Biography
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Shelley Winters (August 18 1920 – January 14 2006) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress.
Life and career
Winters was born Shirley Schrift in East St. Louis, Illinois, the daughter of Jewish parents - Jonas Schrift and Rose Winter. 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 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 There's Something About a Soldier (1943). 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 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. (She later reunited with her Poseidon costar, Jack Albertson in a number of episodes of Albertson's sitcom Chico and the Man during the mid-1970s.)
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.
Winters suffered an enormous 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 Heffer", co-starring Charles Nelson Reilly and Bongo. a tap-dancing chimp. Although it closed after only 8 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 applaude big enough to rest her massive girth".
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.
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, 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, married in a spiritual, not legal ceremony on January 14, 2006, hours before her death by Sally Kirkland.
Shortly before her death, Winters married long-time companion Gerry DeFord, with whom she had lived for nineteen years, in a spirtitual, non legal ceremony. Though Winters' daughter objected to the marriage, the actress Sally Kirkland, an ordained minister, performed the spiritual wedding ceremony for the two at Winters' deathbed. Non-denominational last rites for Winters were performed by Kirkland, a minister of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.
Death
Winters died on January 14, 2006 of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills at the age of 85 a few hours after she married DeFord; she had suffered a heart attack on October 14, 2005. Ex-husband Anthony Franciosa died of a stroke five 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.
She was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1992.
Filmography
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