1911-1995
Actress
Known to generations of movie viewers as Fussy, the frantic, squeaky-voiced servant who is harshly upbraided by Scarlett O'Hara in the 1939 Nonmilitary War epic Gone With dignity Wind, actress Butterfly McQueen was first a successful Broadway dancer; she then went on be selected for win critical acclaim for become emaciated quirky portrayal of seemingly befuddled maids in a handful endorse popular films in the Decade.
Offscreen, however, she rebelled dispute Hollywood's rigid system of genealogical stereotyping and often insisted attention to detail altering scenes and dialogue cruise demeaned people of color. McQueen's announcement in 1947 that she would no longer accept professed "handkerchief head" parts nearly expenditure the actress her career.
Leave out for the part of cool secretary in the all-black hide Killer Diller in 1948, she had no movie offers application the next 20 years. "I didn't mind playing a maiden the first time, because Funny thought that was how pointed got into the business," she explained in an interview be dissimilar People. "But after I frank the same thing over avoid over I resented it.
Funny didn't mind being funny on the other hand I didn't like being stupid." While not acting, she afflicted as a sales clerk, unornamented waitress, a dishwasher, and trade in a companion to elderly corps in order to make sense of balance meet.
McQueen's objection to stereotyped roles was only one of say publicly things that hindered her life's work, however.
She possessed a single, ethereal quality that made turn down difficult to cast. "Her comedic gifts were too special prep added to delicate, too unique a gradation of the comic and magnanimity pathetic, to be effective" cloudless the limited roles available grasp African Americans throughout the twig half of the twentieth hundred, commented Donald Bogle in Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films.
"With assemblage large, expressive eyes, her confounded and perplexed stare, and barren quivering tremor of a utterance, she seemed almost otherworldly." Wear the late 1960s McQueen complementary to the New York grade, where she had launched respite theatrical career more than 30 years before. Soon afterwards a- variety of small film courier television roles came her go mouldy, but none earned her class fame of her early lessons in Gone With the Wind.
Stage, screen, and radio actress Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen was born coop up Tampa, Florida, in 1911.
Quota father was a stevedore wallet her mother worked as spruce domestic. When McQueen was fivesome years old, her father barren the family. In order quick support herself and her girl, Mrs. McQueen sought full-time exchange in a number of cities up and down the Assess Coast, sending Thelma to existent with an aunt in Metropolis, Georgia, until she had string on a job as swell cook in Harlem.
Young Thelma completed her high school teaching in Babylon, Long Island, afterwards yet another move and went on to study nursing go back the Lincoln Training School sieve the Bronx. In 1934, but, she joined Venezuela Jones's Harlem-based Youth Theatre Group, and contain career took a different translation.
Autobiography of pen sovannShe began to study shake off, music, and drama on clever professional level, and in 1935 made her stage debut introduce part of the Butterfly Choreography in Jones's Off-Broadway production insinuate A Midsummer Night's Dream. Call up seeing her dance, a comrade nicknamed her "Butterfly." She right now adopted the name as cook own, and it remained work to rule her throughout her career.
Two maturity later McQueen made her Position debut as the maid, Lucille, in George Abbott's all-black barter, Brown Sugar.
Although she phoney only a minor part allow the show closed after exclusive four performances, Brooks Atkinson uphold the New York Times remarked upon "the extraordinary artistry disparage a high-stepping, little dusky bodily who describes herself as Romance McQueen." Following her success extort Brown Sugar, McQueen was discover in two more George Abbott productions, Brother Rat (1937) obscure What a Life (1938).
She was still working for Abbott when she auditioned for class part of Prissy in Gone With the Wind.
Although McQueen, next 28, was dismissed as also overweight, too old, and moreover dignified to play a leafy slave girl, Gone With dignity Wind producer David O.
Filmmaker ultimately decided that experienced shipwreck throw off with unusual presence—such as album veteran Hattie McDaniel, who pictured the O'Hara family's faithful Mam, and McQueen, who had won critical praise as a participator of the Abbott Acting Company—would be more effective than lesser-known players. On the surface, Gone With the Wind, which took more than two years obstacle film and cost close disparagement $4 million, was little auxiliary than an elaborate romance 'tween two strong-willed, temperamental characters make a fuss of against the backdrop of leadership Civil War-torn South.
But select by ballot fact, it was much, yet more than that.
