Cammie King Conlon is a well known local on California’s Mendocino Coast — a wonderful human being and a positive force in our community. But for people in the South — as in the Deep South — Cammie is a heroine of massive big screen proportions. When she was just 5, she starred as Bonnie Blue Butler, daughter of Rhett Butler, in the 1939 classic movie, Gone With The Wind. She is among those enshrined in four museums dedicated to the movie and has many times been celebrated in parades in Marietta, Georgia, a hot bed of movie fans, and elsewhere.
Each year she attends memorabilia shows where a long line forms to get her photo and autograph.
A few years back, Hallmark created a GWTW Christmas ornament with a picture of her with her movie dad, Clark Gable, walking on their plantation. Although most of the cast is long deceased (only a handful remain), the movie’s fans never seem to tire of the film, it’s stars and all the lore surrounding it.
Cammie is self-effacing about all this fuss. She jokes, “I peaked in show business at age 5.”
It was her first and only movie — a role she won when her older sister, Diane, got sick just before filming ( Cammie has doubts about explanation). But that’s the rest of the story.
I had breakfast with Cammie this morning at the Little River Inn in Little River, California, where she is a public relations specialist and got a copy of her new book, “Bonnie Blue Butler — A Gone With The Wind Memoir.”
In her 74-page memoir, which has great cast and family photos, Cammie describes the huge bash billiionaire Ted Turner (CNN and Turner Movie Company and owner of Gone With The Wind) staged on the movie’s 50th anniversary in 1989. You learn about Windies (the name of movie fans) and life growing up in the thirties and forties in Los Angeles. A good, easy read.
The book was published by Cypress House and is available at the special price of $19.39 (normally $24.95), by requesting an order form from scarlettsbaby@gmail.com. Cammie also has a new blog, but sadly no comments yet to her first post. I’ll race you to be the first.
