- Frustrated with racial type-casting, she quit acting in films in 1947, but appeared in the TV series Beulah (1950), where she played a maid. When not appearing on Broadway, she worked as a taxi dispatcher, a real-life maid, a companion to an elderly white woman, a seamstress, and a department store salesperson.
- Hated her real name of "Thelma" and actually had her name legalized to "Butterfly McQueen."
- In 1980, she sued Greyhound Bus Lines when she was assaulted in a bus station by a guard who thought she was a pickpocket. Thrown roughly onto a bench, the 69 year-old actress had several of her ribs damaged. After several years of litigation, she was awarded $60,000.
- Lines from her obituary indicate that she wished to have all of her many cats put to sleep, as she could not be sure they could be guaranteed good homes after she was gone.
- Received a bachelor's degree in political science from New York City College in 1975 (she was 64).
- In the 1975 stage musical "The Wiz," Butterfly was initially cast to play the Queen of the Field Mice until her scene was cut. She ended up understudying the role of Addapearle, the Good Witch of the North.
- At the time of her passing, she was living in a modest one-bedroom cottage just outside Augusta, GA. Her neighbors told the media that they knew her as "Thelma" McQueen because she did not want the public to know who she was. On the night of Dec. 22, 1995, a fire broke out in her cottage, and she was found lying on the sidewalk outside with second- and third-degree burns over 70 percent of her body. She told firefighters her clothes caught fire while she was trying to light one of two kerosene heaters in her cottage, which was destroyed by the fire. She was taken to Augusta Regional Medical Center, where she died at age 84.
- A lifelong atheist, she was honored with a "Freethought Heroine" award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1989. She was a life member of the organization, and left the contents of her personal bank account to the group when she died.
- Her body was donated to medical science.
- Father was a stevedore and mother was a maid.
- Biography in "Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties" by Axel Nissen.
- The pressbook for the late 1960s release of Gone with the Wind (1939) listed her name as "Butterfield McQueen."
- Was in three Oscar Best Picture nominees: Gone with the Wind (1939), Since You Went Away (1944) and Mildred Pierce (1945), with the first the only winner.
- At one point, lived at the Thomas W. Phillips Residence at 2215 South Harvard Boulevard in Los Angeles, which was the filming location for the house in the majority of The People Under the Stairs (1991). There was a February 4, 1999 Los Angeles Times Article about this entitled "Points Of Pride" .
- She used to ride the ferries in New York waiting for fans to recognize her, which they seldom did. If recognized, she would talk your ear off.
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