(big band music) - It's really ironic that today, because of social media, the one clip that is the most popular clip of Hazel Scott is her playing the two pianos.

The film "The Heat's On," that was where she had the worst experience in Hollywood.

♪ Over hill, over dale ♪ ♪ We have hit the dusty trail ♪ The trouble didn't start until the scene where the women were saying goodbye to their husbands as they went off to war.

♪ Attention ♪ - It's a segregated army at that time, so all Black soldiers, and their wives and girlfriends are there to see them off to war.

They've done the rehearsals, the scene's ready to shoot.

She walks onto the sound stage, and an assistant director decides to change the costume.

- And she notices that the Black women have on soiled aprons.

And she goes, what is wrong with their costumes?

So the choreographer says, well, we sprayed a little oil on them, and so they look more authentic.

- [Hazel] The blood rushed to my head.

Am I to understand that these young women are to see their sweethearts off to war wearing dirty Hoover aprons?

The choreographer bellowed, "Why do you care?

What's it to you?"

With that remark, the lid blew off, and I went absolutely mad.

The next thing I knew, we were screaming at each other, and all work had stopped.

- The director was like, how the other women are dressed on set is none of your business.

You can only control how you are dressed.

That's in your contract.

And she said, well, actually, I can control how you dress the other women, because I'm not coming to work.

- So she stages a strike, and all of the women follow her lead, and she goes, we're not coming back until this is fixed.

- Word gets up to the president of the studio, not that Hazel Scott is objecting to the maids' uniforms, not that Hazel Scott is saying that Black actresses are not being treated well.

The word is Hazel Scott is holding up production.

Well, that's one of the deadliest phrases in Hollywood.

And he said, that's it, she's not gonna make another movie as long as I live.

- [Narrator] Today, when pride in our Blackness has become the order of the day, it is a bit difficult for me to make you understand how lonely it was then.

Until my fight at Columbia, no Black person had ever dared to oppose the establishment.

No one was there to back me up.

There I was, out on the limb of race pride, and Harry Cohn swore that he would chop it off.

- She very much so was the only woman doing what she was doing, the way she was doing it.

And she could have very much so just hoarded all that success to herself, but in times that she didn't have to, she advocated for Black women.

- [Narrator] After three days of strike, they gave in.

The chance to see our people portrayed on screen as they never had before, was heady wine for a 22-year-old crusader.

I told the girls, "Tonight I want every one of you broads into the hairdressers.

Tomorrow morning at nine, I want you on this set immaculately turned out."

As the young women left my dressing room, they had an air of people passing a bier, viewing my last remains.

(big band music) - In the movie, you'll see these women in these beautiful floral dresses doing a dance number, and it's gorgeous, and she stood up for them, but it cost her her entire movie career.

♪ Attention ♪ And it's just staggering to me that they did that to her.

Ugh, it makes me so mad.

It makes me so mad.

(big band music fades)