November 12, 1946: Walt Disney's "South of the South" Premieres

November 12, 1946: Walt Disney Pictures releases Song of the South. Combining live-action with animation, it is based on the Uncle Remus stories, as adapted by Joel Chandler Harris, and stars James Baskett in his final film role.

A member of the cast of the radio show Amos 'n' Andy, and a versatile actor who had played everything from tribal leaders to gangsters -- pretty much anything that a black actor was allowed to play at the time -- Baskett had diabetes, resulting in heart trouble, and, recognizing this, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an Academy Honorary Award in 1948.

He died later that year, as the 1st black man to receive any kind of "Oscar." Also winning an Oscar, for Best Original Song, was "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," written by Allie Wrubel and Ray Gilbert, and sung by Baskett. Hattie McDaniel, the 1st black actor of either gender to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Gone with the Wind, also appeared in the film.

Of course, the premiere of Song of the South was in Atlanta, as was that of Gone with the Wind, 7 years earlier. And, as with that one, the black actors in the very film being premiered were not permitted to attend, due to segregation laws.

Both films were part of a long-term campaign to glorify the pre-Civil War South, to show that, for the slaves, life wasn't all that bad, and that the North should have left everybody alone, and that the fight to maintain the Southern way of life, "The Lost Cause," was a noble one. It was not. It was an evil cause.

The film takes place in Georgia, during the Reconstruction Era (1865-77). The story follows 7-year-old Johnny (played by Bobby Driscoll), who is visiting the plantation of his grandmother (Lucile Watson). Johnny befriends Uncle Remus, an elderly worker on the plantation, and takes joy in hearing his tales about the adventures of Br'er Rabbit (voiced by Johnny Lee), Br'er Fox (voiced by Baskett) and Br'er Bear (also voiced by Baskett). Johnny learns from the stories how to cope with the challenges he is experiencing while living on the plantation.

It is inaccurate to say that the film is only considered controversial in hindsight: It was attacked immediately. The NAACP commended the movie’s technical wizardry and its blend of animation and live action, but it also issued a statement that it "regrets, however, that in an effort neither to offend audiences in the North or South, the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery... [the film] unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship, which is a distortion of the facts."

Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the minister elected to Congress from Harlem, branded the film an "insult to American minorities (and) everything that America as a whole stands for." Richard Dier of The Baltimore Afro-American called the film "as vicious a piece of propaganda for white supremacy as Hollywood ever produced."

The National Negro Congress set up picket lines in theaters in the big cities where the film played, with its protesters holding signs that read "Song of the South is an insult to the Negro people," and, lampooning "Jingle Bells", chanted: "Disney tells, Disney tells/lies about the South." 

On April 2, 1947, a group of protesters marched around the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California with picket signs reading, "We want films on Democracy not Slavery" and "Don't prejudice children's minds with films like this."

But the black actors stood behind the movie. Baskett said, "I believe that certain groups are doing my race more harm in seeking to create dissension than can ever possibly come out of the Song of the South." And McDaniel said, "If I had for one moment considered any part of the picture degrading or harmful to my people, I would not have appeared therein." 

Disney frequently re-released its classic movies, and Song of the South got a re-release in 1986, by which point the original Civil Rights Movement had come and gone, and Martin Luther King Day was already celebrated as a national holiday. The film netted more than $17 million when it toured theaters a 2nd time, a decent total for a 40-year-old film, regardless of controversy.

In 1989, Disney opened Splash Mountain, a log flume ride based on Song of the South, at Disneyland in California, with a version at Walt Disney World in Florida opening in 1992.

The film was released internationally on VHS and LaserDisc, but it has never been released on video in the United States, not on VHS, not on DVD, not on Blu-Ray. In 2019, Bob Iger, by then the CEO of Disney, said, "It wouldn't be in the best interest of our shareholders to bring it back, even though there would be some financial gain."

In 2020, following the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, Iger announced that the film would never appear on the streaming service Disney+, not even with a disclaimer with words to the effect of, "This was a perception of the way things were at the time the film took place, and it was wrong when the film was released, and it is wrong now." No mention of "outdated cultural depictions." Iger flat-out said that the film is "not appropriate in today's world."

The same year, the Splash Mountains were rebranded as Tiana's Bayou Adventure, based on the 2009 film The Princess and the Frog, whose protagonist is Tiana, a black girl in 1920s New Orleans.

UPDATE: In 2023, Disney removed all recordings of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from its theme parks, and prohibited the various musical acts performing there from playing it.

