Originally a dancer, McQueen first appeared in films as "Prissy" in Gone with the Wind.
21 Facts About Butterfly McQueen
2.
Butterfly McQueen was unable to attend the film's premiere because it was held at a whites-only theater.
3.
Butterfly McQueen appeared in the films Cabin in the Sky, Mildred Pierce, and Duel in the Sun.
4.
Butterfly McQueen won a 1980 Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in the ABC Afterschool Special episode "Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid".
5.
Butterfly McQueen had planned to become a nurse until a high-school teacher suggested that she try acting.
6.
Butterfly McQueen initially studied with Janet Collins and danced with the Venezuela Jones Negro Youth Group.
7.
Butterfly McQueen performed with the dance troupe of Katherine Dunham before making her professional debut in George Abbott's Brown Sugar.
8.
Butterfly 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.
9.
Butterfly McQueen had an uncredited bit part as a sales assistant in The Women, filmed after Gone with the Wind but released before it.
10.
Butterfly McQueen played Butterfly, Rochester's niece and Mary Livingstone's maid, in Jack Benny's radio program in the 1940s.
11.
Butterfly McQueen appeared in an uncredited role in Mildred Pierce and played a supporting role in Duel in the Sun.
12.
Butterfly McQueen was in the original version of the stage musical The Wiz when it debuted in Baltimore, Maryland in 1974.
13.
Butterfly McQueen played the Queen of the Field Mice, a character from the original L Frank Baum novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
14.
However, when the show was revised prior to going to Broadway, Butterfly McQueen's role was cut by incoming director Geoffrey Holder.
15.
Butterfly McQueen received a bachelor's degree in political science from City College of New York in 1975.
16.
Butterfly McQueen played the character of Aunt Thelma, a fairy godmother, in the ABC Weekend Special episode "The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody" and the ABC Afterschool Special episode "Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid" ; her performance in the latter earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Children's Programming.
17.
In 1975, aged 64, Butterfly McQueen received a bachelor's degree in political science from City College of New York.
18.
Butterfly McQueen sued for harassment after she claimed the security guards accused her of being a pickpocket and a vagrant while she was at a Washington, DC Greyhound bus terminal in April 1979.
19.
Butterfly McQueen lamented that, if humans had focused on Earth and on people, rather than on mythology and on Jesus, there would be less hunger and homelessness.
20.
Butterfly McQueen died at age 84 on December 22,1995, at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, from burns sustained when a kerosene heater she attempted to light malfunctioned and burst into flames.
21.
Butterfly McQueen donated her body to medical science and remembered the Freedom From Religion Foundation in her will.