Cammie King was a former actress who played the role of Bonnie Blue Butler, the daughter of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, in the classic film Gone with the Wind (1939). She also voiced the young doe Faline in Disney’s Bambi (1942). She died of lung cancer on September 1, 2010, at the age of 76
A Brief Acting Career
Cammie King was born as Eleanore Cammack King on August 5, 1934, in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were W. Cammack King, a chemical plant manager, and Eleanore King, a schoolteacher. Her older sister, Diane, was also a child actress
She landed the part of Bonnie Blue Butler in Gone with the Wind at the age of four, after casting directors had tested 250 applicants for the role, including her seven-year-old sister Diane. After Diane was deemed too old for the part, she told the staff, “My sister looks like me and is only four and she can read lines” Cammie did remember her lines, but she was unable to keep her eyelids from moving during Bonnie’s death scene and was fitted with a death mask. An adult male small person served as a body double for Bonnie’s fall from the horse
Cammie provided the voice of Faline as a fawn in Disney’s 1942 film Bambi According to the Los Angeles Times, she was cast in a third role in the early 1940s but broke out with chicken pox on the day filming began and was dropped from the cast list Reflecting on her film career, she once joked, “I peaked at 5”
Education and Later Career
Cammie studied at Marymount High School and went on to attend the University of Southern California, graduating in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Afterwards she worked as a production assistant on Climax!, a CBS-TV anthology series
In 1980, she moved to Northern California and had a long public-relations career that included working for the Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce In the early 2000s, she made a guest appearance as a contestant on the TV game show To Tell the Truth, hosted by John O’Hurley. She spent 40 years working as a marketing coordinator for the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce
A Gone with the Wind Icon
Cammie often appeared at retrospectives with the surviving Gone with the Wind cast members In 2009, she privately published a small book, Bonnie Blue Butler: A Gone with the Wind Memoir, mainly selling copies directly to fans via personal appearances and the internet
She was one of the last surviving cast members of the film, along with Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Hamilton, and Mickey Kuhn, who played Beau Wilkes
She was married twice and had two children, Matthew and Katie Conlon. Her father-in-law from her second marriage, Judd Conlon, was a musical arranger for many Disney films including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953)
She died on September 1, 2010, at her home in Fort Bragg, California, from lung cancer She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City
She will always be remembered as the adorable and tragic Bonnie Blue Butler, who touched the hearts of millions of viewers with her innocent charm and tragic fate.