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November 12, 1946 was a Tuesday. This was also the day that the 1st drive-up teller windows opened at any bank in the world. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The brand-new Basketball Association of America, later to become the NBA, was in its 1st month of games, and none were scheduled for this day. Nor were any scheduled for the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

February 29, 1940: The 1st Black Oscar Winner

At the time, the winners of Best Supporting Actor

and Best Supporting Actress -- regardless of race --

got a smaller trophy, on a plaque.

Note: I would have written an entry for this event, regardless of the date on it. But I wanted to have an entry that happened on a February 29, and this was the best of the rather small bunch.

February 29, 1940: The 12th Academy Awards are held, at the Coconut Grove ballroom of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. For the 1st time, the host is actor Bob Hope. He will go on to host "the Oscars" 19 times. Through 2022, this remains a record.

Surprising no one, Gone with the Wind, having been nominated for 13 Oscars, wins 8 of them, including Best Picture for producer David O. Selznick, Best Director for Victor Fleming, Best Actress for Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara, and Best Screenplay, divided between Margaret Mitchell for the original 1936 novel, and Sidney Howard for his film adaptation. It was the 1st posthumous Oscar: Howard had been killed in an accident on his farm the previous August, so he never even saw the finished film.

The biggest shock of the evening was that Clark Gable, who played Rhett Butler, did not win Best Actor. That award went to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Donat had also beaten out Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms. At 19, Rooney was the 1st teenager ever to be nominated for an Oscar.

(Rooney had received a special award the year before, for his "juvenile" roles, and would receive an Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1983. But despite Olivier, himself often called the best actor of all time, calling him "the best there has ever been," he never won a regular award, going 0-for-4 as a nominee. Olivier would win 4, but only 1 for acting, in Hamlet in 1948. Gable had already gotten the 1 he would ever win, for It Happened One Night in 1934. Stewart won the next year, for The Philadelphia Story.)

Also among GWTW's awards is Best Supporting Actress, to Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, Scarlett's black maid. McDaniel thus became the 1st African-American actor, of either gender, to win an Academy Award.

She didn't think she would even get the role, as she had become famous as a comedic actress, but Gable -- like his character in the film, he could alternate between generous and rotten in real life -- personally requested her for the role.

As with the book, the film, made just 64 years after the Civil War ended, was pro-South, took the advancing Union Army of "the Yankees" as the villains, and did not criticize slavery.

McDaniel, 46, a native of Colorado and the daughter of slaves, brushed aside the arguments of her own people that her character was a demeaning stereotype, telling the white press, "I loved Mammy. I think I understood her, because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara." 

When the film premiered at the Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, due to segregation laws, she was not permitted to attend. Gable threatened to boycott the premiere, but McDaniel herself told him not to, as it would hurt his career, and not help hers at all.

She was permitted to attend the film's Hollywood debut, 13 days later. But for the Oscar ceremony, the Ambassador Hotel had a strict whites-only policy, allowing McDaniel in as a favor. For what would later be called the "afterparty," her white co-stars went to a whites-only club, and she was denied entry.

McDaniel became the 1st black actor to star in her own radio show, Beulah, on CBS, in 1947. Jazz singer Ethel Waters became the 1st to do so on television, also in Beulah, on ABC, in 1950. She quit after a year, because the production was being moved from New York to Hollywood, and she didn't want to leave the New York clubs that were paying her better.

McDaniel was given the role, and one of her co-stars was Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who had played Prissy in Gone with the Wind. But McDaniel developed cancer, and only lasted a year as Beulah herself, and died in 1952. Louise Beavers took over the role, and held it until the show was canceled in 1953.

No other black person would be nominated for an Oscar until 1954, when Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for Best Actress for Carmen Jones. The betting favorites were Dandridge and Judy Garland, for A Star Is Born. Supporters of both were outraged when the award went to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl. It was hardly her best role, much less a better performance than either Dandridge's or Garland's. Rumors that she slept her way to that award persist to this day. Dandridge died in 1965.

In 1964, Sidney Poitier became the 1st male actor to win an Oscar, taking Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field. In 1975, Sammy Davis Jr., who never won an Oscar, became the 1st black person to host the ceremony. In 1991, Whoopi Goldberg became the next black woman to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress, for Ghost. In 1994, she became the 1st black woman to host the ceremony.

In 2002, both lead Oscars went to black actors: Denzel Washington for Training Day, and Halle Berry -- who had previously starred as her fellow Cleveland native in the made-for-cable-TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge -- for Monster's Ball.

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February 29, 1940 was a Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. But there were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* At the time, there were 7 teams in the NHL. The New York Americans were not scheduled.