Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters
Winters in a studio publicity photo (1951)
Born	Shirley Schrift (1920-08-18)August 18, 1920 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died	Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Heart failure
Resting place	Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, Culver City
Nationality	American
Alma mater	The New School
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1943–2006
Spouse(s)	Mack Paul Mayer (m.1942–1948; divorced) Vittorio Gassman (m.1952–1954; divorced; 1 child) Anthony Franciosa (m.1957–1960; divorced) Gerry DeFord (m. 2006–2006; her death)
Awards	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (1959 and 1965)

Shelley Winters (August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006. Winters won Academy Awards for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, and received nominations for A Place in the Sun (Best Actress) and The Poseidon Adventure (Best Supporting Actress). She also appeared in such films as The Big Knife, A Double Life, Lolita, The Night of the Hunter, Alfie and Pete's Dragon.

Childhood

Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose (née Winter), a singer with The Muny, and Jonas Schrift, a designer of men's clothing. Her parents were Jewish; her father emigrated from Austria, and her mother was born in St. Louis to Austrian immigrants. Her parents were third cousins. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was three years old. Her sister Blanche Schrift later married George Boroff, who ran The Circle Theatre (now named El Centro Theatre) in Los Angeles. Winters studied at The New School in New York City.

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." She studied in the Hollywood Studio Club, and in the late 1940s, she shared an apartment with another newcomer, Marilyn Monroe.

Her first movie was What a Woman! (1943). Working in films (in mostly bit roles) through the 1940s, Winters first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor's A Double Life, in 1947. She quickly ascended in Hollywood with leading roles in The Great Gatsby (1949) with Alan Ladd and Winchester 73 (1950), opposite James Stewart. Her performance in A Place in the Sun (1951), a departure from the sexpot image that her studio, Universal Pictures, was building up for her at the time, first brought Winters her acclaim, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

With James Stewart in Winchester 73 (1950)

Throughout the 1950s, Winters continued in films, including Meet Danny Wilson (1952) as Frank Sinatra's leading lady, most notably in Charles Laughton's 1955 Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish, and the less successful I Am a Camera starring opposite Julie Harris and Laurence Harvey. She also returned to the stage on various occasions during this time, including a Broadway run in A Hatful of Rain, in 1955–1956, opposite future husband Anthony Franciosa. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Diary of Anne Frank in 1960, and another award, in the same category, for A Patch of Blue in 1966. She donated her Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Notable later roles included her lauded performance as the man-hungry Charlotte Haze in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita; starring opposite Michael Caine in Alfie, and as the fading, 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. She appeared in such cult films as 1968's Wild in the Streets and 1971's Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?. She also starred in the 1970 Broadway musical Minnie's Boys as Minnie Marx, the mother of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo Marx.

As the Associated Press reported, "During her 50 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 her autobiographies. She wrote of a yearly rendezvous she kept with William Holden, as well as her affairs with Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Errol Flynn, and Marlon Brando.

Winters gained significant weight later in life, but lost much of it for (or before) an appearance at the 1998 Academy Awards telecast, which featured a tribute to Oscar winners past and present. She appeared alongside an array of former winners, including Gregory Peck, Claire Trevor, Jennifer Jones, and Luise Rainer.

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: she played a restaurant owner and mother of an overweight cook in Heavy (1995), with Liv Tyler and Debbie Harry, as an aristocrat in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), starring Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich, and as an embittered nursing home administrator in 1999's Gideon.

Personal life

Winters was married four times; her husbands were:

• Captain Mack Paul Mayer, whom she married on New Year's Day, 1942; 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.
• 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.
• Anthony Franciosa, whom she married on May 4, 1957; they divorced on November 18, 1960.
• Gerry DeFord, on January 14, 2006, hours before her death.

Hours before her death, Winters married long-time companion Gerry DeFord, with whom she had lived for 19 years. Though Winters' daughter objected to the marriage, the actress Sally Kirkland performed the wedding ceremony for the two at Winters' deathbed. Kirkland, a minister of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, also performed non-denominational last rites for Winters.

Winters also had a romance with Farley Granger that became a long-term friendship (according to her autobiography Shelley Also Known As Shirley). 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 was a Democrat and attended the 1960 Democratic National Convention. In 1965, she addressed the Selma marchers briefly outside Montgomery on the night before they marched into the state capital.

She became friendly with rock singer Janis Joplin shortly before Joplin died in 1970. Winters invited Joplin to sit in on a class session at the Actors' Studio at its Los Angeles location. Joplin never did.

Death

Winters died at the age of 85 on January 14, 2006, of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills; she had suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005. Her body was interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City. Her third former husband, Anthony Franciosa, had a stroke on the day she died and died five days later.

