Sam McDaniel was an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 who appeared in over 210 television shows and films between 1929 and 1950. He was the older brother of actresses Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind ....

 and Etta McDaniel

Etta McDaniel

Etta McDaniel was an African American actress who appeared in over 60 films between 1933 and 1946. She is the sister of actor Sam McDaniel and actress and Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel....

. born in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. He was one of 13 children. His father Henry McDaniel fought in the Civil War

Civil war

A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....

 with the 122nd USCT and her mother, Susan Holbert, was a singer of religious music. In 1900, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Fort Collins and then in Denver, where he grew up and graduated from Denver East High School. The children of the McDaniel Family had a traveling minstrel show. After the death of brother Otis in 1916, the troupe began to lose money. In 1931, McDaniel found work in Los Angeles with sisters Hattie, Etta and Orlena. Sam was working on KNX

KNX (AM)

KNX is an all-news radio station in Los Angeles, California, USA. The station operates on a clear channel and is owned by CBS Radio. KNX broadcasts from facilities shared with sister stations KFWB, KCBS-FM, KTWV, and KAMP on Los Angeles' Miracle Mile...

 radio program called The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, and he was able to get his sister a spot.

Career

Sam McDaniel is known almost exclusively for playing butler, doormen, valet, porter and servant roles in films. McDaniel is familiar to modern viewers for his role as Spiffingham the Butler in the Three Stooges film Heavenly Daze

Heavenly Daze

Heavenly Daze is the 109th short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.-Plot:...

. Having been the only African-American to ever appear in the I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

series, he was "Sam the Porter" in a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy called "The Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery

- Events :* Great Gold Robbery of 1855, took place during a train and sea journey from London to Paris on May 15* Great Train Robbery , took place near Linslade in England on August 8...

". He played a belhop on a train in the 1941 film The Egg and I

The Egg and I

The Egg and I, first published in 1945, is a humorous memoir by American author Betty MacDonald about her adventures and travels as a young wife on a chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state...

(with Fred MacMurray

Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....

 and Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...

.)
He also appeared as the Head Waiter in the 1931 James Cagney

James Cagney

James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...

 gangster film classic The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy is a 1931 American Pre-Code crime film starring James Cagney and directed by William A. Wellman. The film relates the story of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld in prohibition-era urban America...

.

Death

McDaniel died of throat cancer on September 24, 1962 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California

Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California

Woodland Hills is a district in the city of Los Angeles, California.Woodland Hills is located in the southwestern area of the San Fernando Valley, east of Calabasas and west of Tarzana, with Warner Center in its northern section...

.

External links