|
|
|
 Little Hattie was a happy child. A born entertainer, she started singing at an early age, and her habit of doing so loudly around the house often prompted her mother to say, "Hattie, I'll pay you to hush," and to give the girl dimes. As one of a handful of black children at Denver's integrated Twenty-fourth Street Elementary School, she was a good student and popular. Later, at East Denver High School, she won a speech contest sponsored by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, giving a moving recitation of the Alexander Murdoch poem "Convict Joe," which described the tragic downfall of a man ruined by drink. Convinced she had real talent, she ignored her mother's objections and dropped out of school after her sophomore year to pursue a full-time career in show business. She had been performing in
local minstrel shows since 1908, when she was 13, and in 1909 she had received
featured billing on the Red Devils' minstrel program as "Denver's favorite
soubrette." And the show-biz bug bit other members of the family as well.
In 1910 Hattie's father started his own minstrel group, with her brothers Otis
and Sam. The Henry McDaniel Minstrel Show became an immediate hit, touring to
Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Fort Collins. Hattie begged to go with
the troupe, but her mother refused, wanting to spare her the burden of
one-night stands, exhausting travel, and segregated, substandard rooming
houses. She eventually gave in, though, and over the next three years, Hattie
traveled from Colorado to the West Coast with the show and wrote most of its
songs and material..I 1916 her brother Otis died
at 35 of an undiagnosed illness. He had been the driving force behind the
troupe, and without his guidance the show slowly fell apart. With bookings
dwindling,his sister had no choice but to seek employment in Denver as a cook,
clerk, and washerwoman. She would have to fall back on domestic work so often
during her early career that she would later joke, "I washed three million
dishes on my way to stardom."
|