Work

Filmography

Uncredited in Tonight and Every Night (1945), Winters appears with Rita Hayworth

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1943	There's Something About a Soldier	Norma	uncredited
	What a Woman!	Secretary	uncredited
1944	Sailor's Holiday	Gloria Flynn	credited as Shelley Winter
	Knickerbocker Holiday	Ulda Tienhoven	credited as Shelley Winter
	She's a Sailor Too	'Silver' Rankin	uncredited
	Dancing in Manhattan	Margie	uncredited
1945	Tonight and Every Night	Bubbles	uncredited
	Escape in the Fog	Taxi Driver	uncredited
	A Thousand and One Nights	Handmaiden	uncredited
1946	The Fighting Guardsman	Nanette	uncredited
	Two Smart People	Princess	uncredited
	Susie Steps Out	Female Singer	uncredited
	Abie's Irish Rose	Bridesmaid	uncredited
1947	New Orleans	Ms. Holmbright	uncredited
	Living in a Big Way	Junior League Girl	uncredited
	The Gangster	Hazel - Cashier	uncredited
	A Double Life	Pat Kroll
	Killer McCoy	Waitress/Autograph Hound	uncredited
1948	Red River	Dance Hall Girl in Wagon Train	uncredited
	Larceny	Tony
	Cry of the City	Brenda Martingale
1949	Take One False Step	Catherine Sykes
	The Great Gatsby	Myrtle Wilson
	Johnny Stool Pigeon	Terry Stewart
1950	Winchester '73	Lola Manners
	South Sea Sinner	Coral
	Frenchie	Frenchie Fontaine
1951	He Ran All the Way	Peggy Dobbs
	A Place in the Sun	Alice Tripp	New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress(2nd place) Nominated-Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated-Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
	Behave Yourself!	Kate Denny
	The Raging Tide	Connie Thatcher
	Meet Danny Wilson	Joy Carroll
1952	Phone Call from a Stranger	Binky Gay
	Untamed Frontier	Jane Stevens
	My Man and I	Nancy
1954	Tennessee Champ	Sarah Wurble
	Saskatchewan	Grace Markey
	Executive Suite	Eva Bardeman	Venice Film Festival Special Prize for Ensemble Acting
	Playgirl	Fran Davis
	Mambo	Toni Salermo
	To Dorothy a Son	Myrtle La Mar
	The Ford Television Theatre	Sally Marland	episode: Mantrap
1955	I Am a Camera	Natalia Landauer
	The Night of the Hunter	Willa Harper
	The Big Knife	Dixie Evans	credited as Miss Shelley Winters
	The Treasure of Pancho Villa	Ruth Harris
	I Died a Thousand Times	Marie Garson
	Producers' Showcase	Crystal Allen	episode: The Women
1957	The Alcoa Hour	Pat Kroll	episode: A Double Life
	The United States Steel Hour	Evvie	episode: Inspired Alibi
	Wagon Train	Ruth Owens	episode: The Ruth Owens Story
	Schlitz Playhouse of the Stars	Mildred Corrigan	episode: Smarty
	DuPont Show of the Month	Louisa Burt	episode: Beyond This Place
1959	The Diary of Anne Frank	Mrs. Petronella Van Daan	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Laurel Award for Top Female Supporting Performance Nominated-Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
	Odds Against Tomorrow	Lorry
1960	Let No Man Write My Epitaph	Nellie Romano
	Play of the Week	Rose	episode: A Piece of Blue Sky
1961	The Young Savages	Mary diPace
1962	Lolita	Charlotte Haze	Nominated-Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
	The Chapman Report	Sarah Garnell
	Alcoa Premiere	Meg Fletcher Millie Norman	episode: The Way From Darkness episode: The Cake Baker
1963	The Balcony	Madame Irma
	Wives and Lovers	Fran Cabrell
1964	A House Is Not a Home	Polly Adler
	Time of Indifference	Lisa
	Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre	Jenny Dworak	episode: Two is the Number Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
1965	The Greatest Story Ever Told	Healed Woman
	A Patch of Blue	Rose-Ann D'Arcey	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Laurel Award for Top Female Supporting Performance
	Thirty-Minute Theatre	Mrs. Bixby	episode: Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
	Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre	Edith	episode: Back to Back Nominated-Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama
1966	The Three Sisters	Natalya
	Harper	Fay Estabrook
	Alfie	Ruby	Laurel Award for Top Female Supporting Performance (2nd place) Nominated-Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
