{"id":719,"date":"2017-02-26T10:15:39","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T17:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babychoby.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2017-05-04T23:27:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T06:27:02","slug":"so-many-maids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/babychoby.com\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"So. Many. Maids."},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow me, if you will, down an Oscars Eve rabbit hole. A few weeks ago I started reading the fantastic book The Divine Feud<\/em> by Shaun Considine about the career spanning animosity between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. I\u2019ve always been a big fan of both of these over the top actors both as artists and as Personalities.<\/em> What Ever Happened to Baby Jane<\/em> is one of my favorite movies of all time and I\u2019ve dressed up for Halloween both as Bette\u2019s Baby Jane and as as Faye Dunnaway\u2019s Crawford from Mommy Dearest, another one of my all-time favorites. To give me more context as I was reading the book I decided to download some classic films that put these dames on the map and helped fuel their Oscar lust laden rivalry. Yesterday I watched The Women<\/em>, a 1939 masterpiece directed by the legendary George Cukor. If you have not seen this movie, I absolutely recommend it. The first time I saw it was at the Paramount Theater in Oakland and I very much remember my shock and awe when about a \u00bc of the way into the movie there is a fashion show at a fancy department store. Suddenly the film goes from Black and White to full Technicolor and diverges from the plot entirely and we are treated to an absolutely bonkers fashion show complete with live monkeys, sky-high, see-through vinyl hats fit for the Kentucky derby if the Kentucky derby were held on Venus and bear gloves that would be the envy of any furry. So yesterday I\u2019m reliving this masterpiece of the absurd and during one part of this beautifully bizarre scene there is a cocktail party setup and I noticed a stunning woman serving the models champagne from behind a drinks cart. She\u2019s dressed in an emerald green maid\u2019s uniform and, to me, she totally stole the scene. Since she was serving drinks you can probably guess that she was a black woman. The only other black woman in the movie is Butterfly McQueen credited as \u201cCosmetic Counter Maid\u201d who gets bullied by Joan Crawford\u2019s character into Cyrano De Bergeracing a home cooked meal for her and her married lover. The woman in green though, I do not recognize. I evoked the power of IMDB and found out that she was an actress named Theresa Harris.<\/p>\n

Theresa Harris was a talented singer, dancer and aspiring actress who held the screen with countless stars of Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age. I wondered why I\u2019d never heard of her but then I remembered America. I dug a littler deeper; she\u2019s been written about extensively and is well known for the staggering number of maids she played over her long career in Hollywood. I counted; how many maids could one person really play? Well, according to IMDB she was credited as \u201cmaid\u201d in some form in 46 films. In some cases she was given the dignity of a first name but more often she was simply referred to as \u201cmaid\u201d, \u201cladies room maid\u201d or as \u201cso and so\u2019s maid\u201d. She did have a number of credits where she is credited simply with a first name such as Ester, Ruby, Opal and Bessie Mae which was hopeful but then it turned out some of those characters were also maids. Non-maid roles included \u201cBlack Woman\u201d, \u201cBlack Blues Singer\u201d and the perennial favorite, \u201cSacrificed Slave\u201d [sad trombone]. Ms. Harris simply could not catch a break. She was quoted as saying:<\/p>\n

I never had the chance to rise about the role of maid in Hollywood movies. My color was against me anyway you looked at it. The fact that I was not “hot” stamped me either as uppity or relegated me to the eternal role of stooge or servant. I can sing but so can hundreds of other girls. Hollywood had no parts for me.<\/p>\n

Fucking Hollywood. I have always loved the movies. As a young girl, I watched countless classics at home with my mom and started taking myself to the theater as soon as I was allowed. We got HBO early on in our house and I spent hours watching movies from every decade. My favorites were always centered on glamorous, fast-talking, witty dames or painfully beautiful ing\u00e9nues. Apart from Jimmy Stewart, I never really cared about the men. Elizabeth Taylor, Joan and Bette, Katherine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Lauren Bacall; all women who spit fire and took no guff. Talent, charisma and beauty aren\u2019t the only thing that connects these women and I don\u2019t need to tell you the obvious. Imagine an alternative America where white supremacy didn\u2019t exist. Theresa Harris might have been on that list of my film idols. Imagine a black woman with regular Hollywood women problems like being a queen and being in love with your right-hand man, or having to choose between a rich man you don\u2019t love and a poor man who gets you intellectually or helping to solve a murder while being the baddest bitch there is. Can you even imagine? I can but it remains a feisty fantasy.<\/p>\n

As I sit here on the Eve of the Oscars I am at least heartened by the four women of color who are nominated for acting roles this year. We have made some progress over the decades, haven\u2019t we? We have but we haven\u2019t. All four roles have a certain Hallmark of the type of roles for women of color society and the academy applauds. Each of these wonderful performances are centered on race, poverty or addiction. Has this always been the case? This was a question I asked myself and whose answer sent me down yet another rabbit hole, this one sponsored by Wikipedia. Ok, so obsessive me noted every single Oscar nomination for black women from the first (Hattie McDaniel as Mammie in GWTW) through tomorrow\u2019s four nominees. What types of roles are women of color being offered and which types of roles are we rewarding? I know the Oscars are not really relevant in the grand scheme of things and that many, many wonderful films featuring fabulous roles for women of color have always existed and continue to exist but in terms of \u201cInternational Acknowledgement, Acceptance and Prestige\u201d, the Academy Awards are still a major factor when casting, writing, directing and producing opportunities are handed out. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford knew this and spent their lives slobbering over that little golden man in order to advance their careers. And it worked. So, in chronological order (in two categories) I present the roles the Academy has decided are the pinnacle of BLACK ACTING for women!<\/p>\n

*Entries in Bold<\/strong> are winners; common tropes and problematic stereotypes are italicized<\/em>. Underlined<\/u> are notable exceptions.<\/p>\n

Best Actress<\/strong><\/p>\n