Bonnie Blue Butler Died

Well, not really.  It was the actress who played Bonnie Blue Butler who recently passed away.  It was Cammie King Conlon, the woman who played Bonnie Blue Butler in the movie Gone With the Wind who died at the age of 76.  Her obituaries say that she used to joke that her acting career peaked at the age of five, after her role in Gone With the Wind and as the voice of Faline in Bambi.

Ms Conlon was not the sole remaining actor from Gone with the Wind as Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Wilkes) is still alive at 94 as is Ann Rutherford (Careenn O’Hara, Scarlett’s sister) at 89.

Many of the articles on Ms Conlon’s death mention the costs of Gone With the Wind memorabilia.  Now like most forms of memorabilia, this stuff does not usually wind up out behind the garage door.  Even the sturdiest and most airtight garage doors can let in moisture and the elements, causing degradation to the memorabilia and if that garage door gets damaged through whatever means, those pieces of memorabilia can degrade that much further.

Items of memorabilia from any movie, period of someone’s life, cause, or whatever can be degraded quite often by neglect.  The tough thing for most non-collectors to know is what things improve in value after being cleaned up and what things decrease in value.  With the popularity of TV shows such as Pawn Stars and American Pickers, many people are learning that cleaning some items can cause a drastic reduction on the value yet they also learn that other items lose value if used at all.

The dress that Ms Conlon wore as Bonnie Blue Butler is supposed to be at the University of Texas.  It is quite likely that much of the memorabilia from Gone With the Wind has been preserved because of the popularity of the book and movie even before filming started.  Although Clark Gable was apparently a consensus choice as Rhett Butler, the casting for Scarlett O’Hara was an international story with multiple newsreel stories devoted to the process.  There are few if any books today that could be of such a high profile as to elicit worldwide interest in the casting of characters, although there were stories wondering who would be cast as the Vampire Lestat as well as speculative casting for the Bridge of Madison County or The Godfather.  And as always, anytime there are casting discussions for characters as well known as those in Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, Interview with a Vampire, or Bridges of Madison County, people will disagree with the decisions made.

Bonnie Blue Butler, you will be missed.