Hattie McDaniel - Later Career

Later Career

In the 1942 Warner Bros. film In This Our Life, starring Bette Davis and directed by John Huston, she once again played a domestic, but one who confronts racial issues as her law student son is wrongly accused of manslaughter.

The following year, McDaniel was in Warner Bros' Thank Your Lucky Stars, with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. In its review of the film, Time wrote that McDaniel was one of the points of relief in an otherwise "grim study," saying, "Hattie McDaniel, whose bubbling, blaring good humor more than redeems the roaring bad taste of a Harlem number called Ice Cold Katie."

Hattie McDaniel continued to play maids during the war years, in Warner Bros' The Male Animal (1942) and United Artists' Since You Went Away (1944), but her feistiness was toned down.

She made her last film appearances in Mickey (1948) and Family Honeymoon (1949). She was still quite active on radio and television in her final years, becoming the first black American to star in her own radio show with her comedy series Beulah. She starred in the ABC television version, taking over for Ethel Waters after the first season. Waters had apparently expressed concerns over stereotypes in the role. It was a hit, earning McDaniel $2,000 a week. But the show was controversial. In 1951, the United States Army ceased broadcasting The Beulah Show, in Asia because troops complained that the show perpetuated negative stereotypes of black men as shiftless and lazy and interfered with the ability of black troops to do their mission. After filming a handful of episodes, however, McDaniel learned she had breast cancer. By the spring of 1952, she was too ill to work and was replaced by Louise Beavers.