Year 1940

BUGS BUNNY made his official debut in a cartoon called “A Wild Hare.” For an example of Bugs’ hare-raising escapes, see “Dynamite Dance.” 

Elmer Fudd is foiled again.

* 

Lawrence Brooks is drafted to serve in the U.S. Army. Brooks, an African American will end up the oldest living veteran of World War II, dying in 2021, at age 112. Like most members of his race, Brooks did service work in the military, taking care of the needs of three white officers, as an enlisted man in the 91^st Engineer General Service Regiment. His unit mostly built bridges, roads and airstrips in Australia during the war. 

Brooks admitted later that he was not sorry to avoid combat, explaining, “I got lucky. I was saying to myself, ‘If I’m going to be shooting at somebody, somebody’s going to be shooting at me, and he might get lucky and hit.’” 

Asked about his experiences in 2014, Brooks remembered that he was treated better in Australia than back home in Louisiana. He told an interviewer it made him angry to think about all the Jim Crow laws, so he tried not to.

 

* 

February 29: Hattie McDaniel shows up at the Coconut Grove Restaurant in Los Angeles, to accept her academy award, for best supporting actress, in the movie Gone with the Wind. She is shunted off to a side table for two, at the far back wall. The restaurant has a strict “no blacks allowed” policy, but she and her escort are served, as a favor to the movie industry – and her white agent does sit with them. 

In the movie, McDaniel plays a stereotypical role, as "Mammy" to Scarlett O'Hara.

Louella Parsons, a gossip columnist wrote about the moment McDaniel rose from her seat receive her award:

 

Hattie McDaniel earned that gold Oscar by her fine performance of 'Mammy' in Gone with the Wind. If you had seen her face when she walked up to the platform and took the gold trophy, you would have had the choke in your voice that all of us had when Hattie, hair trimmed with gardenias, face alight, and dress up to the queen's taste, accepted the honor in one of the finest speeches ever given on the Academy floor.

 

McDaniel herself called it “one of the happiest moments of my life” and thanked the Academy. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race,” she added, “and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.” 

That line – that McDaniel would have to prove a “credit” to her race, somehow prove that African Americans had worth, says more about the barriers people of color faced than Parsons, or perhaps even McDaniel understood that night. No white actor had to prove anything about his or her race. 

If they had talent, that was enough. 

Rita Dove, an African American poet, later penned a poem about that night: 

late, in aqua and ermine, gardenias
scaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent,
her gloves white, her smile chastened, purse giddy
with stars and rhinestones clipped to her brilliantined hair,
on her free arm that fine Negro,
Mr. Wonderful Smith.

It’s the day that isn’t, February 29th,
at the end of the shortest month of the year—
and the shittiest, too, everywhere
except Hollywood, California,
where the maid can wear mink and still be a maid,
bobbing her bandaged head and cursing
the white folks under her breath as she smiles
and shoos their silly daughters
in from the night dew … what can she be
thinking of, striding into the ballroom
where no black face has ever showed itself
except above a serving tray?

Hi-Hat Hattie, Mama Mac, Her Haughtiness,
the “little lady” from Showboat whose name
Bing forgot, Beulah & Bertha & Malena
& Carrie & Violet & Cynthia & Fidelia,
one half of the Dark Barrymores—
dear Mammy we can’t help but hug you crawl into
your generous lap tease you
with arch innuendo so we can feel that
much more wicked and youthful
and sleek but oh what

we forgot: the four husbands, the phantom
pregnancy, your famous parties, your celebrated
ice box cake. Your giggle above the red petticoat’s rustle,
black girl and white girl walking hand in hand
down the railroad tracks
in Kansas City, six years old.
The man who advised you, now
that you were famous, to “begin eliminating”
your more “common” acquaintances
and your reply (catching him square
in the eye): “That’s a good idea.
I’ll start right now by eliminating you.”

Is she or isn’t she? Three million dishes,
a truckload of aprons and headrags later, and here
you are: poised, between husbands
and factions, no corset wide enough
to hold you in, your huge face a dark moon split
by that spontaneous smile—your trademark,
your curse. No matter, Hattie: It’s a long, beautiful walk
into that flower-smothered standing ovation,
so go on
and make them wait.

* 

In France, Josephine Baker, the famous American dancer, turns to work with the French underground, after Nazi forces overrun France. She has already developed a bitter hatred for Hitler and fascists, in general. As The New York Times notes,

 

On tour in Austria in the early 1930s, churches rang their bells to drown out her performances, and once France was occupied in 1940, she was banned from the stage there, along with all Black and Jewish performers. Undaunted, she joined the French Resistance and collected intelligence while performing in North Africa, smuggling back information written in invisible ink on her score sheets.

 

(In 1961, the French government would award Baker the Croix de Guerre in honor of her bravery. Two years later, she would return to the United States and speak at the March on Washington, organized by civil rights leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)