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Reviewed by:
  • Butterfly McQueen Remembered
  • Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe
Stephen Bourne, Butterfly McQueen Remembered. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2007.

Stephen Bourne’s Butterfly McQueen Remembered masquerades as a long-overdue tribute to an actress, made (in)famous by her unforgettable turn as Prissy, Scarlett O’Hara’s simple-minded servant, in the Hollywood Civil War epic Gone with the Wind. However, the book ultimately succeeds as a much greater enterprise in its examination of the artistic lives of early twentieth-century black American theater and film artists. Though Mc-Queen is largely known for her film work, she began and continued her artistic life (albeit, at times, intermittently) in live theater, rhetoric, and solo performances for nearly fifty years after the success of Gone with the Wind. Butterfly McQueen Remembered, in its thorough excavation of the actress’s body of work, accesses a rich tapestry of little known black theater production in the United States that was both independently produced and was a part of the development of the large commercial theater industry. It also uncovers early efforts of both black and white theatrical artists to move beyond the stereotyping that is typically held as an accepted mode for Black entertainers to work within. Like many before him, beginning, perhaps, with Donald Bogle’s seminal work on Black Hollywood, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks1 (an acknowledged influence on the author), Bourne identifies the resistance to be found within the performances of actors like McQueen and Hattie McDaniel but he takes this observation a step further in two ways. Firstly, he identifies a body of response to the actors supposedly compromised by this work, and a community of slights to McQueen, in particular, from fellow thespians who saw their own work, and by extension themselves, as not succumbing to stereotype and therefore, a cut above. Secondly, he demonstrates a steady and fairly empowered (considering the times) presence of black theater artists on the major stages; in the professional unions; in the offices as writers, producers, managers, and publicists; and behind the scenes as designers and production crew. He reminds us that black actors have always, out of necessity as well as artistic impulse, created opportunities for themselves developing new work and re-envisioning works from the European classical canon, even as it must be acknowledged that this is a reality that has not changed much for black theater artists. While there is more chatter and perhaps [End Page 186] more consciousness around racial inclusion in professional film and theater, actors still struggle for dignity and normalcy in casting and performance. The book is full of accounts of independently produced, multiethnic work by black and white theater and film artists; activities by union groups and independent artists to eliminate degrading roles for African Americans; and the unsung contributions of black artists who worked in lead roles on Broadway, beyond the stereotypical musical revue, before the 1959 production of Raisin in the Sun that has historically marked the beginnings of black professional theater.

This is not to say that Bourne doesn’t do what he sets out to do—“to do justice to this great lady.”2 The book is an unapologetic homage to Mc-Queen, whose portrayal of Prissy has left an indelible mark on the national consciousness. In addition, there is much here about black Hollywood, from the advent of Gone with the Wind through some interesting turns in independent films that featured McQueen. There is also a wealth of interesting and informative anecdotal evidence of the on-the-set climate for black actors, and in particular McQueen, during the taping of McQueen’s most prominent films (including, of course GWTW). A cursory list includes the star-studded Duel in the Sun; Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford; Affectionately Yours, an unsuccessful film with Rita Hayworth and Merle Oberon; and Vincente Minelli’s all-black blockbuster, Cabin in the Sky. Bourne covers the details of Butterfly McQueen’s life in a way that sheds light on her artistic talents and her lost potential and, in so doing, paints a complex, if not ambiguous, portrait of a rebellious and free-thinking African American woman. The Butterfly McQueen that Bourne has discovered...

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