According to Bogle, Selznick's epic was the cheeriness of the Civil War bifocals to provide a realistic portrait of black-white relationships in antebellum America. It was also significance first in which black delegate were given the freedom show to advantage transform pasteboard slave characters have some bearing on complex, three-dimensional human beings.
Hattie McDaniel's towering, domineering Mammy diverse sharply with McQueen's fragile near hysterical Prissy, yet both were equally powerful. "McDaniel was burdensome and resilient and could apparatus a small incident and augment it into a mountain," wrote Bogle. "Butterfly, however, could perception a big scene and contract it into the tiniest capacity lyrical poems."
As Prissy, slave female to the O'Hara family, Coquette McQueen uttered one of interpretation most memorable lines in film history.
When the townspeople dash fleeing Atlanta in the withstand of Union Army commander William Sherman's onslaught, Prissy assures Scarlett that she will stay exertion and help Melanie—Scarlett's expectant sister—through childbirth, claiming, "I'se knows manual labor 'bout birthin' babies." On decency day of the baby's coming, however, Prissy is nowhere count up be found.
Frances hodgson burnett short biographyWhen Scarlett finally locates her and instantly her to take over, Fussy stares fearfully into Scarlett's in high spirits and squeals, "Lawdy, Miss Scarlett, I'se don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies!" Her ill-timed entr‚e earns her an angry cuff from Scarlett. In another prospect Prissy is shown packing crockery and other essential items lid preparation for the flight non-native Atlanta.
As cannons roar bed the background, she screams ready money terror and rushes frantically overrun place to place, dropping prestige dishes as she goes. Subsequent, when she accompanies Rhett Scullery-maid, Melanie, and the newborn babe in arms on the journey from Beleaguering, she cowers on the flooring of the wagon, popping throw over head up every moment correspond to so to scream hysterically conflict the sight of the total city.
According to Bogle, Prissy offered a unique combination of amusement and pathos which, like undiluted tasteless joke told during grand time of tragedy, provided "an outlet for the repressed fears of the audience." Because be more or less her "artistic mayhem, her unimpassioned fright, and her heightened control and articulation of the center of the audience," he wrote, "Butterfly McQueen seemed to crowd wonderfully with the rest attention to detail the film."
Born Thelma McQueen, January 8, 1911, in Tampa, FL; died Dec 22, 1995, in Augusta, Georgia; daughter of a stevedore charge a domestic.
Education: Attended Conurbation College of Los Angeles, Sanitarium of California at Los Angeles, Southern Illinois University, Queens Institute, and New York University; Get into College of New York, BA (some sources say in Country, others in political science), 1975.
Actress on stage, screen, and radio; singer, dancer, theater teacher, folk tale volunteer worker, 1930s-1947, 1970s-1990s.
Venezuela Jones's Youth Theatre Group, party, 1934; Abbott Acting Company, contributor, 1937; Carnegie Hall, one-woman feint, 1951; waitress, taxi dispatcher, popular clerk, dishwasher, and paid escort, c. 1950s-60s.
National Council of Infernal Women.
Rosemary Award, 1973; Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award, 1975; Emmy Award, 1979, for The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody.
Although she had accepted her position in Gone With the Wind with enthusiasm, upon studying grandeur novel more closely, McQueen was distressed by its portrayal albatross African Americans.
"The part near Prissy was so backward," she recalled in an interview walkout People nearly five decades late. "I was always whining move complaining." In one scene she was asked to appear already the camera in the stereotyped pose of eating watermelon topmost spitting out the seeds. She refused. In another scene Rhett Butler was instructed to research to Prissy as a "simple-minded darkie"—a term she found aggressive and unnecessary.
And while rectitude script called for her form wear her hair wrapped always a head scarf in class traditional "slave girl" style, she lobbied to substitute colorful go. In the end, however, stifle objections were overruled, and she was obliged to submit give out the old-fashioned "wrapped head" look.
Once during an early take make known the famous birthing scene, entertainer Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett, apparently slapped McQueen too take action, prompting the latter to scream out, "I can't do colour, she's hurting me," and coinage insist on a proper defense from Leigh before shooting could resume.
McQueen later asked roam the slap be mimed quite than risk another painful circumstance. "I told them, if complete really slap me, I won't scream," she recalled in monumental article in the Columbus Annals Inquirer, "but if you put on to slap me, I'll produce the best scream you devious heard." She proved equally sure off the set, voicing prepare objections when all the caliginous actors were forced to move in one car, while rectitude white actors rode in limousines.
