Tipping Her Hat to Hattie

Mo'Nique, who at last night's Oscars took the Best Supporting Actress statuette for her gritty turn in "Precious," is reportedly at work on a biopic of Hattie McDaniel.

Fans of Turner Classic Movies will know McDaniel as the attentive maid in "Gone With the Wind" (1939). The role - and in the 1930s there weren't many for black actors that didn't require pulling on housekeeping uniforms - won the Kansas-born McDaniel the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on February 29, 1940.

I'm a longtime, die-hard Dorothy Dandridge devotee, and at one point it seemed every black entertainer from Janet Jackson to Whitney Houston was racing to play her, before Halle Berry pulled it out.

I think it's time Hattie got her due. This is Mo'Nique's part to perfect.

Life Is 'Precious'

Every couple of months or so, I'll be racing up the stairs of my building only to stumble over my neighbor splayed out on the steps with her pink backpack at her feet. She's about 14, skin the color of cooling espresso, and although she is baby-faced, she stands 6' with an equally imposing weight.

On the days she forgets the keys to the apartment she shares with her mother, she lies in wait. Her mother shares her physical dimensions but with a masculine frame and the combat-booted gait to match. Unfortunatly, I'm witness to the tongue lashings she endures for minor offenses like forgetting her keys.


My young neighbor is precious and a teenage girl's psyche is fragile. Every word you aim at them is a weapon. How many times have you passed an exhausted, bitter mother berating her little ones?

So I try the little bit I can to sprinkle verbal honey her way, whatever I can do to cut the sting. When I first started seeing the trailers for "Precious" (Nov. 6), starring 24-yo newcomer and Harlemite Gabby Sidibe, I couldn't help but flash to my neighbor. One of a few films I'm genuinely eager to see.