "I want to get some information about this benighted town."

Scarlett swallowed the insult to Atlanta with the contempt it deserved and smiled her best.

"And what can I tell you?"

"My nurse, my Bridget, has gone back North. She said she wouldn't stay another day down here among the 'naygurs' as she calls them. And the children are just driving me distracted! Do tell me how to go about getting another nurse. I do not know where to apply."

"That shouldn't be difficult," said Scarlett and laughed. "If you can find a darky just in from the country who hasn't been spoiled by the Freedmen's Bureau, you'll have the best kind of servant possible. Just stand at your gate here and ask every darky woman who passes and I'm sure--"

The three women broke into indignant outcries.

"Do you think I'd trust my babies to a black nigger?" cried the Maine woman. "I want a good Irish girl."

"I'm afraid you'll find no Irish servants in Atlanta," answered Scarlett, coolness in her voice. "Personally, I've never seen a white servant and I shouldn't care to have one in my house. And," she could not keep a slight note of sarcasm from her words, "I assure you that darkies aren't cannibals and are quite trustworthy."

"Goodness, no! I wouldn't have one in my house. The idea!"

"I wouldn't trust them any farther than I could see them and as for letting them handle my babies . . ."

Scarlett thought of the kind, gnarled hands of Mammy worn rough in Ellen's service and hers and Wade's. What did these strangers know of black hands, how dear and comforting they could be, how unerringly they knew how to soothe, to pat, to fondle? She laughed shortly.

"It's strange you should feel that way when it was you all who freed them."

"Lor'! Not I, dearie," laughed the Maine woman. "I never saw a nigger till I came South last month and I don't care if I never see another. They give me the creeps. I wouldn't trust one of them. . . ."

For some moments Scarlett had been conscious that Uncle Peter was breathing hard and sitting up very straight as he stared steadily at the horse's ears. Her attention was called to him more forcibly when the Maine woman broke off suddenly with a laugh and pointed him out to her companions.

"Look at that old nigger swell up like a toad," she giggled. "I'll bet he's an old pet of yours, isn't he? You Southerners don't know how to treat niggers. You spoil them to death.

Peter sucked in his breath and his wrinkled brow showed deep furrows but he kept his eyes straight ahead. He had never had the term "nigger" applied to him by a white person in all his life. By other negroes, yes. But never by a white person. And to be called untrustworthy and an "old pet," he, Peter, who had been the dignified mainstay of the Hamilton family for years!

"Uncle Peter is one of our family," she said, her voice shaking. "Good afternoon. Drive on, Peter."

Peter laid the whip on the horse so suddenly that the startled animal jumped forward and as the buggy jounced off, Scarlett heard the Maine woman say with puzzled accents: "Her family? You don't suppose she meant a relative? He's exceedingly black."

God damn them! They ought to be wiped off the face of the earth. If ever I get money enough, I'll spit in all their faces! I'll--

Such an instructive quote, R144, such a glimpse into the unabashed mind of a slaver! To claim to love someone and think of them as part of the family, while being totally and deliberately blind to their needs! Did she ever love a slave enough to offer them pay, or their freedom, or just ask them what they wanted to do with their lives?

Anyone who thinks this book or film should be banned or shunned is an idiot, there's much to be learned and not all of it what the author intended.

You weren't so particular about owning slaves!

That was different, we didn't treat them that way.

Ashley was in such denial about so many things.

He claimed that his father would have freed them all if the war hadn't done so.

Such a hypocrite.

I wonder how many old Jewish families took the Ironclad Oath so as to build Reconstruction era founded department stores.

Scarlett's attitude is summed up quite well in this passage:

Scarlett sat frowning for a moment. She was not in the least alarmed or distressed that Sam had committed murder, but she was disappointed that she could not have him as a driver. A big negro like Sam would be as good a bodyguard as Archie. Well, she must get him safe to Tara somehow, for of course the authorities must not get him. He was too valuable a darky to be hanged. Why, he was the best foreman Tara had ever had! It did not enter Scarlett's mind that he was free. He still belonged to her, like Pork and Mammy and Peter and Cookie and Prissy. He was still "one of our family" and, as such, must be protected.

Well she don't be appearing on HBO Max anytime soon..

[quote][R2] cluelessly hijacks the thread and then proves too dumb to know about Hat's lesbo gigs. Ask Tallulah.

Was Tallulah a chubby chaser with jungle fever?

A beauty like Josephine Baker or Lena Horne, I'd believe, but come on. NO ONE could find that obese woman attractive.

The whole movie is an embarrassment. Even back in the dark ages of Hollywood. I’ve seen the movie years ago but would never watch it again.

R153 then kindly fuck off, k?

R145 Banning the book is an idiotic example of erasure vs exposure and discourse. I'm not saying that it's a 'great story ' , but it captures mindsets that are to some inconceivable to some today and there's a great bit to be learned by this novel, even as fiction it captures a moment that needs to be remembered, dissected and understood. Banning it is on par with erasure and nothing is learned. The first time I read this, led me to another book, the non-fiction historical 4 part series Andersonville : A Story of Military Prisons. Learned a LOT and read more, but this isnt a bibliography. Maybe this is where I'm a bit tone deaf, but I think that this isnt the best move to make with this film. It completely glorified the controversial mammy figure, and whitewashed slavery as a whole, but it's a fictional film based on a fictional novel that while is not exemplary in illustrating any contrition in any way, this film led to the first African American woman to win a major award and was publicly presented in a time when Hattie wouldn't even have been included in the audience without Gable going to the mat for her, which is another powerful example of how the use of protest succeeded. There's a HUGE dialogue that could be opened about all of the complexities interwoven between the media and its message.

There's probably going to be a movie about this movie that is peppered with opinions of famous names and historians that'll be done in response, which I'm not critiquing, I just think that conversation should actually be happening between real people at this point in time.

Tendin to the chil’ren.

After Scarlet attempted to force her into birthin' babies, she filed a grievance with her local of the International Sisterhood of Mammies (ISOM), who in turn brought a class action law suit. After winning both the initial suit, and the appeal, the O'Hara's forfeited all their property to Mammy in the settlement, after which she sat on her fat ass and did absolutely nothing.

I think Mammy was actually a thin, svelte beauty who actually had a vacuum cleaner that puffed her out to look fat and jolly to serve da white folkes. She would spend their nap times walkin' around to the cottages where the land slaves slept and tell them about everything going on, followed by "But I ain't one to gossip so you ain't heard that from me!"

R157 R158 lol thanks for the chuckle!