Butterfly McQueen

A lifelong atheist, she donated her body to medical science. Her contribution to the film industry has been recognized through a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. McQueen died in Augusta, Georgia as a result of burns received when a kerosene heater she was attempting to light exploded and doused her in fuel. Alla Nazimova died in 1945 in Los Angeles and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. She had one more role of some substance in the 1986 film The Mosquito Coast. With little choice, she gave up on the film industry, returning to perform on Broadway until the early 1940s when she appeared in a few more films, ostensibly in need of money. Her acting roles after this were very few, and she devoted herself to other pursuits including study, and received a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science in 1975. By 1925 she no longer could afford to invest in more films and financial backers withdrew their support.

By 1950 she had commenced a three year stint on the television series Beulah which reunited her with her Gone With The Wind co-star Hattie McDaniel. However, her creativity did not meet consumer tastes and the films lost a great deal of money. She continued to play maids and small parts in various films including Since You Went Away, (1944), Mildred Pierce, (1945) and Duel in the Sun, (1946) but by 1947 had grown tired of the ethnic stereotypes she was required to play and ended her film career. Daring for the times, in her adaptations of works by such notable playwrights as Oscar Wilde or Henrik Ibsen she instituted her own ideas for filmmaking. She made her first film appearance playing an uncredited bit part as a sales assistant in The Women in 1939 and later that year filmed what would become her most identifiable role - as Prissy the maid in Gone With The Wind. In 1918, at age 39, Nazimova felt confident enough in her abilities that she began producing and writing films in which she also starred. Born Thelma McQueen in Tampa, Florida she trained as a dancer and took her stage name from "The Butterfly Dance" after performing it in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Loyal Davis, Nazimova was made godmother to their daughter, former first lady Nancy Davis-Reagan.

Butterfly McQueen (January 7, 1911 - December 22, 1995) was an American film and television actress. A friend of Edith Luckett and her husband, Dr. Her studio squelched the stories surfacing about her bisexual lifestyle and to cover it up, for more than a dozen years she lived in a partnership of mutual convenience with the homosexual actor Charles Bryant. She became widely gossiped about for the outlandish and allegedly debauched parties in her large mansion on Sunset Boulevard known as the Garden of Allah. Over the next few years she made a number of highly successful films that earned her a considerable amount of money.

She toured Europe as well the United States where her first Broadway performances in 1906 drew critical acclaim. Deciding to make the USA her home, she worked on stage until she made her silent film debut in 1916. Under the stage name, Alla Nazimova, her career blossomed and she married a fellow actor but it did not last long. As a teenager she began to pursue an interest in the theatre and took acting lessons before joining a theater company in Moscow. Her emotional distress caused her to rebel against authority as a way to gain attention but nonetheless, she was a talented child who was playing the violin by age seven.

She grew up in a very dysfunctional family and was shuffled between foster homes and relatives. Born Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon, into a Jewish family in Yalta in the Crimea which at the time was a part of Russia but today is an autonomous region of Ukraine. Alla Nazimova, born May 22, 1879 - died July 13, 1945, was a Ukrainian born stage and film actress, scriptwriter, and producer.