Butterfly McQueen (born Thelma McQueen; January 8, 1911December 22, 1995) was an American actress. Originally a dancer, McQueen first appeared in films as Prissy in Gone with the Wind (1939). She also appeared in the films Cabin in the Sky (1943), Mildred Pierce (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946).
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." Thelma McQueen was the daughter of Wallace McQueen, a stevedore/dockworker, and Mary McQueen, who worked as a maid.
Career
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.
Offers for acting roles began to dry up around this time, and she devoted herself to other pursuits including political study. She received a bachelor's degree in political science from City College of New York in 1975, aged 64. McQueen played the character of Aunt Thelma, a fairy godmother, in the ABC Weekend Special episode "The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody" (1978) and the ABC Afterschool Special episode "Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid" (1979); her performance in the latter earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Children's Programming.
Her final feature film role was in The Mosquito Coast (1986). Her final appearance was in the TV movie Polly, a reimagining of the Pollyanna story with a Black cast.
Personal life
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.
Atheism
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."
Death
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