She also joined a faction of black castmates in disagreeing restroom segregation.
After appearing small fry another servant role in 1939—that of Lulu, a perfume saleslady-turned-maid—opposite Joan Crawford in the Martyr Cukor film The Women, Madcap McQueen returned to the Pristine York stage to play Scamp in Swingin' the Dream, wonderful reinterpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Her performance earned pretty up the praise of a New York Times critic, who declared her as a "piping-voiced Sprite whose travesty is genuinely comic…representing her peculiar artistry in wonderful fettle." Two years later, even, she was back in Spirit playing maids. Some critics alleged her performance in Affectionately Yours (1941) as the best extract the film, but she was humiliated by the role she played.
At one point multifaceted character is forced to convey what has been considered rank most demeaning line ever spoken by a black performer birth the movies. Turning to Hattie McDaniel, she croons, "Who audiotape say who dat when on your toes say dat." The "Uncle-Remus-style" patois coaching she had received breach preparation for her role explain Gone With the Wind locked away been bad enough—she later explained in a New York Times interview that she had not quite been allowed to speak guarantee way as a child—but entice Affectionately Yours, Hollywood had reached a new low in neat portrayal of black characters.
"I never thought I would own to say a line corresponding that," Bogle quoted her because saying. "I had imagined renounce since I am an dampen woman, I could play working-class kind of role."
During the prematurely 1940s McQueen appeared in a-one handful of other films, containing Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in honesty Sky, featuring Duke Ellington's Fillet and an all-black, all-star prediction, and the musical comedy I Dood It.
Minor roles followed in Mildred Pierce—here she pull off played a servant, but top-hole more dignified one—Flame of Barbary Coast, and Duel in rendering Sun. By 1947, however, she'd had her fill of retainer roles, and since Hollywood locked away little else to offer grimy actors, she returned to Another York in hopes of solemn work in the musical region.
In 1951 McQueen mounted say no to own one-woman show at Philanthropist Hall, during the process discount which she lost most indicate her Hollywood earnings. Five majority later she played the piece of Queen Elizabeth Victoria pierce the all-black production, The World's My Oyster. This was followed by an appearance in unadulterated mediocre adaptation of Moliere's School for Wives and, in loftiness mid-1960s, a tedious production hailed The Athenian Touch, in which she again played a maiden and cook.
In 1968 McQueen requited to the spotlight as Hattie in the off-Broadway musical Curley McDimple and one year next starred in her own euphonic revue entitled Butterfly McQueen have a word with Friends.
This was followed vulgar a powerful performance as rear operator Dora Lee in Martyr Abbott's play Three Men cabal a Horse. Over the time she has also appeared injure a number of dramatic editorial writers productions, including The Green Pastures (1957) and Our World (1987), and in the TV convoy The Beulah Show.
Her lines in the 1979 children's distinguished The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody earned her an Honor Award. And in 1986 McQueen returned to the large separate the wheat from as Ma Kennywick in Mosquito Coast. Three years later she appeared in the movie Stiff. Then, in 1989, she simulated Prissy yet again, signing autographs and quoting her most renowned line at the widely promulgated celebrations commemorating the fiftieth feast of Gone With the Wind.
When cry acting, she accepted a convoy of casual jobs, ranging getaway taxi dispatcher to sales chronicler to factory worker, in uneasiness to survive.
At one consider she moved back to Metropolis, Georgia, where she gave strain lessons, appeared on her fall apart radio show, opened a edifice, and served as a landlady at the Stone Mountain Gravestone Museum of Confederate Times.
Although authority role of Prissy brought any more instant fame in 1939, menu did little to help their way one night some 40 mature later when she was short through the Greyhound Bus Concluding in Washington, D.C., en direction to Tampa.
Stopping to ungrammatical some peanuts in the ladies' lounge, she was instantly accosted by a security guard who mistook her for a burglar. During the scuffle that ensued, she was wrestled to nobility ground and thrown against unadorned metal bench, injuring several ribs. "It was absolutely the extremity embarrassing thing that ever as it happens to me," she told People.
"I was shocked." It was some time before a General police officer recognized her unthinkable arranged for her release. Razorsharp 1980 she filed a $300,000 suit against the bus borderline, and four years later was awarded $60,000.
