Shelley Winters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shelley Winters

Winters in Cry of the City, 1948
Born Shirley Schrift
18 August 1920(1920-08-18)
St. Louis, Missouri
Died January 14, 2006 (aged 85)
Beverly Hills, California
Occupation actress, singer, producer
Years active 1943 - 1999
Spouse(s) Paul Meyer (1942-1948)
Vittorio Gassman (1952-1954)
Anthony Franciosa (1957-1960)
Gerry DeFord (2006-2006)

Shelley Winters (August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was a American actress who won Academy Awards for her supporting roles in The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, and a Golden Globe Award for her role in The Poseidon Adventure. She appeared in dozens of films as well as on stage and television.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Jewish parents Jonas Schrift, a designer of men's clothing, and Rose (Winters), a singer.[1][2] Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was three years old. She studied in the Hollywood Studio Club, sharing the same bedroom with another beginner, Marilyn Monroe.

[edit] Career

As the New York Times obituary noted, "A major movie presence for more than five decades, Shelley Winters turned herself into a widely respected actress who won two Oscars." Winters originally broke into Hollywood as "the Blonde Bombshell," but quickly tired of the role's limitations. She washed off her makeup and played against type to set up Elizabeth Taylor's beauty in A Place in the Sun, still a landmark American film. As the Associated Press reported, the general public was unaware of how serious a craftswoman Winters was. "Although she was in demand as a character actress, Winters continued to study her craft. She attended Charles Laughton's Shakespeare classes and worked at the Actors Studio, both as student and teacher."

Her first movie was What a Woman! (1943). Working in films (in mostly bit roles) throught the forties, Winters' first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor's A Double Life, in 1948. She quickly ascended in Hollywood with leading roles in The Great Gatsby (1949) and Winchester 73 (1950), opposite James Stewart. But it was A Place in the Sun, a departure from the sexpot image that her studio, Universal, was building up for her at the time. It was this performance that first brought Shelley Winters acclaim as an actress, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Throughout the 1950s, Winters continued in films, most notably in Charles Laughton's masterpiece, 1955s Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish. She also returned to the stage on various occasions during this time, including a Broadway run in A Hatful of Rain. In 1959, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank and another for A Patch of Blue (1965).

Notable later roles included her lauded performance as the man-hungry Charlotte in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, opposite Michael Caine in Alfie, as the once gorgeous, alcoholic former starlet "Fay Estabrook" in Harper (both 1966), in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) as the ill-fated Belle Rosen (for which she received her final Oscar nomination), and in Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976). She also returned to the stage during the 1960s and 1970s, most notably in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana. Unfortunately, her prestigious work during this period tended to be undermined by her forays into camp kitsch with films like 1968s Wild in the Streets and 1971s Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?. Always conscious of her Jewish heritage—she had first learned her trade in the Borscht Belt—she donated her Oscar for Anne Frank to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

As the Associated Press reported, "During her fifty years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars, her forays into politics and feminist causes kept her name before the public. She delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything."

That led to a second career as a writer. Though not an overwhelming beauty, her acting, wit, and "chutzpah" gave her a love life to rival Monroe's. In late life, she recalled her conquests in autobiographies so popular they undermined her reputation as a serious actor. She wrote of a yearly rendezvous she kept with William Holden, as well as her affairs with Burt Lancaster and Marlon Brando.

Winters suffered a significant weight gain later in life, frequently stating that it was a marketing tool, since there were plenty of prominent normal-weight older actresses but fewer overweight ones, and her obesity would enable her to find work more easily. In 1973 Winters even put on a short-lived Broadway musical review entitled "The Hoofing Hollywood Heifer", co-starring Charles Nelson Reilly and Bongo, a tap-dancing chimp. Although it closed after only eight performances, this show was applauded for its sheer campy bravado by many critics, one of whom stated that Winters was a "Whale of a Talent looking for a sea of applause big enough to rest her massive girth."

Audiences born in the 1980s knew her primarily for the autobiographies and for her television work, in which she played a humorous parody of her public persona. In a recurring role in the 1990s, Winters played the title character's grandmother on the ABC sitcom Roseanne. Her final film roles were supporting ones, as John Gielgud's wife in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and as a bitter nursing home administrator in 1999s Gideon.