	Batman (1966) TV series	Ma Parker	episodes 43 and 44 Special guest villainess
1967	Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre	Clarry Golden	episode: Wipeout
	Enter Laughing	Mrs. Emma Kolowitz
1968	The Scalphunters	Kate
	Wild in the Streets	Mrs. Daphne Flatow
	Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell	Shirley Newman
	Here's Lucy	Shelley Summers	episode: Lucy and Miss Shelley Winters
1969	The Mad Room	Mrs. Armstrong
	Arthur! Arthur!	Hester Green
1970	Bloody Mama	'Ma' Kate Barker
	How Do I Love Thee?	Lena Marvin
	Flap	Dorothy Bluebell
1971	What's the Matter with Helen?	Helen
	Revenge	Amanda Hilton
	A Death of Innocence	Elizabeth Cameron	(TV movie)
1972	Something to Hide	Gabriella
	Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?	Mrs. Forrest
	The Poseidon Adventure	Belle Rosen	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Nominated-Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated-BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
	Adventures of Nick Carter	Bess Tucker	(TV movie)
1973	Blume in Love	Mrs. Cramer
	Cleopatra Jones	Mommy
	The Devil's Daughter	Lilith Malone	(TV movie)
1974	Big Rose: Double Trouble	Rose Winters	(TV movie)
	The Sex Symbol	Agathy Murphy	(TV movie)
	McCloud	Thelma	episode: The Barefoot Girls of Bleecker Street Nominated-Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy or Drama Series
1975	Poor Pretty Eddie	Bertha
	That Lucky Touch	Diana Steedeman
	Journey Into Fear	Mrs. Mathews
	Diamonds	Zelda Shapiro
	Chico and the Man	Shirley Schrift	episode: Ed Steps Out
1976	Next Stop, Greenwich Village	Faye Lapinsky	Nominated-BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated-Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
	The Tenant	The Concierge
1977	Tentacles	Tillie Turner
	An Average Little Man	Amalia Vivaldi	David di Donatello Special Distinction Award
	Pete's Dragon	Lena Gogan
	Black Journal	Lea
1978	King of the Gypsies	Queen Rachel
	Kojak	Evelyn McNeil	episode: The Captain's Brother's Wife
	The Initiation of Sarah	Mrs. Erica Hunter	(TV movie)
1979	The Visitor	Jane Phillips
	City on Fire	Nurse Andrea Harper
	The Magician of Lublin	Elzbieta
	Elvis	Gladys Presley
	Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July	Crystal	(voice)
	The French Atlantic Affair	Helen Wabash
	Vega$	J.D. Fenton	episode: Macho Murders
1981	S.O.B.	Eva Brown
	Looping	Carmen
1982	The Love Boat	Teresa Rosselli	episode: Venetian Love Song/Down for the Count/Arrividerci, Gopher/The Arrangement
1983	Fanny Hill	Mrs. Cole
	Parade of Stars	Sophie Tucker	(TV movie)
1984	Ellie	Cora Jackson
	Over the Brooklyn Bridge	Becky
	Hotel	Adele Ellsworth	episode: Trials
	Hawaiian Heat	Florence Senkowski	episode: Andy's Mom
1985	Déjà Vu	Olga Nabokova
	Alice in Wonderland	The Dodo Bird	(TV movie)
1986	Very Close Quarters	Galina
	Witchfire	Lydia
	The Delta Force	Edie Kaplan
1987	The Sleeping Beauty	Fairy	(TV movie)
1988	Purple People Eater	Rita
1989	An Unremarkable Life	Evelyn McEllany
1991	Stepping Out	Mrs. Fraser
1991–1996	Roseanne	Nana Mary	10 episodes
1992	Weep No More, My Lady	Vivian Morgan
1993	The Pickle	Yetta
1994	The Silence of the Hams	Mrs. Motel
1995	Backfire!	The Good Lieutenant
	Heavy	Dolly Modino
	Jury Duty	Mom
	Mrs. Munck	Aunt Monica
	Raging Angels	Grandma Ruth
1996	The Portrait of a Lady	Mrs. Touchett
1999	Gideon	Mrs. Willows

Source:

Theater

2

Summer Stock Plays

2

Radio appearances

Year	Program	Episode/source
1953	Lux Radio Theatre	Phone Call from a Stranger

Books

• Shelley: The Middle of My Century [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

External links

• Shelley Winters at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection
• Shelley Winters at the Internet Broadway Database
• Shelley Winters at the Internet Movie Database
• Shelley Winters at the TCM Movie Database
• Shelley Winters at TVGuide.com
• Winters' Entry on the St. Louis Walk of Fame
• Shelley Winters in an exclusive interview about acting.