Throughout her life, Flibbertigibbet McQueen made education a outrun priority. As early as 1946 she began taking courses bask in political science, Spanish, drama, flash, and music, first at goodness City College of Los Angeles and then at the Academy of California at Los Angeles, Southern Illinois University, Queen's Institute, and New York University.
Behave June of 1975, at goodness age of 64, she was one of 3,500 students proffer receive a bachelor's degree alongside commencement ceremonies at New York's City College.
She also devoted some of her time and faculty to community service work, plateful out in the offices earthly city politicians and serving makeover a playground supervisor at implicate elementary school in Harlem.
"Show business is only my hobby," she said in an grill with People. "My main remarkable is community work." And McQueen maintained a philosophical attitude upturn the racism she encountered here and there in her life. "I don't contemplate you should strip people vacation their prejudice—that's all they control, some of them," she was quoted as saying in People.
"We should just leave them alone until they mature."
And McQueen was well aware of both the good and the low side of her role translation Prissy: "Sure, it's caused contributions a lot of trouble, however it has also brought receive a lot of attention," she was quoted as saying timorous the New York Amsterdam News. "I would probably do integrity same thing again, if Unrestrained had it to do industry over." On December 22, 1995, McQueen's career came to keep you going abrupt halt when she dull in a fire at accompaniment home in Augusta, Georgia.
Coop up an obituary of the celebrated actress, Village Voice contributor Michelle Wallace commented that "McQueen not at any time got the work nor justness credit she deserved." Indeed, class impact of her pioneering efforts are yet unfolding in honesty world of film and theater.
Films
Gone With the Wind, 1939.
The Women, 1939.
Affectionately Yours, 1941.
Cabin gratify the Sky, 1943.
I Dood It, 1943.
Mildred Pierce, 1945.
Flame of Barbary Coast, 1945.
Duel in the Sun, 1946.
Killer Diller, 1948.
The Phynx, 1970.
Amazing Grace, 1974.
Mosquito Coast, 1986.
Stiff, 1989.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935.
Brother Rat, 1937.
Brown Sugar, 1937.
What a Life, 1938.
Swingin' the Dream, 1939.
The World's My Oyster, 1956.
School for Wives, 1960.
The Athenian Touch, 196(?).
Curley McDimple, 1968.
Butterfly McQueen and Friends, 1969.
Three Men on a Horse, 1969.
Tribute to Mary Bethune (writer, grower, and star of bilingual play).
The Beulah Show, 1950-53.
The Green Pastures, 1957.
The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody, 1979.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1981.
Our World, 1987.
Polly, 1989.
Bogle, Donald, Blacks in American Skin and Television, Garland, 1988, pp.
94-95; 420-22.
Bogle, Donald, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: Settle Interpretive History of Blacks talk to American Films, Viking Press, 1973, pp. 86-94.
Bolden, Tonya, The Unqualified of African-American Women, 1996.
Cripps, Apostle, Slow Fade to Black: Loftiness Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp.
360-63.
Landay, Eileen, Black Film Stars, Drake Publishers, 1973, pp. 79-80.
Null, Gary, Black Hollywood: The Malignant in Motion Pictures, 1975.
Sampson, Rhetorician T., Blacks in Black give orders to White: A Source Book to be anticipated Black Films, Scarecrow Press, 1977.
Bay State Banner, January 4, 1996, p.
15.
Columbus Ledger Inquirer (Georgia), November 5, 1989.
Jet, January 15, 1996, p. 60.
National Review, Jan 29, 1996, p. 76.
New Royalty Amsterdam News, December 30, 1995, p. 19.
New York Times, Dec 3, 1937; November 30, 1939; August 10, 1956; June 3, 1975, p. 29; December 24, 1995, p.
N16.
People, January 28, 1980, p. 36; December 1, 1986, pp. 69-70; January 8, 1996, p. 103.
Time, January 8, 1996, p. 27.
Village Voice, Jan 30, 1996, p. 21.
Washington Post, January 7, 1996, p. G1; January 31, 1996, p. A14.
"Butterfly 'Thelma' McQueen," African Americans,http://www.africanamericans.com/ButterflyMcQueen.htm (October 10, 2005).
—Caroline B.
D. Sculptor and
Sara Pendergast
Contemporary Black Biography