Butterfly McQueen

Often typecast as a maid, she said: "I didn't mind playing a maid the first time, because I thought that was how you got into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over, I resented it. I didn't mind being funny, but I didn't like being stupid." She continued as an actress in film in the 1940s, and then moved to television acting in the 1950s. She won a 1980 Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in the ABC Afterschool Special episode "Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid".

• Name — Butterfly McQueen • Birth Name — Thelma McQueen • Born — 8 January 1911 • Birthplace — Tampa, Florida, U.S. • Died — 22 December 1995 • Place of death — Augusta, Georgia, U.S. • Education — City College of New York • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1935–1989

Born January 8, 1911, in Tampa, Florida, Thelma McQueen was the daughter of Wallace McQueen, a stevedore/dockworker, and Mary McQueen, who worked as a maid. After her parents separated, Thelma lived with her mother in Augusta, Georgia, where she was educated by nuns at a convent. She had planned to become a nurse until a high-school teacher suggested that she try acting. McQueen initially studied with Janet Collins and danced with the Venezuela Jones Negro Youth Group. Around this time she acquired the nickname "Butterfly" – a tribute to her constantly moving hands – for her performance of the Butterfly Ballet in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Disliking her birth name, she later legally changed it to Butterfly McQueen. She performed with the dance troupe of Katherine Dunham before making her professional debut in George Abbott's Brown Sugar.

McQueen was appearing as a student in the Broadway comedy What a Life in 1938 when she was spotted by Kay Brown, talent scout for David O. Selznick, then in pre-production for Gone with the Wind (eventually released in 1939). Brown recommended that McQueen audition for the film. After Selznick saw her screen test, he never considered anyone else and McQueen was cast in the role that would become her most identifiable – Prissy, a simple-minded house maid. She uttered the famous words: "Oh, Miss Scarlett! I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies!" Her distinctive, high-pitched voice was described by a critic as "the itsy-little voice fading over the far horizon of comprehension". While the role is well known to audiences, McQueen did not enjoy playing the part and felt it was demeaning to African Americans. She was unable to attend the film's premiere because it was held at a whites-only theater. She later came to embrace the role, appearing before audiences at several screenings for Gone with the Wind 's semi-centenary and joining fellow cast-members. I was miserable, but now I have studied history, I still study, and I listen to the things that are going on in other parts of the world, and I know that's how things were, and in some strides we have gone forward, but in many we have gone many backward steps.

McQueen neither married nor had children. She lived in New York in the summer months and in Augusta, Georgia, during the winter. McQueen once resided in the Thomas W. Phillips Residence in Los Angeles, a house that later became a filming location, most notably for the 1991 film The People Under the Stairs and the 2024-25 15th season of the show On Cinema. In July 1983, a jury awarded McQueen $60,000 in a judgment stemming from a lawsuit that she had filed against two bus-terminal security guards. McQueen sued for harassment after she claimed that the security guards had accused her of being a pickpocket and a vagrant while she was at a Washington, D.C., Greyhound terminal in April 1979.

In 1989, the Freedom From Religion Foundation honored McQueen with its Freethought Heroine Award. "I'm an atheist," she had declared, "and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I'm puzzled that so many people can't see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry." She told a reporter, "As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion." This quote was used by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in advertisements inside Madison, Wisconsin, buses in 2009 and in an Atlanta market in 2010. McQueen argued that if humans had focused on Earth and on people, rather than on mythology and on Jesus, there would be less hunger and homelessness. "They say the streets are going to be beautiful in Heaven. Well, I'm trying to make the streets beautiful here... When it's clean and beautiful, I think America is heaven. And some people are hell."

McQueen died at age 84 on December 22, 1995, at Doctors Hospital in Augusta from burns sustained when a kerosene heater that she had attempted to light malfunctioned and burst into flames. McQueen donated her body to medical science and remembered the Freedom From Religion Foundation in her will.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1939 — The Women — Lulu – Cosmetics Counter Maid — Uncredited • 1939 — Gone with the Wind — Prissy • 1941 — Affectionately Yours — Butterfly • 1943 — Cabin in the Sky — Lily • 1943 — I Dood It — Annette — Alternative title: By Hook or by Crook • 1944 — Since You Went Away — WAC Sergeant — Uncredited, deleted scene • 1945 — Flame of Barbary Coast — Beulah – Flaxen's Maid — Alternative title: Flame of the Barbary Coast • 1945 — Mildred Pierce — Lottie – Mildred's Maid — Uncredited • 1946 — Duel in the Sun — Vashti — Alternative title: King Vidor's Duel in the Sun • 1948 — Killer Diller — Butterfly • 1950 — Studio One — Episode: "Give Us Our Dream" • 1950–1953 — Beulah — Oriole — 4 episodes • 1951 — Lux Video Theatre — Mary — Episode: "Weather for Today" • 1957 — Hallmark Hall of Fame — Episode: "The Green Pastures" • 1970 — The Phynx — Herself • 1974 — Amazing Grace — Clarine • 1978 — ABC Weekend Special — Aunt Thelma — Episode: "The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody" • 1979 — ABC Afterschool Special — Aunt Thelma — Episode: "Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid" • 1986 — Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Blind Negress — TV movie • 1986 — The Mosquito Coast — Ma Kennywick • 1988 — The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind — Herself (Interview) — TV documentary • 1989 — Polly — Miss Priss — TV movie (final appearance)