Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen was a renowned American actress, originally a dancer, who first appeared in film in 1939 as Prissy, Scarlett O'Hara's maid, in the iconic film Gone with the Wind.
McQueen was unable to attend the movie's premiere due to it being held at a whites-only theater. Throughout her career, she was often typecast as a maid, which she initially accepted but later grew to resent.
She continued to act in film throughout the 1940s and transitioned to television in the 1950s. McQueen's early career was marked by her appearance on the Broadway stage in the comedy What a Life in 1938, where she was spotted by talent scout Kay Brown, who recommended her for the role of Prissy in Gone with the Wind.
After Selznick saw her screen test, he never considered anyone else, and McQueen was cast in the role that would become her most iconic - Prissy, a simple-minded house maid. Her distinctive, high-pitched voice was noted by a critic who described it as "the itsy-little voice fading over the far horizon of comprehension".
McQueen did not enjoy playing the part and felt it was demeaning to African-Americans. She also played an uncredited bit part as a sales assistant in The Women (1939),filmed after Gone with the Wind but released before it.
During World War II, McQueen frequently appeared as a comedian on the Armed Forces Radio Service broadcast Jubilee. Many of these broadcasts are available on the Internet Archive.
From 1950 until 1952, she was featured in another racially stereotyped role on the television series Beulah, playing Beulah's friend Oriole, a character originated on radio by Ruby Dandridge, who would then take over the TV role from McQueen in 1952-53.
In a lighter moment, she appeared in a 1969 episode of The Dating Game. 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. 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.
She had one more role of substance in the 1986 film The Mosquito Coast.