[edit] Personal life

She was married four times. Her husbands were:

  1. Capt. Mack Paul Mayer, whom she married on New Years Day, 1943; they divorced in October 1948. Mayer was unable to deal with Shelley's "Hollywood lifestyle" and wanted a "traditional homemaker" for a wife. Winters wore his wedding ring up until her death and kept their relationship very private.
  2. Vittorio Gassman, whom she married on April 28, 1952; they divorced on June 2, 1954. They had one child, Vittoria born February 14, 1953, a physician, who practices internal medicine at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was Winters' only child.
  3. Anthony Franciosa, whom she married on May 4, 1957; they divorced on November 18, 1960.
  4. Gerry DeFord, on January 14, 2006, hours before her death.

Shortly before her death, Winters married long-time companion Gerry DeFord, with whom she had lived for nineteen years. Though Winters' god-daughter objected to the marriage, the actress Sally Kirkland, performed the wedding ceremony for the two at Winters' deathbed. Non-denominational last rites for Winters were also performed by Kirkland, a minister of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Winters also had a romance with Farley Granger that became a long-term friendship. She starred with him in the 1951 film, Behave Yourself!, as well as in a 1957 television production of A. J. Cronin's novel, Beyond This Place.

Winters died on January 14, 2006 from natural causes at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills at the age of 85 a few hours after she married DeFord; Ex-husband Anthony Franciosa died of a stroke five days later.

[edit] Awards and nominations

Year Award Film Won?
1951 Best Actress in a Leading Role A Place in the Sun No
1959 Best Actress in a Supporting Role The Diary of Anne Frank Yes
1965 Best Actress in a Supporting Role A Patch of Blue Yes
1972 Best Actress in a Supporting Role The Poseidon Adventure No

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1750 Vine Street, and was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1992.

[edit] Work

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Theater

Summer Stock Plays

  • The Taming of the Shrew (1947)
  • Born Yesterday (1950)
  • Wedding Breakfast (1955)
  • A Piece of Blue Sky (1959)
  • Two for the Seasaw (1960)
  • The Country Girl (1961)
  • A View from the Bridge (1961)
  • Days of the Dancing (1964)
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1965)

[edit] Television

[edit] References

  1. ^ Shelley Winters Biography (1920?-)
  2. ^ The religion of Shelley Winters, actress

[edit] External links


Awards
Preceded by
Ann-Margret
for Carnal Knowledge		 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
1973
for The Poseidon Adventure		 Succeeded by
Linda Blair
for The Exorcist
v • d • e
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Mary Astor (1941) · Teresa Wright (1942) · Katina Paxinou (1943) · Ethel Barrymore (1944) · Anne Revere (1945) · Anne Baxter (1946) · Celeste Holm (1947) · Claire Trevor (1948) · Mercedes McCambridge (1949) · Josephine Hull (1950) · Kim Hunter (1951) · Gloria Grahame (1952) · Donna Reed (1953) · Eva Marie Saint (1954) · Jo Van Fleet (1955) · Dorothy Malone (1956) · Miyoshi Umeki (1957) · Wendy Hiller (1958) · Shelley Winters (1959) · Shirley Jones (1960)

Complete list · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)
v • d • e
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Rita Moreno (1961) · Patty Duke (1962) · Margaret Rutherford (1963) · Lila Kedrova (1964) · Shelley Winters (1965) · Sandy Dennis (1966) · Estelle Parsons (1967) · Ruth Gordon (1968) · Goldie Hawn (1969) · Helen Hayes (1970) · Cloris Leachman (1971) · Eileen Heckart (1972) · Tatum O'Neal (1973) · Ingrid Bergman (1974) · Lee Grant (1975) · Beatrice Straight (1976) · Vanessa Redgrave (1977) · Maggie Smith (1978) · Meryl Streep (1979) · Mary Steenburgen (1980)

Complete list · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)
v • d • e
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie

Judith Anderson (1954) · Mary Martin (1955) · Claire Trevor (1956) · Polly Bergen (1957) · Julie Harris (1959) · Ingrid Bergman (1960) · Judith Anderson (1961) · Julie Harris (1962) · Kim Stanley (1963) · Shelley Winters (1964) · Lynn Fontanne (1965) · Simone Signoret (1966) · Geraldine Page (1967) · Maureen Stapleton (1968) · Geraldine Page (1969) · Patty Duke (1970) · Lee Grant (1971) · Glenda Jackson (1972) · Cloris Leachman (1973) · Susan Hampshire / Cicely Tyson / Mildred Natwick (1974) · Katharine Hepburn / Jessica Walter (1975)


Persondata
NAME Winters, Shelley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schrift, Shirley
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actress
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis, Missouri, USA
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 2006
PLACE OF DEATH Beverly Hills, California, USA