The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is sending Howard University a replacement Oscar for the groundbreaking actress Hattie McDaniel, whose original award has been missing for at least 50 years.
McDaniel was the first Black person to be nominated for and win an Oscar for her supporting role as Mammy in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind. She went on to act in more than 300 movies, and shortly before her death from breast cancer in 1952, she asked that the Oscar be moved from her home to Howard University in Washington. But the plaque, which preceded the gold statuettes and was given to supporting winners from 1936 to 1942, suddenly disappeared from the school's fine arts building.
Thomas Battle, the former director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard, told NPR in 2009 that he believes the award went missing in the late 1960s or early 1970s, possibly during a period of student unrest. Denise Randle, who tracked the university's inventory of artifacts, has been unable to gather the necessary information to further investigate the disappearance.
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]