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Shelley Winters (August 18, 1920 – January
14, 2006) was an Academy Award winning American actress.
****
Winters was born Shirley Schrift in East
St. Louis, Illinois, the daughter of Jewish parents - Jonas Schrift (an
immigrant) and Rose Winter (born in Missouri to immigrant parents). Her
family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was 3 years old.
She studied in the Hollywood Studio Club,
sharing the same bedroom with another beginner: Marilyn Monroe. 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 Academy Awards." 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).
In 1959, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The
Diary of Anne Frank and another for A Patch of Blue (1965). Notable
later roles included her turn as the once gorgeous, alcoholic former
starlet "Fay Estabrook" in Harper (1966) and in The Poseidon Adventure
(1972) as the ill-fated "Mrs. Emmanuel Rosen", for which she received
her final Oscar nomination.
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 Museum in Amsterdam.
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 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.
She was married four times. Her husbands
included:
1) Capt. Mack Paul Mayer, married 1943,
divorced 1946. Mack Mayer was not able to deal with the "Hollywood"
lifestyle. Mayer left Winters, mainly since he wanted a 'traditional
homemaker'. Winters wore his wedding ring up until her death and kept
their relationship very private.
2) Vittorio Gassman, married 1952, divorced
1954. They had one child, Vittoria, a physician, who practices internal
medicine at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut.
3) Anthony Franciosa, married 1957,
divorced 1960
4) Gerry DeFord, married in a spiritual --
not legal ceremony 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's daughter objected to the marrage, the actress
Sally Kirkland, an ordained minister, performed a spiritual -- not legal
wedding ceremony for the two at Winters's deathbed. Non-denominational
last rites for Winters were performed by Kirkland, a minister of the
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.
Audiences born in the 1980's 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 early 1990s, Winters played the title character's grandmother on
the top-rated ABC sitcom Roseanne, which had the bizarre effect of
making her play Estelle Parsons' (who played Roseanne's lesbian mother)
mother, although Parsons was only 7 years younger, and looked about the
same age as Winters.
Death
Winters died on January 14, 2006 of heart
failure at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills at the age of 85;
she had suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005. Ex-husband Anthony
Franciosa died of a stroke 5 days later.
Academy Awards and nominations
1951 - Nominated Best Actress in a Leading
Role - A Place in the Sun
1959 - Won Best Actress in a Supporting
Role - The Diary of Anne Frank
1965 - Won Best Actress in a Supporting
Role - A Patch of Blue
1972 - Nominated Best Actress in a
Supporting Role - The Poseidon Adventure
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame at 1750 Vine Street.
Filmography
What a Woman! (1943)
The Racket Man (1944)
Sailor's Holiday (1944)
Knickerbocker Holiday (1944)
Cover Girl (1944)
She's a Soldier Too (1944)
Together Again (1944)
Tonight and Every Night (1945)
Dancing in Manhattan (1945)
Escape in the Fog (1945)
A Thousand and One Nights (1945)
The Fighting Guardsman (1946)
Two Smart People (1946)
New Orleans (1947)
Living in a Big Way (1947)
The Gangster (1947)
A Double Life (1947)
Killer McCoy (1947)
Red River (1948)
Larceny (1948)
Cry of the City (1948)
South Sea Sinner (1949)
Take One False Step (1949)
The Great Gatsby (1949)
Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949)
Winchester '73 (1950)
Frenchie (1950)
The Raging Tide (1951)
He Ran All the Way (1951)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Behave Yourself! (1951)
Phone Call from a Stranger (1952)
Meet Danny Wilson (1952)
Untamed Frontier (1952)
My Man and I (1952)
Cash on Delivery (1954)
Tennessee Champ (1954)
Saskatchewan (1954)
Playgirl (1954)
Executive Suite (1954)
Mambo (1954)
I Am a Camera (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955)
The Big Knife (1955)
I Died a Thousand Times (1955)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960)
The Young Savages (1961)
Lolita (1962)
The Chapman Report (1962)
The Balcony (1963)
Wives and Lovers (1963)
Time of Indifference (1964)
A House Is Not a Home (1964)
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
A Patch of Blue (1965)
The Three Sisters (1966)
Harper (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Enter Laughing (1967)
The Scalphunters (1968)
Wild in the Streets (1968)
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968)
Arthur! Arthur! (1969)
The Mad Room (1969)
Bloody Mama (1970)
How Do I Love Thee? (1970)
Flap (1970)
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)
Something to Hide (1972)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Blume in Love (1973)
Cleopatra Jones (1973)
Poor Pretty Eddy (1975)
Journey Into Fear (1975)
Diamonds (1975)
That Lucky Touch (1975)
The Scarlet Dahila (1976)
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)
The Tenant (1976)
Mimi Bluette... Flower of My Garden (1977)
Black Journal (1977)
Tentacles (1977)
An Average Little Man (1977)
Pete's Dragon (1977)
King of the Gypsies (1978)
The Visitor (1979)
City on Fire (1979)
The Magician of Lublin (1979)
S.O.B. (1981)
Looping (1981)
Fanny Hill (1983)
Ellie (1984)
Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984)
Deja Vu (1985)
Witchfire (1986)
Very Close Quarters (1986)
The Delta Force (1986)
Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend (1987)
(documentary)
Purple People Eater (1988)
An Unremarkable Life (1989)
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy
Warhol (1990) (documentary)
Touch of a Stranger (1990)
Stepping Out (1991)
The Pickle (1993)
A Century of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
The Silence of the Hams (1994)
Heavy (1995)
Backfire! (1995)
Jury Duty (1995)
Mrs. Munck (1995)
Raging Angels (1995)
The Portrait of a Lady (1996])
Gideon (1999)
La Bomba (1999)
A-List (2004) (Cameo)
TV work
Wipe-Out (1963)
A Death of Innocence (1971)
Adventures of Nick Carter (1972)
The Devil's Daughter (1973)
Big Rose: Double Trouble (1974)
The Sex Symbol (1974)
Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976) (voice)
The Initiation of Sarah (1978)
Elvis (1979)
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July
(1979) (voice)
The French Atlantic Affair (1979)
(miniseries)
Emma and Grandpa on the Farm (1983)
(narrator)
Alice in Wonderland (1985)
Weep No More, My Lady (1992)
Roseanne (1993, 1995, 1996, 1997)
****
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