THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512290089
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
``YES, SIR, I was Prissy in `Gone With the Wind,' '' Butterfly McQueen acknowledged with pursed lips as she sat in the Madison Hotel in Norfolk in 1986.
The high-pitched voice, which once drove Scarlett O'Hara to distraction as the Yankees advanced on Atlanta, spoke with obvious pride as well as genuine modesty.
Butterfly McQueen emerged as one of the more beloved character actresses in movie history, in spite of the fact that she only appeared in a half-dozen movies. She became a legend in ``GWTW'' when she squealed, ``I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies.''
Fame did not mean fortune to her. She died two days before Christmas, not far from where she was raised in Augusta, Ga., of burns sustained when she was trying to light a kerosene stove. She was 84.
Butterfly McQueen, in spite of her baby voice and her gentle, flighty manner, was a proud and independent woman.
I first met her backstage at an Off-Broadway theater when she was doing a little comedy called ``Curley McDimple.'' She asked if I would walk her down 41st Street to catch her bus. ``I'm scared to walk down that street by myself,'' she said. ``People are so mean now. I don't know why. They didn't used to be.''
She asked if I would mind if she stopped to get an ice cream cone. As we walked, she talked about ``Gone With the Wind.'' ``Mr. Clark (Gable) was so tall and so nice - a gentleman. He made sooooooo much money, but I didn't make much.''
Asked about Vivien Leigh, she admitted, ``there was a lot of gossip written about Miss Vivien being mean on the set - especially to me, because, you know, she had to slap me. The truth was that she had a lot on her. She was in almost every scene. She really did slap me - hard - but I knew she was acting. You know, Prissy was worrisome. I think, actually, Prissy should have been slapped.''
Finishing her ice cream cone, she retrieved the basket I had been carrying for her and boarded the bus to Harlem. There she lived in a one-room apartment with a cat named Mozart.
Through the years, I kept in contact. She never changed, even as she aged. She appeared at Chrysler Hall in the musical ``Show Boat.'' She came to Norfolk for a convention featuring a ``Gone With the Wind'' exhibit in 1986.
``No, sir, I never get tired of Prissy,'' she said. ``I make my living from her, you know. The fans are just everywhere!''
In Harlem, her daily routine involved neighborhood clean-up. ``Whenever I see a weed, I pull it up, and I teach the children to help,'' she said.
She played the piano, ``mostly things by Mr. Mozart.''
Prissy was not her only role. She was in ``Mildred Pierce'' with Joan Crawford as well as ``Since You Went Away'' with Claudette Colbert and ``Mosquito Coast'' with Harrison Ford.
In ``Duel in the Sun,'' with Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck, she played Vashti, a servant to Lillian Gish. In one memorable scene, she asks Miss Gish if she'd mind if she married. ``Why no, Vashti,'' Gish answers. ``Who are you going to marry?''
In her unmistakably screechy voice, McQueen replies, ``I don't rightly know. Do you know anyone who would like to get married?''
``They've asked me to be in many, many movies, but I can't be in them because of the language,'' she said. ``Mr. Burt Reynolds asked me to be in `Sharkey's Machine' but I heard there was killing in that, so I said `no.' ''
Thelma McQueen was born in Tampa but was raised in Augusta, Ga. ``My father was a stevedore and my mother was a domestic servant,'' she once told me. ``They sometimes left me with people from Nassau. That's why you can hear a little touch of British accent in me.''
She was only 13 when she joined a theater group in Harlem. She was nicknamed Butterfly after appearing in a production of ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in which she danced the Butterfly Ballet. She made her professional debut in a Broadway show called ``Brown Sugar'' in 1937.
She tilted her head and purred with high-pitched glee: ``The critics were nice to me. They called me `a winsome girl of chocolate hue.' ''
``Gone With the Wind'' producer David O. Selznick insisted that she have the part of Prissy in spite of the fact that she was 28 years old and the book called for Prissy to be a teen-ager. For five decades, critics have hailed her rare ability to mix comedy and poignancy, but some civil rights groups criticized the Prissy role as stereotyped.
``People of my race picketed `Gone With the Wind' at one time,'' she remembered, ``but I was the one who was working in films and they were parading around on the streets. They don't know that I actually complained a lot on the set about the part. I didn't want to play this stupid, simple servant girl. I thought she was soooooo lazy. Hattie McDaniel (who played Mammy in the film) used to tell me that I'd never work in Hollywood again because I complained too much. I didn't care, because I thought of myself as a stage person anyway.''
Her philosophy on racial issues was direct: ``Black people have made great progress and we shouldn't take that for granted, but all black Americans should let the world know that we don't have a lot of hateful white people in this country. We need to speak up for our country. We have fine white people here and we have fine black people and we're working together. . . we wouldn't have gotten this far if we hadn't.''
She squeaked with delight once as she recalled one of her favorite memories: ``Prissy was the one character who Margaret Mitchell, the author of the book, always said she would have wanted to play, if she could. Isn't that sweet?''
Butterfly McQueen will remain one of the most beloved character actresses in the world as long as films flicker across any screen. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
FILE/The Virginian-Pilot
Actress Butterfly McQueen, who died Dec. 23 at age 84, visited
Norfolk in 1986.
by CNB