Cammie Conlon with her new book

Cammie King Conlon is a well known Fort Bragg, California resident and a wonderfully positive human being with a ready smile and a good sense of humor. To 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 other towns around the country. All that and more is in her new book just published. She will be autographing “Bonnie Blue Butler – A Gone With The Wind Memoir” at 4:30 pm June 5 (First Friday) at Cheshire Books on Franklin Street.

Each year Cammie 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 movie star 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 her mother’s explanation of how she was chosen). (more…)