Butterfly McQueen (8 January 1911 – 22 December 1995)

During the filming of Affectionately Yours (1941), Merle Oberon told friends that the film was a “dud”. And she wasn’t wrong. It is a mis-step of a comedy, based on the idea that two intelligent and exceptionally beautiful women would care about and compete over a philandering liar. Big names and talents wasted on a silly, pointless script. It is not just my 21st century sensibilities that baulk at the chaotic, broad comedy. It did poorly at the time, finishing 166th at the box office for 1941, despite the three-way draw of Rita Hayworth, Merle Oberon and Dennis Morgan. It also had the talents of Academy award winner Hattie McDaniel in yet another maid role. And the unique voice and spirit of Butterfly McQueen is used merely to punctuate the comedy with shrieks and laughs. (Notice neither of them make it onto the poster…)

This is a trite comedy, that underlines the problem of 1940s Hollywood with women and race. The black women get to play maids with no story-line of their own. Margarita Cansino has had electrolysis on her hairline and the remaining hair dyed red, to camouflage her Spanish heritage before changing her name to Rita Hayworth. And Merle Oberon, the English Rose, is frantically using skin lightening products to hide her South Asian origins. None of the women in the film have interesting back stories. They are simply foil to Dennis Morgan’s double-crossing and physical comedy.

This month marks Butterfly McQueen’s birthday. She was born Thelma MacQueen on 8 January 1911 and started her performing career as a dancer. It is suggested that she chose the name Butterfly after a ballet performance in Midsummer’s Night Dream.

But it is her voice that distinguishes her on the big screen in the talkies of the 1930s and 1940s – high-pitched, child-like screams and charming chuckles.

Butterfly appeared in a range of high-profile films – some of the biggest of the era. She had her biggest break in the biggest film of them all – Gone with the Wind (1939), where she played Prissy, Scarlett’s enslaved maid - the first of many maid roles. As 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."

Butterfly, along with Hattie McDaniel, was unable to attend the premiere as it played in a whites-only cinema in Atlanta.

It was a problematic role in a problematic film. As Malcolm X wrote in his biography:

“I was the only Negro in the theater, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug”

She appeared in other big pictures such as The Women (1939) (as an uncredited sales assistant) and as domestic help in Mildred Pierce (1945) (again uncredited, despite scenes of dialogue with the star). However even in those brief appearances, she is easily recognisable by her “on the edge” energy, underpinned by that voice. Despite the obvious stereotyping, Butterfly made a distinct contribution to all the films she appeared in.

Butterfly grew disillusioned with Hollywood and quit to take other jobs in stage, radio and whatever else she could take to pay her way, including sales assistant, a taxi dispatcher and community social work.

Her life was very much that of a jobbing actor. She was resourceful and produced her own cabaret act. Sometimes her career reached heights like appearing in the original Broadway production of The Wiz, or an Emmy for her acting in Children’s TV. But there was also the lows of suing security guards, who having mistaken her as a pickpocket, broke several of her ribs.

And she appeared regularly at showings of Gone with the Wind during it’s 50th anniversary tour, seemingly reconciled with the role she had initially hated, because of it’s depiction of stupidity. By then, of course, she had earned her BA in Political Science and possibly felt more secure in her intelligence:

“Now I am happy I did ‘Gone with the Wind’. I wasn’t when I was 28, but it’s part of black history. You have no idea how hard it is for black actors, but things change, things blossom in time.”

She died in 1995 at the age of 84, after receiving burns from a kerosene heater.

But as an imaginary 1940’s screen writer, I am left with only traces of Butterfly. In Gone with the Wind, which runs for (sharp intake of breath) 3 hours and 58 minutes, there are no clues to the back stories of the black roles.

As Donald Bogle points out:

“All the black actors worked hard to make the most of their screen time, with indelible sequences that linger in the move-goers minds long after the film has ended.”

But there is no sense of their lives outside the screens, where they live, their relationships, the formation of their characters. Indeed, even the nature of their enslaved existences is camouflaged by calling them ‘house servants’ in casting lists.

And that is the problem I have with writing about Butterfly. I feel like I am groping at fragments. Rather than having a fully-developed human being, I have the remnants of a photographer’s failed dark room. I can see the faint outlines of the limits of what was permissible for African-American artists of her time.

I can see that she has comic timing. I can hear she has a unique voice. But I can’t hold her image down. It floats away like, well, a butterfly.

If I had been given the chance to write Butterfly a screen play what could I have given her? How could I have kept her in Hollywood?

I would like to write Butterfly her own version of Mildred Pierce, where she is not the hired help. Instead she is the star of a Woman’s Film, about the economic necessity to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. I would like to showcase her charm and her giggle and how she uses it to forge friendships and manipulate situations to ensure that she can remain independent.

It would be a film about her intelligence, her compassion and her challenge to the order of things. And I’d like to work with the playfulness that dances in her hands and her voice.

She said:

“I had imagined that since I am an intelligent woman, I could play any kind of role.”

What a shame that Hollywood didn’t see it that way.

This is my love letter to those fragments of Butterfly McQueen, signed Affectionately yours…

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