In the crucial scene when Melanie Wilkes (Olivia deHavilland) arrives to convince Rhett Butler to bury his dead child, Mammy carries the burden of the family as Hattie McDaniel carries the weight of the tale. Many believe it is this moment in the film that led to McDaniel's Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress--the first Oscar ever to go to an African-American. From the time she answers the door crying to when Melanie returns from talking to Rhett and collapses in her arms, Mammy is the center of attention. First of all, as the two women make their way up the long red staircase, Mammy must relay all of the events that have occurred since the prior scene of the death of Bonnie Blue Butler: Rhett shooting the pony that refused to jump and caused Bonnie to break her neck, Scarlett calling Rhett a murderer for teaching their child to jump, Rhett telling Scarlett she never cared for her daughter, Rhett locking himself in the nursery with his Bonnie's body, Scarlett beating on the door trying to get in, Rhett locked in the room for two days, Scarlett threatening to kill her husband tomorrow, Rhett refusing to bury Bonnie, and Mammy imploring Melanie to help fix the situation. Fortunately for McDaniel, it is a really long staircase.

This is a powerful scene whose success or failure depends upon the conviction of Mammy's character. Underneath all of the emotional trappings, however, it seems to simply be a variation on the mythic mammy figure of The Birth of a Nation. As a "faithful servant," Mammy does her best to save the white family but needs the help of a white woman to make everything right again. The parallel between this scene and Griffith's depiction of the mammy and the tom struggling to free their master becomes apparent. Clearly, though, this mammy's character is exponentially more fleshed out than the slapstick found in Griffith's epic and McDaniel, Sidney Howard, the screenwriter, and Victor Fleming, the director, all deserve credit. Around the three and a half hour mark of the epic, this scene works wonderfully. McDaniel's performance resonated with critics and audience members alike. Nell Battle Lewis wrote in her review of the film, "Scarlett Materializes":

Next to the acting of Miss Leigh, I put that of Thomas Mitchell as Gerald O'Hara. And probably of all the actors he looked most like the original as pictured in the reader's mind. . . . And third, to my way of thinking, comes Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, rotund, ebon and inimitable in speech and spirit, that dark duenna who strove so valiantly and so vainly to make a lady out of Scarlett. This trio, it seems to me, is well ahead of the field.⁽¹⁾

betrayed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who gave McDaniel an Oscar, the first ever given to a black performer. A few black pickets appeared, but the euphoria attendant upon the award smothered them. McDaniel took her statuette from Fay Bainter, thanked God, and predicted a decent age that would let black kids "aim high and work hard." She pulled it off in the Hollywood style, fashionably late, wrapped in ermine, gardenias in her hair, seated at Selznick's table. Afterward Leigh rushed up and kissed her, and Gable pumped her hand.⁽³⁾

By eliminating the negative depictions of the Ku Klux Klan and African-Americans, Selznick and Howard succeeded in accentuating the positive elements of the Hollywood myths. There was no Gus or Silas Lynch to complain about and although the black characters in Gone With the Wind were stereotypes, they were admirable ones. When McDaniel earned her Academy Award, it essentially silenced complaints about the portrayal of African-Americans not by drastically improving the state of Hollywood but by legitimizing McDaniel's interpretation of the stereotype as excellent acting that was on par with the white performers up for the award. Academy Awards, after all, are nothing more than an industry highlighting their "best" work of the year--even when their best isn't good enough.