The Butler (2013) on Netflix
Cecil Gaines, a sharecropper's son from Georgia, becomes a butler in the White House. His son Louis joins the civil rights movement while Cecil serves presidents.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.2/10124,459 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
Cecil Gaines is the son of Black sharecroppers on a Georgia cotton plantation, and as a boy he is taken in by the estate's matron, Annabeth Westfall, who trains him as a house servant. At eighteen he leaves the plantation, is taken on by an elderly master servant named Maynard, and learns the trade of waiting on people. He works in a Washington, D.C. hotel, marries Gloria, and they raise two sons, Louis and Charlie. In 1957 the White House hires him, and he joins the domestic staff under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Across the decades he works in the residence while Louis joins the fight for civil rights in the South, and Gloria, feeling that the job comes before her, drinks.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Butler (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Warner Bros. claimed a now-lost 1916 silent short had the same title, so the MPAA let the Weinstein Company rename the film Lee Daniels' The Butler, on the condition that Daniels' name be 75% the size of the title.
- Principal photography began in June 2012 in New Orleans, with the White House interiors shot at Second Line Stages, and the shoot ran past its planned early August wrap because of Hurricane Isaac.
- The Butler was the last film produced by Laura Ziskin, who died on June 12, 2011, and it was also the final film appearance of Clarence Williams III, who retired from acting in 2018 and died in 2021.
- The real Eugene Allen, the butler the film draws on, was born on a Virginia plantation in 1919, not in Georgia as the film shows, and what befalls Cecil Gaines' parents on the cotton field was added for dramatic effect.
- Melissa Leo was cast as First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and Orlando Eric Street as Barack Obama, but neither actor appears in the finished film.
